Orchestral concert: Beethoven, R. Strauss

Two composers whose oeuvres span the boundaries of musical eras, a grandiose violin concerto and a monumental-sounding ballet are offered in the BFO’s program. The soloist in Beethoven's only violin concerto will be Alina Ibragimova, who is equally at home on period and modern instruments, and has a repertoire ranging from Baroque to brand new works. A reviewer in the Guardian praised her direct and honest performances. Hungarian audiences may be familiar with the sound of her 1775 Anselmo Bellosio violin, not only from her award-winning recordings: In 2022, Ibragimova performed Prokofiev’s concerto with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. This time, it will be the “king of all violin concertos”. After the interval, a curiosity, Richard Strauss's first completed ballet score, Josephslegende (The Legend of Joseph) will be performed, telling the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.

Although he had previously composed for violin and orchestra, the only work in Beethoven's oeuvre that is called a violin concerto is Op. 61. The piece – like many other well-known violin concertos – was written in D major, perhaps the most comfortable key for this solo instrument, and is 45 minutes in length, taking up an entire half of a concert. This key is so closely associated with the violin that although the composer, who was primarily a pianist, rewrote the work as a piano concerto, only the original version was successful. Audiences were enthusiastic at the 1806 premiere. However, critics were more cautious about the piece, calling it too innovative.The opening night took place without an orchestral rehearsal, Franz Clement, for whom the concerto was written, sight-read the solo part at the premiere because Beethoven was late finishing the solo part. This famous violinist not only set the date for the premiere, but also kept visiting the composer to check if the work was progressing well. With musical obstacles demanding great technical expertise and its deeply sensual lyricism, the piece is doubly challenging for the violinist. The first movement in sonata form, unusually beginning with four drum beats, is followed by a slow movement with variations and then a rondo finale conjuring up a hunting scene.

He composed operas while fantasizing about ballets – Richard Strauss's first ballet was a long time coming. Although he began composing a ballet entitled Kythere as early as 1900, he had to wait until 1912 for the ideal circumstances in the world of ballet. That was when Hugo von Hofmannstahl, the librettist of Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, and Ariadne, recommended some topics. Eventually they agreed on the adventurous story of Joseph, the favorite son of Jacob. The main motivation, was not the subject matter, but the fact that it was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev with the promise - later broken - that the role of Joseph would be danced by the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky. The premiere was at the Paris Opera in May 1914, conducted by the composer and starring Léonide Massine. The outbreak of the war and the grandiose orchestral apparatus – quadruple woodwinds, four harps, keyboards, a range of percussion instruments and split strings – which is astonishing even for Strauss, contributed to the piece's fall into oblivion. The story, which takes place in Potiphar’s palace, includes several exotic and exciting dance movements (love, struggle, the supernatural, seduction, hatred, hysteria, torture, and help from Heaven) making not only the plot, but also the music colorful.

Did you know? Brahms’s Intermezzo premiered on January 30, 1893 in London. Fanny Mendelssohn’s Gartenlieder premiered in 1846. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto premiered on December 23, 1806 in Vienna, with Franz Clement performing the solo. Richard Strauss’s The Legend of Joseph premiered in Paris on May 15, 1914, with the composer himself conducting. This will be the BFO’s first performance of Intermezzo. The BFO most recently performed Morgengruß on January 19, 2025 (conductor: Iván Fischer); its most recent performance of the Violin Concerto was on January 19, 2020 (soloist: Benjamin Beilman, conductor: Marek Janowski); and it performed The Legend of Joseph most recently on August 24, 2006 in Edinburgh (conductor: Iván Fischer).

Contemporary events: Norwegian painter Edvard Munch created his picture The Scream in 1893 / Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck’s drama Pelléas et Mélisande premiered on May 16, 1893 in Paris / The Galician Peasant Uprising and an uprising in Krakow against Austrian occupiers broke out in February 1846 / French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon published his work The System of Economic Contradictions or, The Philosophy of Poverty in 1846 / Francis II, of the House of Habsburg–Lorraine, abdicated from the throne as Holy Roman Emperor at the demand of Emperor Napoleon on August 6, 1806, marking the end of the Holy Roman Empire / German composer Carl Maria von Weber composed his piece Concertino for Horn and Orchestra in 1806 / Irish-English author James Joyce published his collection of short stories Dubliners in 1914 / Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico created his painting Gare Montparnasse in 1914