Schumann’s Fateful Piece

Event has already taken place. Gothenburg Symphony, Jukka-Pekka Saraste conductor, Isabelle Faust violin

Concert length: 2 h 15 min incl. intermission Scene: Stora salen

330-490 SEK Student 165-245 SEK

Wednesday 8 May 2019 19.30 — Event has already taken place
Thursday 9 May 2019 19.30 — Event has already taken place

Event has already taken place

Isabelle Faust has played with leading orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony, and has been praised for her “passion, disarming warmth, and electricity that can unveil the music’s hidden strains of lyricism.” (New York Times)

Now she’s coming to Gothenburg for the first time to play Schumann’s violin concerto, his final big piece which was written with manic eagerness in 13 days in 1853. A few years later, he passed away, broken and mentally weak, in an asylum. His wife Clara decided that the violin concerto shouldn’t be published, as it had been created when Robert was under the influence of mental illness, and the piece was forgotten in the archives until its original performance in 1937.

Today, it is considered one of the great concertos with its intensity and passion, while there is also a brooding, underlying sense of grief and worry, even in the calmer parts and the seemingly jolly ones.

This ambivalence can be found once again in Mahler’s fifth symphony, with an adagietto that many call the most delightful music in the world. But all other human, emotional needs are also met – such as happiness, melancholy, angst and ecstasy – in this near perfect introduction to Mahler’s music.