Beethoven: Egmont Overture, Op. 84
Chopin: Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 21
R. Strauss: Don Quixote, Op. 35
Gergely Bogányi piano, Máté Szűcs viola, László Fenyő cello
Concerto Budapest
Conductor: András Keller
Lamoral, Count of Egmont, went from being a Spanish viceroy to a legendary martyr of the Dutch struggle for freedom, and his memory will be exalted forever by Goethe’s tragic play and the incidental music Beethoven composed for it. It is of course the overture to Beethoven’s work that first comes to mind when we hear the count’s name, and for Hungarians this powerfully dramatic piece primarily evokes the memory of 1956. Chopin’s oeuvre occupies a special place in the career and repertoire of Kossuth Prize-winner Gergely Bogányi, the guest soloist for the concert. We all remember how, back in 2010, he took on the impressive task of performing all of the composer’s works for solo piano over the course of two days. At this concert, he will play Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which is in fact the first the Polish master and reveals, most of all through its unmistakably youthful energy, the age of the barely 19-year-old, but already accomplished, composer. “A complete refutation of everything that I myself consider to be music,” wrote a critic after the 1898 premiere of Don Quixote in Cologne, yet the audience judged it quite differently even then. Portraying the main characters, the sad-faced knight and his faithful squire, through the sounds of the cello and viola at this performance of Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem will be László Fenyő and Máté Szűcs.
