Spectacle vs. content: Alexander Gavrylyuk plays Schumann

Pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk, a regular guest at the NTR Saturday Matinee, plays Schumann's little piano concerto. And did you already know Schubert's Seventh?

Schumann asks for cooperation
A piano concerto without a piano, Liszt thought. Other contemporaries also did not understand why Robert Schumann had not turned his only solo concerto for piano into a virtuoso spectacle. But much more than dexterity, Schumann focuses on the symbiosis of soloist and orchestra, and the solidity of the thematic construction.

Schubert's Unfinished Work' completed
Twenty years earlier, Schubert, too, had envisaged an orchestral structure of unprecedented proportions in his Seventh Symphony. But the score did not live up to his expectations and the symphony remained unfinished. What remains is a four-part sketch of which only the slow introduction and a fragment of the opening movement have been orchestrated. Based on Schubert's instructions, many composers including Schubert specialist Brian Newbould have since given their own interpretation of the score. Anton Webern's Passacaglia completes this orchestral triptych: an opus 1' that was by no means the earliest work by the notoriously self-critical composer, but nevertheless the first with which he wanted to show himself to the world.