Bravura!

In November 1954, a representative from Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre knocked on Shostakovich's door with an urgent request: the theatre needed a brand-new orchestral work to open its anniversary concert for the October Revolution — and the concert was three days away. Shostakovich agreed on the spot. As pages of the score were completed, couriers rushed them across the city to copyists waiting at the theatre, lifting the paper before the ink had dried. The result was six of the most unabashedly joyful minutes he ever wrote — a blazing brass fanfare launches the orchestra into an exhilarating sprint, a fleet-footed theme tumbles through the woodwinds, balanced by a broader, more ceremonial idea in the horns, until the fanfare makes its triumphant return.

To those who knew him, the speed was no surprise. Shostakovich liked to say that he thought slowly but wrote fast — by the time his pen met the paper, the music was already finished in his mind. And some of it had been waiting longer than most. That opening fanfare had begun life nine years earlier as a birthday gift: a small piano piece written for his daughter Galina's ninth birthday; part of a tender collection called the Children's Notebook that he had composed for her as she began her piano studies.

To pass music down to smaller hands is one of the most enduring gifts a composer can give. Shostakovich was part of that lineage — alongside Bach, Schumann, and many more. And as you share this wonderful evening with our young rising musicians, he would not be the last composer tonight to answer that call.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the small German city of Weimar punched far above its weight. Through the patronage of its ruling dukes, it had already drawn Goethe and Schiller to its court, making it the literary capital of Germany. Music followed the same pattern. Johann Nepomuk Hummel served as court Kapellmeister, and in 1848 Franz Liszt arrived — trading the life of a touring virtuoso for the role of music director — with the ambition of turning Weimar into a new Athens of music and ideas.

Ernst Sachse was already there. A brass player at the Weimar Hofkapelle, he had worked under Hummel and now found himself in an orchestra shaped by one of the most electrifying musical minds of the age. But for a player with solo ambitions, there was a problem: the trombone had almost no solo repertoire to speak of. If you wanted to step out from the section and stand in front of the orchestra, you largely had to write the music yourself.

That is exactly what Sachse did. His Concertino is almost certainly a vehicle he composed for his own performances — part of a quiet campaign, waged by a small generation of German brass virtuosos, to prove that their instrument could do what critics doubted: sustain a melody, move an audience, and hold the stage alone.

Tonight's Allegro maestoso opens with a commanding orchestral statement. When the trombone finally enters, the effect is quietly surprising — not a fanfare, but a long, arching melody that seems simply to breathe. Phrase by phrase, it exhales, rises, and exhales again, revealing a warmth and vocal generosity that the instrument's reputation had never promised. As the movement builds, brilliance follows lyricism, until orchestra and soloist unite in a broad, conclusive phrase that brings the argument to rest — not with a question, but with an answer.

Most people know Tchaikovsky as the quintessential Russian Romantic — the composer of sweeping ballets, passionate symphonies, and music that wears its heart firmly on its sleeve. But Tchaikovsky was also deeply, almost reverently, in love with Mozart. He wrote in his journal that Mozart represented “the highest, the culminating point which beauty has reached in the sphere of music.” When life grew turbulent — as it often did — Tchaikovsky turned to the elegance of the eighteenth century for peace.

That is exactly what happened in late 1876. He had just finished Francesca da Rimini, a stormy tone poem about doomed lovers drawn from Dante, and needed a change of air. The result was the Variations on a Rococo Theme. Light and ornamental, with a small transparent orchestra and a graceful theme of his own invention, it sounds as though it could have been written a century earlier — the style of Mozart's world as Tchaikovsky lovingly imagined it.

The piece was written for and with the help of Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, a German cellist and Tchaikovsky's colleague at the Moscow Conservatory. At the time, the cello was poorly served as a solo instrument — Dvořák's landmark concerto was still two decades away — and Tchaikovsky set out to change that. The result is effectively a cello concerto in disguise, and it has since become one of the pillars of the cello repertoire: the piece that advanced students aspire toward, and that professional cellists return to throughout their careers.

Fitzenhagen premiered the work in Moscow in 1877, and also took considerable liberties with it — reordering the variations and cutting one entirely. Tchaikovsky's publisher was outraged: “Tchaikovsky revu et corrigé par Fitzenhagen!” he fumed. The composer, characteristically, shrugged: “The devil take it. Let it stand as it is.” Fitzenhagen's version became the standard, and — with a certain irony — its gradual increase in difficulty from variation to variation makes it a near-perfect pedagogical progression for cellists learning the work.

