Sibelius: Violin Concerto / Järvi / Hadelich

Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

conductor Paavo Järvi
violin Augustin Hadelich

Debussy Prelude à l’apres-midi d’un faune
Sibelius Violin Concerto
Prokofiev Symphony No. 5

Conductor Paavo Järvi is returning to Santa Cecilia after a six-year absence. Born in Tallinn in 1960, he is the son of famed conductor Neeme Järvi, and the brother of Kristjan, also a conductor. Currently Chief Conductor of Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchester and Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, he will be joined, for the first time on the Santa Cecilia stage, by Augustin Hadelich, a German violinist born in Cecina, Italy, in 1984. “The essence of Hadelich’s playing,” writes The Washington Post – is beauty: reveling in the myriad ways of making a phrase come alive on the violin, delivering the musical message with no technical impediments whatsoever, and thereby revealing something from a plane beyond ours.” In 2016, he won his first Grammy Award for the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category.

The evening will begin with Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, a true masterpiece of the musical literature that in 1892 ushered in a new era in the history of music; as Pierre Boulez asserted, “one is justified in saying that modern music was awakened by Après-midi d’un faune.” This will be followed by the Violin Concerto by Jan Sibelius – “a Finnish Schubert,” as his friend Busoni defined him – which premièred in Helsinki in 1904 and may be considered the final example of a Romantic concerto, with thematic material marked by a Nordic atmosphere and a distinctly virtuoso style. The programme ends with Prokofiev’s Symphony no. 5; composed in 1944 and performed for the first time in January the following year, it is the longest of the Russian composer’s seven symphonies and among the most beloved in his catalogue, thanks also to his always captivating melodic inventions and to a successful fusion between Classical form and the language of the 20^th century.

 VIDEO