Concerto Budapest

Gidon Kremer and his chamber ensemble, Kremerata Baltica, have long been excellent guests, partners and creative fellows of András Keller and Concerto Budapest. This time, moreover, they are here to be celebrated since the concert greets the 75-year-old violinist and orchestral leader, as well as his 25-year-old ensemble: this neat timing is far from a coincidence because in 1997, the master ‘surprised himself’, on his fiftieth birthday, by founding Kremerata. In this spirit, the programme sets off with the work of the young Latvian componist, Jēkabs Jančevskis who has composed and dedicated it to the orchestra.  The following number with the soloist of the celebrated artist will not be the Violin Concerto in D minor, but the A minor concerto which Schumann originally acquired for cello then make the violin version as well. After the intermission, the second half of the concert is split between a 20th century masterpiece of perfection and a passionate Romantic composition: Bartok’s Music from 1936 and the symphonic fantasia after Dante dating from 1876, which depicts the doomed lovers, Francesca da Rimini and her Paulo, as playthings of a never-ending storm.