Grieg & Sibelius by Grieg, Sibelius, Lutosławski, Sâm 18 Nov. 2023, De la (2023/2023), Dirijor Tabita Berglund, Musikverein, Vienna, Austria

Music that comes from the heart and goes to the heart: With Tabita Berglund at the lectern, the Tonkunstler Orchestra follows Edvard Grieg’s musical telling of the story of the «Scandinavian Faust», Peer Gynt, through the world and the soul, travelling from the Sahara to the Hall of the Mountain King. In the Finale of Jean Sibelius’s magnificently rhapsodic Violin Concerto, filled with fire here by Benjamin Beilman, a British critic once claimed to sense a «polonaise for polar bears». From there it’s just a crevasse-leap to the real Poland, where Witold Lutosławski builds up influences from folk music, the baroque and modernism into a sweeping virtuoso work for the whole orchestra.