Wiener Symphoniker / Rana / Orozco-Estrada ABGESAGT
Friday
26
November
2021
19:30
Großer Saal
Presented by
Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft
Seductive power & transcendent lightness
Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto fascinates Beatrice Rana. But the young pianist, to whom The Times attests »a kind of Orphic seductiveness, a transcendent lightness of touch,« admits that it is at the same time a great challenge to give every aspect of this music the dignity it deserves: »It is always difficult to present a concerto like Tchaikovsky's, because everyone has it in their ears and there are so many traditions of interpreting it. At the same time, I find it rewarding to play this concerto because it is famous for its melodies, they are just wonderful, the most beautiful Russian melodies, Tchaikovsky was a great melodist. Off the top of that, it's also a revolutionary concerto, because for the first time we have a solo piano playing against the orchestra sometimes. Then there's the great drama in the first movement, the second is reminiscent of ballet music, and the third movement goes to everyone's heart because the music comes from Ukrainian folk music.«
Contrast this with Andrés Orozco-Estrada's performance with the Vienna Symphony of Dimitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, written in 1937 under Stalin's totalitarianism. These conditions explain Shostakovich's statement that his Fifth was »a Soviet artist's creative response to just criticism.«