Tonight we hear a selection of four movements from Fitzenhagen's version, tracing an arc from elegant simplicity to brilliant conclusion.

1. Tema: Moderato semplice

   The cello introduces the graceful, symmetrical theme, ornamented and unhurried, as though stepping into a candlelit salon of an earlier age.

2. Variation I: Tempo della tema

   The first variation keeps the same gentle tempo, elaborating the melody with delicate filigree.

3. Variation II: Andante sostenuto

   The music turns inward and lyrical, the cello singing in long, warm phrases — unmistakably Romantic beneath the Classical surface.

4. Cadenza

   The soloist steps into the spotlight alone, navigating a dramatic, free-ranging passage that draws on the work's melodic material. It is at once a technical showcase and a moment of genuine expressive weight.

5. Variation VII: Allegro vivo

   The orchestra returns with energy, and the finale unfolds as a brilliant, dancing exchange between soloist and ensemble. The cello sparkles through rapid scales and octaves before the work closes in a jubilant rush.

Tucked into the mountains of eastern Transylvania lies Korond, a small Hungarian-speaking village better known for its pottery than its concert halls. Though it sits in present-day Romania, Korond has remained stubbornly, warmly Hungarian in culture and identity — and it is from this spirit of folk life, of dances played at village gatherings and celebrations, that László Draskóczy drew his inspiration.

The musical world Draskóczy inhabits has its roots in the verbunkos and csárdás tradition — the lifeblood of Hungarian dance music. Originating as a military recruiting dance in the eighteenth century, the verbunkos evolved into a proud national style: expressive, rhythmically bold, and shot through with the distinctive sound of the Gypsy scale. From it grew the csárdás, the great Hungarian couple dance, built on a defining contrast between a slow, dignified opening — the lassú — and a breathless, jubilant finale known as the friss. Those who know Brahms's Hungarian Dances will find themselves on familiar ground.

Draskóczy assembles his folk-flavoured themes in a flowing chain, framed by a short solo cadenza at the opening and propelled toward an exhilarating friss that leaves little doubt that dancers were very much in mind. The clarinet carries the melody with natural ease and warmth throughout — a voice at home in this tradition, singing the kind of tunes that once filled village dance halls across the Hungarian world.

The piece was published in 1981 and dedicated to Nándi Götz, a Hungarian clarinettist of exceptional promise who was just fifteen years old at the time. That detail tells us something important about Draskóczy — a composer whose published works were written with players in mind, accessible without being slight, designed to draw the best out of a young musician and send them onto the stage with something genuinely worth saying. In that sense, Dances from Korond is not only a celebration of a place and its traditions, but a gift from a teacher to a student — perhaps the most enduring kind there is.

By the early 1950s, Dmitri Kabalevsky was one of the most powerful figures in Soviet musical life: a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, a founder of the Union of Soviet Composers, and a composer whose music reached every corner of the USSR. He was prolific, politically connected, and celebrated. And yet, what drove him most was not prestige — it was young people.

Long before it was expected of him, Kabalevsky wrote music for children and championed music education with a missionary zeal. He believed that learning music was not just about developing technique, but about forming character — that exposure to beauty made people kinder, more humane. His personal credo said it plainly: “Beauty Evokes Kindness.”

It was this belief that led him, in the late 1940s, to compose a trilogy of concertos — for violin, cello, and piano — dedicated entirely to youth. He wanted to give young musicians the full experience of the great Romantic concerto tradition: the drama, the lyricism, the dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The Piano Concerto No. 3, completed in 1952, was the trilogy's crowning piece.

When it premiered in early 1953, the soloist was a fifteen-year-old Ashkenazy — who would go on to become one of the most celebrated pianists of the twentieth century. It was the perfect proof of what Kabalevsky had always believed.

Tonight, that story continues. We hear the first of the concerto's three movements: it opens with a bold trumpet fanfare before the piano enters with sweeping, energetic themes that carry echoes of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. A dramatic cadenza gives the soloist a moment to shine alone, before the fanfare returns to close with a sense of joyful triumph.

There is a secret hidden in the first four notes of this concerto. According to legend, Liszt's student and son-in-law Hans von Bülow sang words to the opening theme: “Das versteht ihr alle nicht” — “None of you understand this, haha!” Whether the story is true or not, it captures something essential about Liszt and this piece: a work of dazzling brilliance that is also, beneath the surface, a deeply serious artistic statement.

