Name: Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini and Anna Prohaska
Start: 2011-05-15T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2011-05-15T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Berliner Philharmonie

Organization

Conductor

Claudio Abbado

Singer

Soprano

Anna Prohaska

Pianist

Maurizio Pollini

Orchestra

Berliner Philharmoniker

Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini and Anna Prohaska

Berlin

Germany

Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini and Anna Prohaska
Claudio Abbado and Maurizio Pollini: one of the great artistic friendships of classical music. In this concert from 2011, they perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17. A further Mozart soloist is the soprano Anna Prohaska, who is also heard in Alban Berg’s Symphonic Pieces from Lulu. The concert closes with the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony: a manifestation of the hopelessness and a farewell to life.

Berliner Philharmonie

Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini and Anna Prohaska: Concert Various

Public

Concert

Approved

Claudio Abbado and Maurizio Pollini covered much of their artistic careers together, giving many joint concerts, including the ones with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In this recording from 2011, they perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major together for the first time in Berlin. The same evening, Claudio Abbado conducted the Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony with his old orchestra for the first time.

The appeal of the G major concerto lies not least in the prominent role given to the woodwind. On an almost equal footing, they converse with the piano, awaking memories of ensemble scenes in Mozart’s operas. And just as in an opera, the gamut of emotions is run: “Within its friendly key”, the work is “full of secret smiles and secret sorrows,” fittingly wrote the Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein. There is genuine theatrical drama in this concert with Mozart’s concert aria K 418, giving us the opportunity to meet Anna Prohaska, a young soprano from the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and a rising star of the Berlin music scene.

The concert opens with Alban Berg’s Symphonic Pieces from Lulu, which Berg put together to promote his opera, at a time when he saw the planned premiere threatened by the Nazi regime. The result is a fully-grown five-movement symphony resembling not least the symphonies of Mahler – a composer who Berg deeply admired and whose baton he once stole as a souvenir. Notably, the parallels between the last of the pieces, an adagio, and the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth are clear; both manifestations of the hopelessness of, and a farewell to life.

English

Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini and Anna Prohaska by Various, From (2011/2011), Conductor Claudio Abbado, Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble

Programme, About & Synopsis

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