Daniel Hope is one of the most brilliant, prestigious violinists on today’s music scene. This South African, who boasts an extensive career, major repertoire, and special predilection for 20th century composers, will be returning this weekend to play alongside the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, performing the Concertino for Violin by Mieczysław Weinberg.
The OBC will be headed by German conductor Anja Bihlmaier. She will be making her début at L’Auditori de Barcelona with this programme, which also features Symphony No. 4 by Robert Schumann, one of the Romantic composer’s finest works. Bihlmaier is the third of the five female conductors who will be visiting the OBC this Spring Season. The principal guest conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, from August onward, she will also take over the position of principal conductor of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague. This makes Anja Bihlmaier the Residentie Orkest’s first female conductor and the second female conductor to be named the principal conductor of any Dutch orchestra.
Symphony No. 4 by Robert Schumann is one of the first instances in the history of music of a symphony being heavily revised and changed. Although it was composed and performed for the first time in 1841, it was not until ten years later that the composer felt satisfied with it, following its re-orchestration and the lightening of its tight instrumentation. The structure of the symphony was also altered, since different fragments were eliminated and others were added.
As for Weinberg’s Concertino, which will be performed by Daniel Hope, growing interest is being shown in this little-known, unjustly undervalued composer, who was ostracized and harshly criticized for a large part of his life for political and ethnic reasons. A composer of modest Polish-Jewish descent living in Soviet Russia, he suffered directly from anti-Semitism and from Stalin’s purges of artists deemed to be contrary to the regime. He never heard his Concertino for Violin and String Orchestra, Op. 42, being performed. Although it was composed in 1948, it was premiered in Moscow in 1999 and recorded for the first time in 2007 by the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. With its simple, lyrical structure, possibly conditioned by the risk of any sign of formalism or bold experimentation, it is a work that moves from merriment to tragedy and from irony to severity. Weinberg is unarguably one of the Soviet Union’s leading composers and he deserves to be elevated to the ranks of Shostakovich, Khachaturian and Prokofiev.
This concert can be followed live on Sunday morning at 11 am on Catalunya Música radio station.
El violinista Daniel Hope i la directora Anja Bihlmaier: duet d’estrelles amb l’OBC
05-May-2021 – Aleix Palau