Name: Chamber Symphony: Bronfman Plays Beethoven 'Emperor'
Start: 2024-08-09T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2024-08-09T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Klein Music Tent

Admin

Aspen Music Festival

Conductor

David Robertson

Orchestra

Aspen Chamber Symphony

Instrumentalist

Pianist

Yefim Bronfman

Piano

Chamber Symphony: Bronfman Plays Beethoven "Emperor"

Aspen

United States

Klein Music Tent

Public

Concert

Oratorio / Orchestral

Symphonies of Wind Instruments, K036

Musica for strings, percussion and celesta , BB 114 SZ 106

Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major Op. 73

Ayyappa swamy y

Approved

Multiple Grammy winner Yefim Bronfman has been described as an artist "for whom no score is too demanding." Hear his remarkable affinity for Beethoven in one of his signature works, the Fifth Piano Concerto. It’s believed that, for unknown reasons, a publisher later added the title “Emperor” to Beethoven’s last and most ambitious piano concerto. Beethoven would not have approved, especially since the real emperor, Napoleon, was bombarding his adopted city of Vienna at the time the piece was written. Relax into the serene slow movement and let all your cares melt away, then exult in the euphoric energy of the finale.

Two 20th century pieces with contrasting instrumentation make up the program’s first half. Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments was originally intended as a tranquil chorale in memory of Debussy, but as the work developed, Stravinsky added more eclectic material. In his words, "I did not, and indeed I could not, count on any immediate success for this work. It lacks all those elements that infallibly appeal to the ordinary listener, or to which he is accustomed...It is an austere ritual which is unfolded in terms of short litanies...This music is not meant to 'please' an audience, nor to arouse its passions." In spite of Stravinsky’s negative expectations, you may well find this piece both pleasing and arousing as played by the Aspen Chamber Symphony conducted by the dynamic David Robertson.

Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste is one of his greatest works. It’s full of the contrasts that make Bartók so fascinating and sometimes challenging to the listener. You’ll hear barbarism and sweetness, humor and solemnity, wild abandon and restraint. The unique instrumentation in the score was accompanied by a diagram arranging the two string orchestras on opposite sides of the stage as mirror images of each other, with the percussion and keyboard instruments in the middle and toward the back. This setup creates antiphonal effects as the sounds fly back and forth across the hall.

Hear one of the powerhouses of the piano world and a pair of one-of-a-kind 20th century works on this spirited program

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Ensemble