Liszt was the most celebrated pianist of his age — a phenomenon whose concerts across Europe drew crowds and hysteria that had no precedent. But fame as a performer was never enough. He wanted to be taken seriously as a composer, and this concerto was his proving ground. The piece gestated for 26 years, from early sketches in 1830 to its premiere in 1855 — not out of indecision, but out of relentless ambition. When he read critic Robert Schumann challenge composers to “invent a new form,” Liszt took it as his own. The result is a concerto unlike anything before it: four movements played without pause, bound together by a single motto theme that transforms and returns throughout the work — bold in the opening, tender in the slow movement, playful in the scherzo, and triumphant in the finale. Béla Bartók would later call it “the first perfect realization of cyclic sonata form.”

The premiere took place in Weimar on February 17, 1855 — with Liszt at the piano and Hector Berlioz on the podium, two of the most radical musical minds of the century sharing the same stage. Critics were not always kind. Eduard Hanslick famously dismissed it as a “Triangle Concerto,” mocking the instrument's prominent role in the scherzo. But history sided with Liszt. The one-movement, multi-section concerto he pioneered here became a model for generations of composers to follow.

There is one final, telling detail: after the premiere, Liszt rarely performed this concerto himself. The greatest showman of his era stepped aside so the composition could speak for itself. Perhaps that was the point all along.

1. Allegro maestoso

   The orchestra opens with a stark, unison statement — Liszt's motto theme, angular and commanding, planting its flag before the piano enters with full force.

2. Quasi adagio

   The mood shifts to lyrical intimacy. A flowing, singing melody emerges, offering a rare moment of stillness at the heart of the concerto.

3. Allegretto vivace

   Liszt turns playful. The piano and woodwinds trade light, dancing phrases, while the triangle — Hanslick's nemesis — marks the pulse with glittering clarity.

4. Allegro marziale animato

   The finale arrives like a homecoming. Themes from all three previous movements return, transformed and united in a march-like sweep toward a brilliant close.

Of Saint-Saëns's thirteen operas, only one has held its place in the repertoire. Samson et Dalila tells the Biblical story of the Israelite hero Samson — a man of superhuman strength — and Dalila, the Philistine woman sent to destroy him. She discovers that the secret of his power lies in his hair, cuts it while he sleeps, and delivers him, blind and shackled, to her people. The opera was originally conceived as an oratorio, but librettist Ferdinand Lemaire convinced Saint-Saëns to give it the full operatic treatment — grand passions, sword fights, and yes, a Bacchanale.

Saint-Saëns was a phenomenon. A child prodigy who was composing before the age of four and performing concertos from memory at ten, he grew into one of the most learned musicians France had ever produced. Berlioz said of him: “He knows everything but lacks inexperience.” Yet even a genius of his stature could not get this opera onto a French stage. Authorities refused to allow a Biblical subject in the opera house, and no theater in France would touch it.

It was Franz Liszt — whose concerto you heard just moments ago — who rescued the work. Using his enduring influence in Weimar, he persuaded the city's opera to mount the premiere. On December 2, 1877, Samson et Dalila was heard for the first time — in German, in Weimar — nearly a decade after Saint-Saëns began writing it. France would not see a performance until 1890.

The Bacchanale arrives at the opera's darkest moment. Samson, now blind, is dragged into the temple of the Philistine god Dagon as a trophy of war. Before his captors can complete their sacrifice, they pause to celebrate — and that celebration is the Bacchanale. Named for Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, a Bacchanale is a dance of pure, uninhibited ecstasy. Saint-Saëns gives it music to match.

The piece opens with a solo oboe, floating freely above silence — sinuous, unmetered, unmistakably foreign to Western ears. Saint-Saëns uses the Arabic Hijaz mode, a scale with two unusually wide melodic leaps that give the melody its distinctive, unsettled quality. For a 19th-century Parisian audience, this was the sound of the ancient, dangerous East. Then the percussion enters, the rhythm locks in, and the dance catches fire. Castanets, tambourine, and triangle layer over a driving pulse as the full orchestra builds toward a climax of barely contained frenzy. The seductive opening and the explosive finale are two faces of the same coin — desire and destruction, the very engine of the opera itself.

Tonight, this music arrives with an extra resonance. Liszt's concerto and this Bacchanale are separated by twenty-two years, yet both owe their existence to the same city and the same man. Without Weimar, and without Liszt, we might never have heard either piece at all.