Orchestre National de Lyon - Nielsen 4 & Maria João Pires plays Beethoven

For this exchange concert, the Orchestre National de Lyon comes to Bozar. Led by the Danish-Israeli conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, principal conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon since the 2020-2021 season, horn player Guillaume Tétu will venture into a new work by the French-Lebanese composer Bechara El-Khoury. It is entitled Grand poème Alpestre pour cor et orchestre.

Beethoven premiered his Piano Concerto No. 4 in December 1808 at the end of a mammoth concert that spanned several hours at the Theater an der Wien. Other works on the programme included the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, movements from his Mass in C major and some concert tunes. The second movement, the Andante, is said to have been inspired by the legend of Orpheus: at the gates of the underworld, the furies (the orchestra) rage against the singer (the piano), who is tormented by heartbreak and eventually wins.

The Orchestre National de Lyon closes this concert with the Fourth Symphony by Danish composer Carl Nielsen. He wrote this work during the First World War and subtitled it ‘The Inextinguishable’. He was referring to the will to live, an irrepressible life force that permeates the whole world and which, even in the midst of a horrific world war, cannot be extinguished. Moments of gentleness and sudden bursts of anger alternate abruptly in what is perhaps Carl Nielsen’s most dramatic work. The fourth and final movement is particularly impressive: two timpanists, one on the left and one on the right of the orchestra, engage in an aggressive duel. At the end, the will to live is gloriously asserted.

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, conductor
Maria João Pires, piano
Guillaume Tétu, horn
Orchestre National de Lyon