Conductor Zsolt NAGY
Music historians like to argue – who was the most important classical composer of the 20th century? It sounds silly, since one might just as well ask who was the most important writer or the most notable gangster, and yet there is a certain point to the question. Running through the men and women of the first rank, every music lover ends up with a personal top five (or top three, or top ten, as the case may be), and to defend that view in thisbillboard topcontest you have to put it as precisely as possible – why, in your opinion, is the greatest of them all Stravinsky (or Schoenberg, or Satie, or Messiaen, as the case may be)?
In these arguments and debates about the very greatest, the name of Béla Bartók is almost always invoked as well. Who was Béla Bartók? A small, lean, ferociously chain-smoking Hungarian who irritated the representatives of the Austrian Empire by performing in Hungarian national costume, and one of the first to point out the difference between the Roma music of Hungary and genuine Hungarian folk music. His music is powerful, saturated with rhythm, irregular, unpredictable, challenging, daring, harsh and hard-hitting. Yet it is not that Bartók only strikes you between the eyes – no, he can also be gently hazy and fragilely beautiful. Like many seemingly harsh men who, at certain moments, try to hide a faint dampness on their cheeks.
What made Béla Bartók remarkable? The fact that he was among the first to draw inspiration from the purest and most ancient sources of folk music, and that he knew how to fuse those ethnic rhythms and combinations of sound into a musical language of his own, so that it all merged into one grand, unmistakable creative signature. He has no direct followers, yet his works left a considerable mark on many significant composers of the second half of the 20th century.
The Concerto for Orchestrais certainly one of the most approachable of Bartók’s works. In his own programme note the composer says: “The mood of the work shifts from the stern resolve of the first movement and the mournful death-song of the third to the affirmation of life in the finale.” The life force triumphs over the destructive.
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On 30 October Andris Poga launched an entirely new concert seriesCONCERT CONVERSATIONS WITH GORAN GORA @LNSO,which the LNSO’s chief conductor and artistic director has brought back from his experience of working withOrchestre de Paris. These concerts are intended for the LNSO’s future audience of listeners and fans. “Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák – it seems everyone has heard these composers’ names and almost everyone has some notion of them. A mobile phone ringtone, a film, a wearily crackling record – there really are plenty of possibilities. The new series is an invitation to look behind the familiar façade and discover what is so special, so gripping, perhaps even surprising, that it has carried this music through the centuries,” says Andris Poga.
At each meeting, at 7 p.m., the LNSO will present one classical hit to be heard from beginning to end. Before it, the conversation about the era, the composer and the work will be led by the singer-songwriter and theatre composer Goran Gora, a man with considerable experience of listening to classical music.
29.01. #BARTÓK – THE PUNK ROCK OF HIS TIME (Buytickets)
26.02. #BEETHOVEN #FIFTHSYMPHONY (Buytickets)
23.04. #DVOŘÁK #SYMPHONYFROMTHENEWWORLD (Buytickets)