Conductor Giordano Bellincampi

Piano Behzod Abduraimov

Beethoven Symphony No.3, ‘Eroica’

Shostakovich Piano Concerto No.1

Ligeti Concert Românesc

 

When Napoleon cast off his egalitarian facade by crowning himself Emperor, Beethoven was appalled. He furiously destroyed the page bearing a Napoleonic dedication, renaming the piece ‘Heroic Symphony, in memory of a great man’.

Shostakovich’s madcap piano concerto with its crazy trumpet solo sums up late 1920s Moscow, when experimental Soviet art was encouraged by the government.

By contrast, the post-war Hungarian authorities banned Ligeti’s Concert Românesc. It’s an affectionate recollection of his Romanian childhood, with the orchestra transformed into a gigantic village band.

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