Pannon Philharmonic

Conductor

Korsten Gérard

Born in Pretoria (South Africa), Gérard Korsten began his career as a violinist after studying with Ivan Galamian at the Curtis Institute and with Sándor Végh in Salzburg. Following his studies in the US and Europe he became Concertmaster and Assistant Music Director of the Camerata Salzburg… More

Soloist

Gergely Bogányi

piano

About the Programme

The programme includes works of two important prominent composers of the 19th century, Johannes Brahms and Antonin Dvořák. Brahms First Piano Concerto can be heard with a curiosity that it was originally written for symphony and Brahms, who had a predilection for changing the structures of his works, only opted for converting the piece, already worked with, into a concerto after having completed the intermediate movements drafted on the piano, due to his friend Robert Schumann's tragic death in 1854. It is known that Brahms didn’t publish his symphony until 1876. This date is not so far from the premiere of Dvořák's Sixth Symphony (1880), of which main inspiration was Brahms’s Second Symphony from 1877, as music historians tend to think. They especially often draw attention to the similarity between the first and last movements, in their thematic material, as well as in their form and orchestration. However, there is something that makes Dvořák's work definitely unique: the presence of the Czech national style, which then became a determining factor in the Bohemian composer's later works.