“We feel as though we were lifted off the earth… We experience the extraordinary pleasure that circulates in high places; it seems as though we have an immense horizon before us …” wrote Baudelaire about the Prelude to Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, which opens the concert in a Grail-themed mystical atmosphere. Next, the violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann joins the Symphoniker on stage to perform Martinů’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor (on his Stradivarius violin!). Very lyrical, this work was composed in 1943 during Bohuslav Martinů’s period of exile in New York. Described as “Beethoven’s 10th” and considered a work that marked the return of the classical symphony, Brahms’s First Symphony rounds off the program.

Photo: Jakub Hrůša © Andreas Herzau

In cooperation with BR KLASSIK

Recording Producer: Pauline Heister
Recording Engineer: Christian Jaeger