She has maintained a close relationship with the Symphoniker Hamburg for some years now, and Martha Argerich regularly returns to her beloved Laeiszhalle. Despite the current situation, she makes sure to enjoy a digital reunion with her fans: together with the orchestra under its chief conductor Sylvain Cambreling, she presents a programme full of musical highlights. Maurice Ravel’s subtle »Le tombeau de Couperin« is followed by Beethoven’s boisterous and parodistic Eighth Symphony, before we return to Ravel and his Piano Concerto permeated by jazz harmonies.
»Her performances are at once thunderous and skilful, transcendent and human.«
The Economist
Performers
Symphoniker Hamburg
Martha Argerich piano
conductor Sylvain Cambreling
Programme
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Le tombeau de Couperin (1917)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 (1811/1812)
Maurice Ravel
Piano Concerto in G major (1932)
The Music
The concert begins and ends with one of Martha Argerich’s favourite composers, Maurice Ravel. In the wake of the First World War, the French composer dedicated the individual movements of his piano suite »Le tombeau de Couperin« to his fallen comrades. The G major concerto, by way of contrast, is a thoroughly exciting example of 1920s music, which mixes Spanish sounds with elements of jazz.
What happens when music falls into a crisis of its own making is illustrated by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony. Before he wrote his groundbreaking Ninth, Beethoven deliberately drove the symphony genre straight into a wall. His Eighth can be understood as the climax of his symphonic oeuvre so far – or as a parody of the same. The result is wild and boisterous, cheekily flouting established conventions.
This online concert is promoted by the Symphoniker Hamburg. Watch the full-length interviews with Martha Argerich and Minister of Culture and Media Dr Carsten Brosda as well as many other Symphoniker concert streams on www.symphonikerhamburg.de.
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