deFilharmonie . Philippe Herreweghe

The combination of Philippe Herreweghe and Isabelle Faust - very much two kindred spirits - in Beethoven's Violin Concerto will undoubtedly be a great musical event. Beethoven composed the concerto during the same period as the Fourth Symphony and the Rasumovsky quartets. He dedicated it to the violinist Franz Clement, who played it for the first time in the Theater an der Wien on 23 December 1806. It was an immediate success among the public, but was panned by the press, which attacked it for incoherence and spoke of 'an incessant stream of noise poured over the public by a few instruments'. Equally precocious is Schumann's Second Symphony, composed in 1845 and 1846, having been begun shortly after the composer's recovery from a nervous breakdown. It was in Dresden - the city where, in poor spirits, Schumann sought rest - that, in a single week, he scribbled down the outlines of a new symphony. Developing his sketches would take a great deal more time and it was only a year later, in Leipzig - and with a lot of support from his friend Mendelssohn - that he would complete the heroic work. The symphony is the reflection of his pain and battle to conquer it, which perhaps explains why it was written in the triumphant key of D major. PLEASE NOTE! Individual tickets only from deFilharmonie: www.defilharmonie.be or 03 213 54 34