High spirits, optimism, humour and vitality – all are warmly welcome to join us at this concert who wish to experience these uplifting sensations. You will hear three compositions full of these feelings written by three pianist-composers who spent most of their lives in Vienna. First, the audience can relish Mozart's Violin Concerto in D major, a composition alluding to the ideas and plans of Mozart, the young adult. This work is part of Mozart's violin concerto trilogy alongside two others in G major and A major. In reference to these violin concertos, Mozart made the remark to his father that he had left his years as a child prodigy behind; now he couldn't write just any odd piece, for he had to compete with adult masters. Even from a distance of two hundred years, we can undoubtedly claim that he would not need to feel embarrassed about his achievements. Another violin concerto follows Mozart's music, originally a cello concerto, which is, however, by no means the strings-inspired, lyrical type, as its composer was the 20th-century pianist, Friedrich Gulda. The work is greatly inspired by jazz and pop music and is not accompanied by a symphony orchestra but by a winds ensemble assisted by percussion instruments.
Nonetheless, this buoyant piece unmistakably meets the formal, content-related, emotional, instrumental and technical requirements of classical music. Finally, you can hear Brahm's Symphony No. 2 in D major, perhaps the master's most optimistic symphony. In this composition, we can encounter a smiling Brahms full of vitality and creativity, inspired this time by his high spirits.
