JOHANNES BRAHMS
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major op. 83
DMITRIJ ŠOSTAKOVIČ
Symphony No. 1 in F minor op. 10
Piano
Michele Campanella*
Conductor
Donato Renzetti
Opera Carlo Felice Genova Orchestra
*Please note that, due to Michele Campanella’s sudden indisposition, the soloist for Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major Op. 83 will be Alexander Romanovsky, whom the Theatre Management sincerely thanks for his availability.
Brahms began work on his second Piano Concerto in 1878. Only three years later, in 1881, would he finish the composition with a view to its premiere performance on November 9 of that year in Budapest. While the first Piano Concerto dates from 1858, that is, from the composer’s first artistic period in which piano music was central, the second belongs to a time when Brahms was deepening his orchestral writing: in ’77 he had completed his Second Symphony, and in the same years he would begin work on the Third and Fourth, as well as other famous orchestral pieces such as the Academic Overture and Violin Concerto. The long work and intense symphonic practice resulted in a singularly large Concerto, in which both orchestral and piano writing are of considerable density. The Second Concerto is divided into four movements: Allegro non troppo, Allegro appassionato, Andante and Allegretto grazioso. The Allegro non troppo, in sonata form, is expanded by a double exposition; the principle of elaboration and development of the thematic material is also asserted in a rich interweaving in the second and fourth movements, the latter containing the moments of greatest virtuosity. More lyrical and romantic, however, is the Andante, in tripartite form, in which the main theme is introduced by the cello.
Šostakovič composed his First Symphony in 1925 as his final exam for his diploma in Composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The following year the composition was premiered in Leningrad under the baton of Nikolai Malko. Although this is the first symphonic work by a barely 19-year-old Šostakovič, the musical language is already personal and defined by original timbral and rhythmic choices, between moments of brilliant ironic flare and others of greater sweetness and lyricism. The first movement Allegretto – Allegro non troppo seems to evoke late nineteenth-century Russian symphonism from afar, but Šostakovič employs a writing aimed at enhancing the timbres of the individual instruments by alternately isolating them from passage to passage, achieving an innovative musical discourse with a charming and playful character. An Allegro with a march-like rhythm follows; it is itself at times humorous and at times mysterious, with an important presence of percussion. The Lento opens with a theme entrusted to the oboe, to which the cello responds, in a lyrical atmosphere and developed into a crescendo of tension punctuated by echoes of the previous march. The last movement, which opens after a drum roll, creates a contrast between the sections Lento-Adagio and Largo, and Allegro molto and Presto. The former develop almost in continuity with the third movement, the latter reach the height of brilliance and orchestral density.
