Programme Guide

If you have never ever heard of Marianna Martines, it’s a name to take note of: she was one of the most famous female composers of Mozart’s time, hailed in Vienna as a “child prodigy”. In 1773, she was the first woman ever to be admitted to the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna. Court poet and family friend Pietro Metastasio ensured that Joseph Haydn gave her harpsichord lessons and Niccolò Porpora taught her singing. In addition to masses and other vocal works, Marianna Martines’s surviving compositions include several harpsichord sonatas and concertos and a symphony, with which the Berliner Philharmoniker and Fabio Luisi open this concert: a real discovery!

A true classic of the piano repertoire will then be performed by star pianist Evgeny Kissin: Mozart’s famous A major concerto, K. 488 which features one of the most touching Adagio movements from the composer’s pen. The concert closes with another discovery: Austrian composer Franz Schmidt’s monumental Second Symphony. For many years he played as a cellist in the orchestra of the Hofoper in Vienna under the direction of Gustav Mahler. The late Romantic work already delighted audiences at its premiere in December 1913 under Franz Schalk – thanks to its sensuously intoxicating sound, memorable melodies and extraordinarily imaginative harmonies.