LUDWIG van BEETHOVEN: Egmont Overture, Op.84
BÉLA BARTÓK: Piano Concerto No. 2, in G major, BB101
PIOTR ILICH CHAIKÓVSKI: Symphony No. 5, in E minor, Op. 64
Piano: Juan Pérez Floristán
Conductor: György Györiványi Ráth
Program notes
Composed in 1810, Egmont is incidental music for Goethe's tragedy about the Count of Egmont, hero of the Netherlands, executed after his confrontation with the Duke of Alba. Beethoven writes a powerful and highly original work, a summary of the drama from the slow introduction to the triumphal coda.
It is accompanied by two masterpieces that perfectly represent the centuries to which they correspond: the modernity of Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2 and the romantic expressiveness of Tchaikovsky's Fifth.
Bartók composed three piano concertos. In the Second, written between 1930 and 1931, he moderated the technical difficulties of the First and employs ‘more pleasant thematic materials’. Structured symmetrically and with an original instrumental arrangement in each movement, it is situated between the extreme virtuosity of the previous one and the nudity of the next one. With this performance, Juan Pérez Floristán brings to an end the cycle he has been offering so brilliantly in the two previous seasons.
Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies form a cycle of great expressive and emotional intensity. Composed in 1888, eleven years after the Fourth, the connections between the two are evident, with the Fifth having a romantic background contained in a classically balanced form. Full of beautiful and exuberant melodies, it includes a leitmotif with the theme of destiny, related to the Beethovenian Fifth, which accompanies the development of the symphony from the sombre beginning to the vibrant colouring of the finale.
Juan Lamillar