Klassik Highlights

Symphony concert by the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra in the Liederhalle

PROKOFJEW | Symphony No. 1 "Symphonie classique"
MOZART | Piano Concerto in D major KV 451
SCHUMANN | Symphony No. 1 "Spring Symphony"

Charlotte Steppes, piano
Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Sebastian Weigle

FIRST SONG

Sergei Prokofiev began writing his first symphony at the age of 23. His idea was "to compose an entire symphonic work without the aid of the piano. In such a work, the orchestral colors would have to sound purer. So the plan was born to write a symphony in Haydn's style, because his technique had somehow seemed particularly clear to me during my lessons in the composition class and it must be easier to plunge into the dangerous waters without the piano under such familiar circumstances. If Haydn were still alive today, I thought, he would retain his way of writing and adopt some of the new elements. That's the kind of symphony I wanted to write - a symphony in the classical style."

Mozart's Piano Concerto K. 451, which he completed in Vienna on March 22, 1784, is undoubtedly a classic. According to him, it is "entirely obbligato with wind instruments", i.e. in contrast to earlier works, a performance cannot do without the parts of the wind instruments (here flute, two oboes, two bassoons, horns, trumpets with timpani). The virtuoso piano part and the rest of the music are partly reminiscent of his opera "Idomeneo".

Robert Schumann first had to make a discovery before he finally dared to write his first symphony. It had been said "so often and to the displeasure of composers that 'after Beethoven we should abandon symphonic plans', and it was partly true that apart from a few important orchestral works, which were always of more interest in assessing the development of their composers, they did not exert a decisive influence on the masses or on the progress of the genre." It was only his discovery of Franz Schubert's symphonies in Vienna, which were lying unknown in a drawer with his surviving brother, that inspired Schumann so much that he was able to sketch his own First within four days "in a fiery hour" in January 1841.