Classics of classical music

Where should you start when you are only just beginning? Which pieces must you have heard from the great repertoire of classical music? We propose five famous works that will be performed during the 202/25 season. Shortly before each concert, you will find videos here in which our musicians present the work to be performed.

Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2

The solo violin begins this concerto all alone, with a simple, wistful, almost folk-like melody. Prokofiev wrote it in Paris, and you can hear his homesickness for Russia in it; he returned to Moscow shortly afterwards. In connection with this concerto, Prokofiev himself spoke of "new simplicity" and that it tells of the "nomadic life" of a concertising artist. The second movement was composed in Voronezh, he completed the orchestration in Baku, and the premiere took place in Madrid in 1935 - in keeping with the castanets in the finale.

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 begins with a funeral march, and it characterises everything that follows - right up to the triumphal march in the finale. There is an ambiguity in this finale and in the entire symphony, and Tchaikovsky himself criticised it harshly: "There is something repulsive in it, patchwork, insincerity and artifice". Today, this work is one of his most famous, precisely because it is so multi-layered and tells a new story in every new performance.

Stravinsky: "Le Sacre du Printemps"

The Paris premiere of Stravinsky's ballet "Le Sacre du Printemps" is one of the biggest scandals in music history. There was laughter and tumult in the auditorium and the dancers were booed. "No doubt one day people will understand that I landed a surprise coup in Paris, but that Paris was indisposed," Stravinsky wrote. He was right: the colours and rhythms of this work have long since cast a spell over musicians and audiences alike. Incidentally, it draws its almost archaic power at least in part from folk tunes: The famous bassoon melody at the beginning, for example, is based on a Lithuanian song.

Schubert: Symphony No. 7 "Unfinished"

Unfinished works have their own charm. Mozart's "Requiem", Mahler's Symphony No. 10 and Bach's "Art of Fugue" are among them - and of course Schubert's "Unfinished". The composer completed two movements of this symphony in 1822, and there are sketches for a third; he then put the work aside because he was pursuing other plans. The fragment remained unfinished until his death six years later, and even after that it was 37 years before it was premièred. There was great enthusiasm for it, and there still is today. And even if people are still puzzled as to why Schubert did not complete the composition: In the concert hall, it seems anything but unfinished.

Mahler: Symphony No. 1

Mahler was inspired by all kinds of things in his works, as his Symphony No. 1 shows. Folk tunes, fanfares, ländler and klezmer melodies swirl together, the result sounds sometimes grotesque, sometimes ironic, sometimes solemn - and always deeply alive. The beginning of the third movement is particularly beautiful: Here, a double bass plays the famous children's song "Frère Jacques" in a minor key, more and more instruments join in so that the music gradually builds up to a grand, magnificent funeral march.

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Click here for the previous video clips.