Fourth Symphony Concert

Tchaikovsky literally worked day and night during the composition of the First Symphony. By day lecturing at the Moscow Conservatory and by night trading sleep for composition time, he became emotionally and physically strained, until a doctor declared him “one step away from insanity”, ordering complete rest. After Rimsky-Korsakov’s Symphony No. 1 in 1865 was hailed “the first Russian symphony”, Tchaikovsky wanted to be one of the first successors to this title, and so devoted himself to employing typical Russian winter elements in his symphony. The first movement (“Dreams of a Winter Journey”) evokes images of a fast sleigh ride, while the second (“Land of Desolation, Land of Mists”) sighs with Russian melancholy, followed by a third movement which sways to the waltz-like sounds of a grand ball. Bela Bartók dedicated his life to the study of folk music, striving to blend nationalist elements into his oeuvre, but around the time of composing the Second Violin Concerto in 1937/1938 he was filled with serious concerns about the growing strength of fascism, often publicly denouncing the establishment. No stranger to overcoming boundaries, the soloist in Bartók’s concerto is Michael Barenboim, concert master of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. To complete the programme, Ernst von Dohnányi – another Hungarian great and, coincidentally, a childhood friend of Bartók – challenges the large orchestral body to a feather-light game in the five miniatures that make up his “Symphonic Minutes”.