Freddy Kempf, piano | Manchester
Mendelssohn Hebrides Overture | Beethoven Piano Concerto No 3 | Beethoven Symphony No 3 ‘Eroica’
Tickets: £12 – £25 | Students £5 | Free for Under 18’s
We begin our new season as Orchestra in Association at Manchester’s Stoller Hall with a programme full of turbulent energy and colossal music in the company of one of the greatest pianists of his generation, Freddy Kempf. The evening starts with the Hebrides overture, written by Mendelssohn after a memorable trip to Fingal’s Cave. This overture sets a suitably dramatic scene before Beethoven’s great C minor piano concerto written at a time when the composer was coming to terms with impending deafness. The concerto demonstrates that he was not going to accept his situation meekly, and in the last movement he seems to be confronting his condition with an almost irascible humour. Beethoven’s deafness was even more apparent to him when he penned his 3rd symphony, a truly ground-breaking work that despite his great emotional struggles ends in almost joyful triumph.
