To mark the bicentenary of Anton Bruckner’s birth, Herbert Blomstedt and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra are bringing his Symphony No. 9 in D minor to the sumptuous Austrian abbey of St Florian, with which the composer had a strong bond.
Lucerne Festival 2020: Blomstedt conducts Beethoven
In 1949, at only seven years old, Martha Argerich made her debut with Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto and the piece has accompanied her throughout her career. Naturally, Argerich has discovered new facets of this work over the decades. And she surely did so when she performed this signature piece with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Herbert Blomstedt who gave his debut with the orchestra thanks to a very special festival edition in August 2020. Beethoven’s music plays a very important role in Blomstedt’s career and thus the concert featured another work of the composer: his Symphony No. 2. PROGRAM Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1, Symphony No. 2
Blomstedt conducts Voríšek & Mozart
With this concert, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Herbert Blomstedt embarked on a musical journey to the Czech Republic in memory of the orchestra’s former conductor Václav Neumann. It was there that Jan Václav Voríšek was born in 1791, the manuscript of his D Major Symphony sharing the fate of the symphonies of his friend Franz Schubert in neither being published nor performed during his lifetime. Prague was also the place of a short, late, and rare happy chapter in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s moving biography and his D major Symphony K. 504 was premiered there. PROGRAM Voríšek: Symphony D major, op. 23; Mozart: Symphony D major, K 504 “Prague”