Kammerorchester Basel olv. Christian Zacharias piano

It is no less a figure than Christian Zacharias who will be bringing our ‘Know Your Classics’ series to a close. As both pianist and conductor of one of Europe’s best ensembles, Kammerorchester Basel. Some of the music-lovers among you will undoubtedly recall the complete Beethoven concertos in 1994. With Zacharias at the piano and at the same time masterfully galvanising the Beethoven Academie. It’s already two decades ago.
So it’s high time we invited this engaging personality once again, and of course to play Beethoven. This time it’s his Third Piano Concerto, a work for which Beethoven took a Mozart piano concerto as his model. The final part is one of the most brilliant rondos in musical history, and is right up Zacharias’ street.
On a trip to the Scottish island of Staffa, Felix Mendelssohn visited the impressive ‘Fingal’s Cave’. This inspired his Hebrides Overture, a short symphonic poem in which he evokes real and imaginary images.
Schumann started on the sketches for his Second Symphony in December 1845. He finished it a year later, when the first signs of his mental illness were appearing. It is the product of his pain and his victory over it, which is a possible explanation of the triumphant main key of C major.