AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS – ROYAL CONCERTGEBOUW ORCHESTRA – SCHUBERT, PROKOFIEV, BEETHOVEN

Evgeny Kissin, piano
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Semyon Bychkov, conductor

Schubert: Symphony No. 8
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D- flat major , Op. 10
Beethoven: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36

VENUE NOTE:

Evgeny Kissin joins the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Semyon Bychkov also conducts Beethoven’s Second Symphony and Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’.

Together with our orchestral musicians, master pianist Evgeny Kissin throws himself into Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a veritable whirlwind of musical ideas. Hidden amidst all the pianistic fireworks is a shimmering gem – the warm, sensual Andante assai.

Semyon Bychkov opens the concert with Schubert’s ‘ Unfinished ’ Symphony in B Minor. No one quite knows why this lyrical work consists of only two movements. Did Schubert stop working on it because he felt he couldn’t surpass Beethoven after all? In any event, Schubert never got to experience the work’s later popularity for himself.

Twenty years earlier, Beethoven composed his Symphony No. 2, a work brimming with a lust for life and bursting with musical inventions and jokes that still shocked audiences on the threshold of the nineteenth century.