Elisabeth Leonskaja & Franz Schubert Filharmonia

We’re honoured to introduce to our audience one of the grandes dames of the piano, the wonderful Elisabeth Leonskaja. She will join the orchestra to perform one of Mozart’s most elegant concertos, No. 12 in A major. In the second part of the concert, Tomàs Grau will conduct Schubert’s famous Symphony No. 5, a work of pure Viennese style. We open, meanwhile, with a world premiere from Joan Magrané. Based on Schubert’s famous Lied of the same name, Meeresstille (“Calm sea”) has been written for and is dedicated to the Franz Schubert Filharmonia.

THE SOUNDS OF VIENNA

Mozart is one of the great Georgian pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja’s favourite composers. While she has played virtually every piano concerto there is, she still declares herself “faithful” to Mozart – now in her mid-70s, she recently recorded his complete piano sonatas. On this visit she will perform the composer’s Concerto No. 12, a work with which he hoped to win over the Viennese public. As he himself wrote, it “presents a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult, pleasing to the ear and natural, without being vapid”. Schubert never had the chance to enjoy the success of his music, since he died at the age of just 31. Over time, those who had known him began to perform his music and to revive works that had been written years earlier, such as the Fifth Symphony, composed when he was 19. This work only received its public premiere 25 years later and was an instant success. It draws on the ideals of Classicism and pays homage to Schubert’s beloved Mozart. Our concert will also include the world premiere of a new work by Joan Magrané, one of today’s best-known Catalan composers.

Elisabeth Leonskaja

Piano