Utopia Orchestra / Teodor Currentzis - Brahms: Piano Concert No. 2, Mahler Symphony No. 4

The Utopia Orchestra, a prestigious ensemble founded and directed by Teodor Currentzis, with Alexandre Kantorow, soloist of the Piano Concert No. 2 by Johannes Brahms, Currentzis and his extraordinary musicians propose Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica.

The Piano Concert No. 2 Op. 83 in B flat major, completed in 1881, is considered one of the most complex of the entire concert repertoire due to its technical difficulty and unorthodox writing. Performed for the first time in Budapest in the same year of its composition with Brahms himself at the piano, it enjoyed considerable public success from the beginning, and was considered by critics as a symphony with piano due to the density of the orchestral discourse, very rich and varied in its play of timbre and rhythm. The Concert is divided into four movements instead of the traditional three and, also for this reason, presents larger dimensions than any other previous solo concert.

Mahler's Symphony No. 4, originally titled Symphonie Humoreske in reference to the gaiety of Nietzsche's The Gay Science, was the result of a long process of compositional maturation that began when Mahler was already working on the Second and Third; in the author's original plan, the Fourth Symphony was supposed to include six movements but was then structured into four movements; the fourth is a lied for soprano originally written in 1892, entitled Das Himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life). Compared to Mahler's other symphonies, this is the one that features the smallest orchestra.

With the Utopia Orchestra; conductor: Teodor Currentzis, piano: Alexandre Kantorow, soprano: Regula Mühlemann.

Photo credits: courtesy of the  Auditorium Parco della Musica official site