Heavenly in G

Programme:

In 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed almost exclusively keyboard music. He had a highly talented and virtuosic piano student named Barbara Ployer, whom he proudly introduced to his colleagues. Mozart wrote several works expressly for Mlle. Ployer, including the Piano Concerto in G major (KV 453). It consists of a cheerful, march-like Allegro, an Andante with solo cadenza, and a concluding Variations movement. Several passages in this work are so harmonically interesting that it is often described as a precursor to Romanticism.

Already in his 2nd and 3rd symphonies, Gustav Mahler had reused songs from his cycle "Des Knaben Wunderhorn". For the 4th Symphony, he wanted to incorporate several of them. He planned the Fourth as a symphonic jest - with a smaller orchestra, in a cheerful, almost childlike tone, with less Romantic pathos. In the opening movement, children's songs indeed seem to echo. The Scherzo, however, turned out quite grotesque and eerie, while the slow movement is even hauntingly dark. In the end, Mahler used only one of the "Wunderhorn" songs: "Das himmlische Leben", a childlike vision of paradise (4th movement).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G major KV 453

Gustav Mahler:
Symphony No. 4 in G major

Introduction with Tung-Chieh Chuang at the piano at 19:00 in the Grand Hall

Performers:

Miah Persson, soprano
Bochum Symphoniker
Tung-Chieh Chuang, piano and conductor

With this concert, we bid farewell to our General Music Director and Intendant Tung-Chieh Chuang - Thank you for 5 years full of music!