Zubin Mehta / Sir András Schiff II by Brahms, Shostakovich, No (2018/2018), Diriģents Zubin Mehta, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Florence, Italy

Sir András Schiff performs Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 with Zubin Mehta, a youthful composition of great breadth and complexity. Composed between 1854 and 1858, it is probably influenced by Beethoven's ninth symphony which the author had listened to in those years in Cologne; Proof of this is the indication Maestoso and the unusual breadth of the orchestral introduction. Symphony no. 5 by Dmitrij Shostakovich refers to the late Romantic style, limiting dissonance and atonality as much as possible. After the criticism and the panning of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mcensk District in Pravda, perhaps by Stalin himself, Shostakovich interrupted the rehearsals of his fourth symphony and dedicated himself to writing the fifth, composed in less than three months, to amend himself from the accusations of bourgeois formalism and present his new work as «a Soviet artist's creative response to well-founded criticism».