NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Anna Vinnitskaya / Juraj Valčuha

The first Sergei (Rachmaninov) would have celebrated his 150th birthday in 2023, and is a feast for any pianist. Rachmaninov was himself a celebrated keyboard virtuoso, and wrote four exceptionally beautiful and exceptionally hard-to-play piano concertos. While Nos. 2 and 3 have made it into the classical charts, as it were, Nos. 1 and 4 have had a harder time of it in the world’s concert halls, whatever the reason. Vinnitskaya embarked on her Rachmaninov birthday marathon with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra with the rarely-played Concerto No. 4 in G minor a day before this concert; in this concert she performs the more popular Concerto No. 2.

With his monumental Fifth Symphony, the second Sergei (Prokofiev) produced a feast for any orchestra. He dedicated the work to the »triumph of the human spirit« – a statement that can be favourably interpreted as a utopia of humanity and international understanding amidst the dark turmoil of the Second World War. The symphony’s premiere on 13 January 1945, shortly after the Red Army pushed German forces back from the River Vistula, certainly took place at a time of historic significance. Sviatoslav Richter recalls: »What symbolic meaning was expressed on that occasion!«