Henderickx & Leif Ove Andsnes plays Beethoven

TRIBUTE TO WIM HENDERICKX

In the first part of this opening concert, chief conductor Antony Hermus casts a glance ahead into the Belgian National Orchestra's new season. Some symphonic highlights from L'amour des trois oranges, an absurd opera by Sergei Prokofiev, hint at the Prokofiev Festival taking place in early February. Like all the music played at this festival, Prokofiev composed L'amour des trois oranges during his wanderings in America and Europe between 1918 and 1936.

Gustav Mahler's imposing funeral march Totenfeier (later reworked as the opening movement of his Second Symphony) is the prelude to the Mahler integral that the Belgian National Orchestra, Bozar and la Monnaie will realise in Brussels over the next two years. At the same time, the programming of this work is also an ode to the recently deceased Wim Henderickx, whose last composition Rejoice! (Hymn for New Times), a commissioned work by the Belgian National Orchestra, will have its world premiere at this concert.

Since Norwegian star pianist Leif Ove Andsnes recorded all Beethoven's piano concertos for the well-known Sony Classics label some ten years ago (The Beethoven Journey), he has been considered an absolute Beethoven authority. During the opening concert, he will play the fifth, last and perhaps most impressive of the German composer’s concertos. The socalled ‘Emperor concerto’ differs from Beethoven's other piano concertos by its phenomenal length, its heroic tone and the fact that the piano part is written out in great detail. Beethoven composed this work – which he was never able to perform himself due to his increasing deafness – amid "the drum roll, cannon roar and human suffering" caused by the French when they besieged Vienna under Napoleon's leadership in 1809.

Antony Hermus, conductor
Leif Ove Andsnes, piano