Programme Guide

Piotr Tchaikovsky wrote his Fourth Symphony in 1877 under the influence of both eventful and drastic personal experiences: at the beginning of the year, he began corresponding with the well-off widow of a railway magnate, Nadeschda von Meck, who in the following years would support his artistic creativity with generous financial support; shortly thereafter, the homosexual composer married an admirer whom he hardly knew. The marriage failed after only a few weeks, leading to a deep depression for the sensitive Tchaikovsky. That he called the menacing fanfare in the introduction to the first movement of the Fourth the “fate” theme has led to the work being interpreted as a “fate symphony”. This multi-layered composition ends the concert programme with which Gianandrea Noseda, born in Milan in 1964, gave his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Gianandrea Noseda, principal guest conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre for many years and acting music director of the Teatro Regio in Turin, is conductor laureate of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and chief guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Guest appearances in major centres of music confirm his reputation as an opera and concert conductor in demand internationally.
Noseda programmes Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder alongside music by his fellow Italian Goffredo Petrassi, who died in 2003.