Ravel wrote his “Boléro” almost as an industrial joke and hardly considered it music at all, yet it has become one of the all-time great hits of the symphonic repertoire. For one listener it is an apocalypse, for another athletic sex, for a third a rhythmically reined-in parade of wind instruments or a quarter of an hour of unbroken build-up to a climax. Beside it stands the wonderfully buoyant Piano Concerto in G major, in whose translucent slow movement the musicians (with a little luck) touch the heavens.
The next concert on 15 December – Schubert’s Unfinished.
Franz Schubert – outwardly unremarkable, rather sickly, inwardly a genius; cherished by many close friends, his short life spent in countless evenings of friendship and music; never finding himself in love, yet realising himself in music to the full; an impoverished, sparkling citizen of Vienna who never heard a single one of his symphonies performed. The “Unfinished” is probably the most popular of them all, helped no doubt by the various legends about why this masterpiece has only two movements.
Agnese Egliņa – piano