Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester

We meet another composer for the first time in our concerts, presented by conductor Anja Bihlmaier. The Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz was a violinist, pianist and composer, taught at various conservatories and wrote short stories and novels - a multi-talented woman and an important representative of Polish music. Her original Concerto for String Orchestra is neo-baroque to neo-classical, yet unmistakably 20th-century music.
If Grażyna Bacewicz's String Concerto is almost delicate, Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 can certainly be described as monumental. Traditional in form but experimental in style, the four-movement work still seems modern and innovative today, more than a hundred years after its premiere in 1913. It is also considered one of the most difficult piano concertos in the repertoire, with its enormous expressive range, its overflowing solo cadenzas in the outer movements and its ludicrous virtuosity.
Peter Tchaikovsky was not particularly fond of his Fifth Symphony, which, like Beethoven's Fifth, contains a 'motif of destiny'. It was 'too colourful, too unwieldy, too insincere, too long, generally not very attractive'. After the premiere, which he conducted, he felt compelled to make changes to the interpretation, including shortening the finale. His doubts were allayed by the extremely positive response to this version. The Fifth Symphony has long since established itself in the concert repertoire and is now a firm favourite with audiences.
(Frankfurter Museums-Gesellschaft e.V.)