The annual Haspa New Year's Concert traditionally attracts lots of Hamburg VIPs to the Laeiszhalle to drink to the future in music. This year, the concert regrettably had to be given without an audience, but it is being broadcast as a live stream.
The Symphoniker welcome in the New Year with Mozart's sparkling overture to the comic opera »Le nozze di Figaro«. After this we hear Mendelssohn's much-loved Violin Concerto with the fantastic Viviane Hagner as soloist. The concert is brought to an end by Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, described by Romain Rolland as an »orgy of rhythm«.
Performers
Symphoniker Hamburg
Viviane Hagner violin
conductor Sylvain Cambreling
Programme
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ouvertüre zu »Le nozze di Figaro« KV 492
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Konzert für Violine und Orchester e-Moll op. 64
Ludwig van Beethoven
Sinfonie Nr. 7 A-Dur op. 92
About the Music
It's hard for us to imagine today what roars of laughter and shouts of indignation Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's comic opera »The Marriage of Figaro« caused nearly 250 years ago. The story about the valet in the service of a Spanish count is nothing if not cheeky, and the turbulent overture already indicates that we can look forward to some amorous derring-do…
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was likewise sure of himself: »I can feel that with every new piece I come closer to writing what's in my heart, and in the final event that's the only guideline I know. I am not cut out for popularity, so I feel no inclination to learn it or aim for it.« Of course, Mendelssohn's music enjoyed popularity nonetheless: the first performance of the Violin Concerto in E minor in 1845 brought resounding applause from the audience. Within the shortest space of time, it took Europe's concert halls by storm, and has remained one of the most oft-performed works in its genre ever since. In this year's Haspa New Year's Concert (the 13th such event!), the solo part is taken by Munich-born Viviane Hagner, who has already appeared with some of today's greatest conductors.
Ludwig van Beethoven was only in his early forties when his Seventh Symphony was first performed in Vienna in 1813. The symphony, written in 1911-12 and dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries, was later given the unofficial sobriquet »the apotheosis of dance« by Richard Wagner. And no wonder: in the Seventh, Beethoven was obviously trying to show that he not only had Fate and heroism in his Elbphilharmonie, but wild and boisterous as well.
