Beethoven's Fifth
They are perhaps the most famous four notes in music history: the motto 'pa-pa-pa-paaaa' with which Beethoven knocks on the door in his Fifth Symphony . From this motif unfolds a particularly ingenious structure that still sounds just as urgent more than 200 years later. The Concertgebouw Orchestra performs this dazzling hit from the early nineteenth century under the direction of Riccardo Minasi.
Mao Fujita plays Mozart
The concert begins with music by Emilie Mayer, a successful composer in the nineteenth century who subsequently fell into obscurity. Her Faust Overture was acclaimed in the press in the early 1880s. Come and hear for yourself why—and witness the return of Mao Fujita while you're at it! After his memorable debut with the orchestra in 2023 with Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto, NRC praised the 'clarity, richness of color, and the finesse with which passages are seamlessly joined together,' and the young pianist definitively blew the audience away with Mozart's 'Sonata Facile' in his encore. That bodes well for Mozart's sublime Piano Concerto No. 25. On either side of the meditative slow movement, Mozart pulls out all the stops for both the piano and the orchestra.