Fifth Symphony Concert

Alexander Glazunov is said to have once described Modest Mussorgsky as “rough around the edges”. Musically dramatizing the theme of a witches' sabbath occurring on St. John's Eve on Mount Triglav, Mussorgsky’s demonic musical poem “Night on Bald Mountain” only had success in its original form long after its completion, with Rimsky-Korsakov's altered version prevailing for nearly 70 years. A similar fate befell Robert Schumann's Cello Concerto, refused by its dedicatee Emil Bockemühl as "too unmelodic" (even if the slow movement is a lyrical homage to Schumann’s wife Clara), and never performed in the composer's lifetime. Clemens Hagen, Austrian cellist and professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, is the concerto soloist. The programme concludes with Dmitri Shostakovich's thrilling Symphony No. 5, a piece which is often seen as a response to Stalin’s criticism of the composer’s opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”, composed shortly before. With its huge, exultant final movement, the symphony recalls the metaphorical heroic journey “from darkness to light”, which is often associated with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The success of Shostakovich’s symphony was unusually overwhelming, but the composer sarcastically remarked that “the rejoicing was forced, created under threat”. Hungarian Stefan Soltesz will conduct the Hessian State Orchestra in this programme.