One of
Beethoven
’s early symphonies will be the opening piece at the special concert of
Andrea Rost
and
Concerto Budapest
:
Symphony No. 1
is the composing debut of the thirty-year-old pianist, who had already been living in Vienna for almost a decade by then. In the second part of the concert Andrea Rost, who feels at home in virtually all opera houses of the world, from the Viennese Staatsoper to the New York Metropolitan, will sing three dramatic Mozart concert arias, and Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 will bring the evening to a close.
Górecki’s symphony is among the most popular contemporary musical pieces to this day: in 1992, fifteen years after its creation, the London Sinfonietta recorded it, selling 700,000 copies over two years.
The composer, who had had no idea the recording would achieve such extraordinary success, said: “I guess people perhaps found something in this piece that they needed […] I struck a chord they were missing. Somewhere they had lost something. I feel like I instinctively knew what they needed.” The tragic symphony – subtitled “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” - has three movements, all of which include soprano solos: the first movement sets to music a 15th century Polish hymn to Mary, the second one is inspired by an inscription on a prison cell wall from the Second World War, and the third one is based on a Silesian folk song.
Tying into the theme of the concert is the third event of the Concerto Mesteriskola at 5 pm on 16 November 2014, which will feature a screening of Tony Palmer’s documentary about Polish composer Henryk Górecki called The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Venue: Budapest Music Center Library. Attendance is free of charge.
