Concert
Live Stream: Simon Rattle and Daniel Barenboim with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 1

Sat, 24.02.2018
5:45 PM - 20:00 Goethe-Institut Glasgow

Berliner Philharmoniker

Join us for a Live Stream of a concert introduced by Scottish conductor Paul MacAlindin.

The long artistic friendship between Daniel Barenboim and the Berliner Philharmoniker began with Bartók’s First Piano Concerto. Wolfgang Stresemann, general manager of the orchestra at that time, had the young pianist in mind for a Philharmoniker concert programme under the direction of Pierre Boulez in June 1964: “If you want to play there, you’ll first have to learn Béla Bartók’s First Piano Concerto,” he said. Barenboim got the music and immediately fell in love with what was then a very rarely performed piece. Although Bartók based his composition on the classic three-part concerto form, the function of the piano is completely different to anything that had come before: He used the piano primarily as a percussion instrument that gives an energetic, vibrant and at the same time dance-like character to the inexorable, onward-driving momentum of the work. And at his debut, Barenboim succeeded in conveying just that. As one review described, “He played with virtuosity, intelligence, and in the slow movement in particular, he brings out Bartók’s sublimation of the rhythmical”. As a conductor, Barenboim has performed the concerto several times with the Philharmoniker in recent years, and now he is also to be heard as its soloist for the first time since 1964.

Programme:
Antonín Dvořák
Slavonic Dances, op. 72

Béla Bartók
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1, Sz 83
Daniel Barenboim piano

Leoš Janáček
Sinfonietta, op. 60