At forty years old, Beethoven had already assumed that he would never recover his hearing. He knew how to overcome and promoted his work as a composer without being influenced by fashions. He worked with absolute freedom that produced works such as the energetic Egmont overture or the delicious and rhythmic Symphony No. 7, baptized by Wagner as “The Apotheosis of Dance.” With The Seventh, Beethoven stretched the harmonic rules and gave breadth to symphonic forms whose intensity can only be transmitted by batons experienced in the great musical tradition.
The Franz Schubert Filharmonia is honored to be conducted for the first time, in its 2023-24 Concert Season, by acclaimed conductor Christoph Eschenbach, to perform two of his most beloved composers: Beethoven and Mozart. Eschenbach is one of the most renowned directors in the world. Karajan promoted the beginning of his career by projecting a career that has led him to be a regular and conduct the best orchestras in the world.
Christoph Eschenbach is a phenomenon within the top league of international directors. Universally acclaimed as a conductor and pianist, he is one of the last stalwarts of the conducting school of German intellectual tradition, imbuing, with a unique emotional intensity, performances revered by concertgoers around the world.
In the first part of the concert, Maestro Eschenbach, known for the breadth of his repertoire and the depth of his interpretations, will conduct Mozart's Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra. This work is the result of the time when the composer traveled to Paris at the age of twenty-one with the idea of finding a good job, but he only received small commissions and many pats on the back. The originality and beauty of this concert have made it a work much loved by the public. We will hear it in the version of two young talents: the Greek flutist Stathis Karapanos and the Murcian harpist José Antonio Domené.
We will also experience the world premiere of Concerto No. 2 for Flute and Orchestra, the new work by acclaimed American composer Michael Fine. The title 'Do you remember?', originally in Spanish, is dedicated to the composer's wife, in memory of a vacation together in sunny Andalusia. A work in three movements that recalls a walk through the Alhambra, a lazy moonlit night and a dance of starry lights and dreams that ends with a quick and happy dawn.
This program will be presented twice, on Sunday, March 3, at six in the afternoon, at the Teatre Tarragona and on Tuesday, March 5, at eight in the afternoon, at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona.
