Franz Welser-Möst Conducts

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 is like “a pure and beautiful flower that preserves the scent of the brightest days in Beethoven’s life,” wrote Nobel Prize Winner Romain Rolland. Robert Schumann described it as a slender Greek maiden between two Nordic giants.

At this concert, celebrity Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Möst highlights both the playfulness and the incredible tension of Beethoven’s Symphony No 4. Among other positions, Welser-Möst has been principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and music director of the famous Vienna State Opera. Between guest performances on the world’s most prestigious concert stages, he is also music director of the Cleveland Orchestra. He most recently led the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at the 2015 Nobel Prize Concert.

At this concert, we will also hear music by Shostakovich, one of the twentieth century’s absolute greatest symphonic composers. Not only because he composed an impressive fifteen symphonies, but because his music contains unsurpassed passion and steadfast volition. All of his life, Shostakovich had a complicated relationship to political power in his home country of Russia, and this sixth symphony continues on the same path as the preceding fifth symphony, which he composed after receiving sharp criticism from Josef Stalin.