The Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra (QPO) is set to perform Friday at the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC), featuring “an evening of Brahms, including Haydn Variations and Symphony No 2 in D Major”.
Elias Grandy, who has established himself as one of the leading conductors of his generation with a reputation for exceptional versatility, equally at home in the concert hall and opera house, will be conducting the ‘Concert Brahms Meets Haydn’, scheduled at 5pm and 7.30pm at QNCC’s Auditorium 3.
Elias Grandy, who has established himself as one of the leading conductors of his generation with a reputation for exceptional versatility, equally at home in the concert hall and opera house, will be conducting the ‘Concert Brahms Meets Haydn’, scheduled at 5pm and 7.30pm at QNCC’s Auditorium 3.
Elias Grandy
Haydn Variations was written in 1873 and is a testimony to Brahms’ mastery of the technique of variation. The variations are based on a simple theme that was thought to be of Joseph Haydn’s composition at the time, but now know that this attribution was incorrect.
Brahms’ Symphony No 2 in D Major is one of the most cheerful of his mature works, and its happy nature could be because it was composed during a summer holiday in 1877 while living on the shores of an Austrian lake.
Variations on a Theme by Haydn has remained one of Brahms’s most popular works. The composer himself cited it as a personal favourite. The Variations begin with a stately melody that proceeds through eight rich reimagining before an explosive return in its original form in the work’s grand, passacaglia-like finale.
The Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn, now also called the Saint Anthony Variations is based on a "Chorale St Antoni", composed in the summer of 1873 at Tutzing in Bavaria.
After the successful premiere of Brahms’s First Symphony in November 1876 the ice was broken, and the Second Symphony was written in a single summer the following year.
The Second Symphony describes a rather unique emotional curve. A soft-spoken and lyrical, indeed somewhat pastoral-like first movement contains a first theme subjected to fugal treatment in the development.
New motifs and variations in the rhythm are hailed and dismissed by clipped comments from the brass, and after its vigorous course has been run the movement ends even more tenderly than it began.
QPO will also perform on March 5 at 7.30pm, featuring Belgian-French composer César Franck's Symphony in D Minor to mark his 200th birth anniversary.
This concert, which will be conducted Marcus Bosch, includes Bizet's Symphony No. 1 in C major, which he wrote when he was 17, hid it away in a drawer and told no one about it. (still a mystery).