Romantic music doesn’t come any more romantic than Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony, just 100 years old, which forms the second half of tonight’s concert. We are very lucky, in several ways, to have this great symphony: fifteen years earlier, Rachmaninov’s reputation, and his health, had been ruined by the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony. The … Read more
The ‘Rhenish’ was Schumann’s last symphony (the symphony we know as No. 4 was actually written after No. 1), and is general regarded as his brightest and most abandoned: at this stage he had made the decision to move away from academic, keyboard-bound composition to a freer, more spontaneous method of developing musical ideas in … Read more
Mahler was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and conductor, and was best known during his own lifetime as one of the leading orchestral and operatic conductors of the day. He has since come to be acknowledged as among the most important post-romantic composers. Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 was written in 1901 and 1902, mostly during the summer … Read more
Yes! It was written there, and was first performed privately on the 12th June 1778 at the residence of the Ambassador of the Palatine (Mannheim), six days before its successful public debut. This was performed, after a nerve-rackingly bad rehearsal, for the Concert Spirituel, the leading music society in Paris. It was responsible for regular … Read more
For the festivities in Salzburg of mayor Sigmund Haffner’s elevation to the nobility, Mozart received a request from his father Leopold for a new symphony. This was in July 1782 and Mozart was already overloaded with work. The serenade resulting from this request (and written mostly at night) was the foundation of his Symphony No. … Read more
Along with Janacek and Smetana, Dvorak is regarded as one of the great nationalist Czech composers of the 19th Century. He has earned worldwide admiration and prestige for Czech music with his 9 symphonies, chamber music, oratorios, songs, piano works and his operas. Although no child prodigy, he showed an early aptitude for music, mastering … Read more
Gustav Mahler was born in July 1860 at Kalischt, Bohemia (now Kaliste, Czechoslovakia). He was the son of a Moravian-Jewish merchant and distiller and his early years were ones of extreme poverty. He began learning the piano at the age of 6 and gave his first public recital in 1870. He studied briefly in Prague … Read more
Despite the encouragement from his friends, Robert and Clara Schumann, to write a symphony, Brahms’ first suffered a long gestation. The material for his first attempt derived from a two piano sonata, finally evolving as his first piano Concerto in D minor of 1858. The tragic early death of Robert Schumann in 1856 had a … Read more
Joseph Anton Bruckner was born at Ansfelden, Upper Austria, the son of the village schoolmaster and organist who early taught the boy the violin and spinet. By the age of ten, the young Bruckner was deputising for his father at the village church. Following his father’s death three years later, he was accepted as a … Read more
