Barokorkest B'Rock olv. Bejun Mehta

Are you as intrigued as we are to see countertenor Bejun Mehta at work as a conductor? We've been sure to provide him with first class sparring partners: top cellist Christian Poltéra and the stunning baroque orchestra B'Rock. The first half of the concert is reserved for Joseph Haydn, who, in the slow section of his 'Trauer-Sinfonie', wrote the music for his own funeral. The First Cello Concerto is less woeful. For a long time, the work was thought to have been lost, and it was only rediscovered at the Prague National Museum in 1961. In this work Haydn put the cello on the map as a solo instrument, upholding the classicist conventions of the concerto genre. The Divertimento for strings in D, KV136, is actually Mozart's first Salzburg symphony. He wrote it in 1772 when, aged sixteen, he had just started work as a composer for the new archbishop, Colloredo. At first the pair got along well. But two years later, when he wrote his Twenty-Ninth Symphony, the relationship had soured: Colloredo disliked the headstrong Mozart, rarely allowed him to travel and gave him an underpaid job as a concertmaster. When Mozart was finally allowed to go to Vienna, he heard Haydn's music there for the first time. This became the great inspiration for this sparkling symphony.