Tchaikovsky was not long back from hearing Wagner in Bayreuth when he started work on his Symphony No. 4 in 1877. Something of the force of Wagner’s imagination is felt in the score, Tchaikovsky’s compulsive tussle with fate. It is a symphony of eruptions, outbursts and tragic inevitability. Edward Gardner precedes the work with the precise piece of Wagner that was on Tchaikovsky’s mind – the noble hymn and cascading strings of the overture to Tannhäuser, music that longs for redemption and ultimately receives it.
In between, Kirill Gerstein joins the orchestra for the first Norwegian performance of the much-anticipated new piano concerto by Austrian composer Thomas Larcher, commissioned by the Bergen Philharmonic and a consortium of partners. Larcher’s work promises ‘energetic music rooted in the historical canon.’ Here is your chance to be one of the first to hear it.