CONCERTS 2026 | JOY – Sunday with Beethoven
ARAM KHACHEH / ENRICO CELESTINO
BRAHMS Concerto for viola in F minor op. 120 No. 1 (arr. Luciano Berio)
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5 in C minor op. 67
Director
Aram Khacheh
Viola
Henry Celestine
Program
Johannes Brahms
Concerto for viola in F minor op. 120 No. 1 (arr. Luciano Berio)
In 1986 Luciano Berio returned to an old love of his youth-Brahms’ Sonata for viola (or clarinet) and piano-transforming it into a concertante guise. Thus was born the Concerto for Viola, first performed in Los Angeles. Berio tried to give the impression that the work had been written expressly for orchestra, an arduous task because it involved making people forget the Sonata’s piano origin. “What is asked of the transcription,” the composer explained, “is to fit into the more concrete, more everyday, even private fabric of the musical experience. A true three-way dialogue, with Brahms and with himself.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 5 in C minor op. 67
“We sat from 6:30 until 10:30 in a polar cold, and we learned that you can get sick of even good things,” said composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt after attending a concert in which, on the same evening, included the world premieres of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto, some sacred pages and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. A cyclopean concert, the 1808 one was typical of the fluvial academies of the time. The judgment is not all that bad, for from its first appearance the Fifth Symphony had a way of glimpsing something unprecedented in European music, later earning a stable place among the most universally known and beloved pieces of Western civilization. If the four notes of the incipit – the famous “G-Sol-Sol Mi” – are indeed “fate knocking at the door,” one can rest assured that Beethoven opened to his guest, making us participants in one of the greatest masterpieces in music history.
Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna
Before each concert, listening keys by
Martino Ruggero Dondi
A Milanese musician and philosopher, with a diploma in piano and a degree in philosophy with honors, he works as a collaborating maestro, choral and orchestral conductor at important opera houses. In parallel, he devotes himself to musical and cultural popularization, collaborating with Italian and international theaters and festivals.
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