Approx until: 9.15 pm
Liszt Academy Grand Hall
Ferencsik season ticket 3
MAGICAL SOUNDS OF THE HORN
Program:
Richard Strauss: Don Juan, op. 20
Richard Strauss: Horn Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, op. 11
***
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 73
Stefan Dohr horn
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Gábor Hontvári
The first two pieces being played at the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra’s Richard Strauss–Brahms concert are connected by an invisible but all the more audible link. The protagonist of the concerto at the centre of the programme is the horn. This brass instrument favoured by the Romantics evokes the atmosphere of forests, hunting, and jousting. However, it is also used to play the intoxicating main theme of the symphonic poem that will open the concert.
The German soloist at the concert is one of the finest horn players of our time, and the conductor is of the youngest generation of Hungarian conductors.
Dating from 1884, Don Juan was the 24-year-old Richard Strauss’s second symphonic poem. Based on Nikolaus Lenau’s unfinished verse drama, it looks at the figure of the knight from a tragic perspective, yet the memory of the main theme conveying intoxication with the joy of life is what nevertheless continues to echo in the listener’s mind after hearing the work. Strauss’s youthful horn concerto – along with all the other horn parts in his oeuvre – was inspired by his father, Franz Strauss, a leading horn player of his day who served as a soloist with the Bavarian Court Opera and taught at Munich’s Royal Academy of Music. Struggling with the overwhelming burden of Beethoven’s legacy, Brahms completed work on his Symphony No. 1 in 1876, which was followed by his Symphony No. 2 the following year, in 1877. If the First Symphony is often compared to Beethoven’s Ninth, this D-major work Brahms wrote is likened to the earlier composer’s Sixth (Pastoral) symphony, for in it Nature speaks to us, and the sound of the music is full of energy, serenity and the affirmation of life.
After stints with the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Stefan Dohr, one of the world’s top horn players, now serves as a soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Gábor Hontvári is an award-winning conductor, the holder of the Ernst-von-Schuch Prize in 2018 and the prize-winner of various international conducting competitions, including the Deutscher Dirigentenpreis and the Sir Georg Solti International Conductors' Competition.
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