Programme Guide

In his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Béla Bartók succeeded in weaving a dense network of relationships between tonal colours; continuous transitions are juxtaposed with direct contrasts. The arrangement of the instrumentalists, targeting spatial sound effects, emphasises the great significance of the orchestral sound: the score states that the strings, split into two quintets, are to be placed to the left and right of the podium so that the two groups converge in the contrabasses at the extreme end of the semicircle, while the middle of the podium is reserved for the percussion. Mariss Jansons selected Bartók’s “masterpiece” (Paul Sacher) for his guest appearance with the Berliner Philharmoniker, as well as the Second Suite from Maurice Ravel’s “Symphonie choréographique” Daphnis et Chloé, which Igor Stravinsky called “one of the most beautiful products of all French music”.

Between these two pieces, Frank Peter Zimmermann plays Dmitri Shostakovich’s emotionally charged Second Violin Concerto, a work which Shostakovich wrote for David Oistrakh’s 60th birthday. However, the composer had miscalculated by one year so that the successful première took place in Moscow on 26 October 1967 when Oistrakh was 59 years old...