Pablo-Heras Casado conducts the Orchester Philharmonique de Radio France at the Auditorium de Radio France

Three composers on the program of the Orchester Philharmonique de Radio France: Schubert, Goldmark and Brahms.

It’s by the startling and strange Gesang der Geister über den Wassern by Schubert that this concert began. Based on a text by Wolfgang von Goethe, it requires an extensive Male Choir and four lower strings. It was on March 7, 1821 that it was premiered in Vienna. This pantheistic work, maintaining close relations with the supernatural, will have a determining influence on certain works of Brahms.

The second work of this concert was the Concerto for violin and orchestra N°1 in A minor, op.28 by Karl Goldmark. Little known to the music-loving public, this composer nevertheless produced no less than six operas and survived anonymity thanks to his Symphony “The rustic wedding “. Constructed in three movements, his Violin Concerto demands extreme virtuosity from the soloist, which in no way prevents him from expressing in the Andante a very great intensity, close to meditation and passion. Although contemporary with Symphony No. 2 of Brahms, the Violin Concerto No. 1 by Goldmark hardly seems influenced by this work of Brahms and displays its own originality right to the end.

It is with the Symphony No. 2 of Brahms that this concert was about to end. It was the famous conductor Hans Richter, at the head of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, who gave the first performance in Vienna on December 30, 1877. As a passionate defender of Brahms, Hans Richter also gave the first performance of the Symphony No. 3 of the composer in 1883. Very different from the shady and heroic Symphonies No. 1 and No. 3 and melancholy Symphony No. 4, this second Symphony manifests a kind of joy excluding any harshness, as if Brahms took refuge in a kind of happiness shrouded in unwavering optimism. The orchestration put together by Brahms for this second Symphony is extensive, even going so far as to require the presence of a tuba and three trombones. This work in a happy climate bathed in a light that can be described as “Viennese” will be paradoxically followed by the Symphony No. 3 of great harshness, crossed by violent movements rarely present in the symphonic universe of Brahms.

Renaud Capuçon manages to give Violin Concerto of Goldmark a vision excluding any superficiality, while Pablo Heras-Casado at the head of a very successful Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, gives Symphony No. 2 of Brahms a boosted, dynamic and constantly inspired version.

A concert revealing an unfairly neglected Violin Concerto by Karl Goldmark that Renaud Capuçon happily rehabilitates.

Text by Michel Jakubowicz

More informations

• Franz Schubert: Gesang der Geister über den Wassern D.714
• Karl Goldmark: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 in A minor, Op.28
• Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, op.73
• Renaud Capuçon, violin
• Radio France Choir
• Lionel Sow, choir director
• Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra
• Nathan Mierdl, concertmaster
• Pablo Heras-Casado, conductor
• Radio France Auditorium
• Saturday, November 19, 2022, at 8 p.m.
  www.maisondelaradioetdelamusique.fr

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