On April 29, 2021, the 85th birthday of his close friend and colleague Zubin Mehta, Daniel Barenboim is hosting a very private birthday concert: the pianist, conductor and general music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden hands over the direction of “his” orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin, to the jubilarian with whom he has been friends for decades – in private and musical terms. On the program are Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with Daniel Barenboim as soloist and Franz Schubert’s last Symphony “The Great”. PROGRAM: Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4; Schubert: Symphony No. 9
Barenboim conducts Beethoven No. 1
The Staatskapelle Berlin and its chief conductor Daniel Barenboim continue their symphonic Beethoven cycle with this recording of Beethoven’s First Symphony. The cycle started with an acclaimed performance of the Ninth on Berlin’s Bebelplatz and goes on in the Lindenoper. Beethoven’s First is both a retrospective and a foresight: it is still in the tradition of Mozart and Haydn and nevertheless hints at some of what later made the “mature” Beethoven; it contains the contemporary and the future. The world premiere in April 1800 in Vienna was a temporary high point in the career of the twenty-nine-year-old Beethoven.
Barenboim conducts Beethoven No. 2
The Staatskapelle Berlin and its chief conductor Daniel Barenboim continue their symphonic Beethoven cycle with this recording of Beethoven’s Second Symphony. The cycle started with an acclaimed performance of the Ninth on Berlin’s Bebelplatz and goes on in the Lindenoper. First performed in Vienna in 1803 with Beethoven conducting, the Second Symphony exhibits a daring departure from the traditional form. In a classical symphony, the third movement was always a minuet; Beethoven replaces it with a Scherzo, a quick-paced musical form in three-quarter time. While working on this symphony, Beethoven was undergoing an enormous personal crisis: the growing deafness.