Pannon Philharmonic

Conductor

Olari Elts

Soloist

Akiko Suwanai

violin

Praised by The Times for her “noble playing, with its rhythmic life, taut and rigorous,” Akiko Suwanai is the youngest ever winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition and now enjoys a prestigious international career.   Recent performances have included concerts… More

About the Programme

The two Romanian Rhapsodies, which were conducted by the composer himself already at the premiere, accompanied Enescu's life: the Romanian Rhapsody No.1, you can hear tonight, was kept by the Romanian Maestro on his repertoire for fifty years and was selected into the programme of the New York concert paying tribute to his work in 1950, as well. In the thirties of the last century, the genre of the violin concerto enjoyed a great popularity among modern composers; several key works of the genre was born then, thanks to Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Sergei Prokofiev, Béla Bartók, and others. At the end of the decade, in 1939, the British-born William Walton composed a great work, which he dedicated to the world famous Jascha Heifetz. The programme is closed by a popular piece of the Finnish national composer; it divides music lovers to this day: though the composer has denied such associations, many a man links his composition to the Finns’ struggles for independence from the Russian empire.