Sir Mark conducts Rachmaninov

Sir Mark conducts Rachmaninov

Grieghallen

Nearly three decades had passed since Rachmaninov last wrote a symphony when he sat on the shores of Lake Lucerne in 1935 and heard the plush, lustrous sound of the great American symphony orchestras in his head.

This was the inspiration the composer needed to write his third and final symphony - a palpitating and harmonically adventurous essay on yearning and longing that combines the composer’s Romantic soul with wholly original new ideas.

Sir Mark Elder conducts Rachmaninov’s unusually transparent and finely contoured symphony here, after music with a whole lot more joy in its heart.

After the medieval prankster Till Eulenspiegel runs riot around Richard Strauss’s cartoonish orchestra, we hear Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in the sunny key of D major - the brightest and most joyous work the composer wrote.

Arabella Steinbacher is the soloist in this ray of musical sunshine from the composer more associated with impassioned fury and tortured introspection.

Related concert recordings at Bergenphilive:
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 (Eroica)
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 (Fate)
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7
Ludwig van Beethoven: Romance No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra 
Richard Strauss: An Alpine Symphony
Richard Strauss: Don Juan
Richard Strauss: Don Quixote
Richard Strauss: Oboe Concerto (BFUng)
Sergei Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances
Sergei Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2
Sergei Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3

Main photo: Sir Mark Elder conducts the Orchestra in Mahler Symphony No. 9 on 15 February 2024. Photo: Tarjei Hummelsund