Programme Guide

“It always excites me,” says Andris Nelsons, “how Sofia Gubaidulina combines intellect, spirituality and sensuousness in her works. Her music gets directly under your skin.” Together with his long-time artistic associate Baiba Skride, he performs Gubaidulina’s Third Violin Concerto Dialog: Ich und Du. The title refers to a book by the religious philosopher Martin Buber, in which he developed the dialogical principle: “the person in you becomes me”. The violin concerto focuses above all on the individual in his relationship to God – in a fascinating dialogue between soloist and orchestra, which is repeatedly interrupted in a cadenza-like manner in order to develop into dramatic outbursts.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s playful Fourth Symphony, which departs from the heroic spirit of the music of the French Revolution, takes us into completely different soundscapes. “Cheerful, comprehensible and very engaging”, as described by Beethoven, it could have been written as a musical escape from the spiritual misery of its time.

Richard Strauss’s effervescent hit Don Juan, on the other hand, offers spectacular music in breathtakingly sophisticated instrumentation, with which the composer catapulted himself into the forefront of the avant-garde at the time.