Shostakovich’s two piano concertos are worlds apart. The lively humour of the first, which dates back to 1933, is reminiscent of music for the silent screen; indeed, the composer had once earned his living as a cinema pianist. The neoclassical second from 1957, on the other hand, seems unrooted in time. The composer’s own view was merciless: »I have finished a piano concerto that has no redeeming artistic merits«. Yet perhaps his words should be taken with a pinch of salt: Shostakovich composed the work for his son, and he did not hinder him from performing it. To help launch the Shostakovich Festival, Marie Jacquot is combining this Janus-faced pair of works with Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2, which premiered in Paris in 1934, the year in which the composer fled Nazi Germany.
Organiser: Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
Marie Jacquot | Conductor
Kirill Gerstein | Piano
Helmut Fuchs | Trumpet
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
Program
Dmitri Shostakovich
Piano Concerto No. 1 in c minor, Opus 35
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Opus 102
Kurt Weill
Symphony No. 2