Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony

Grieghallen

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Thursday 30 January 7:30 PM

Fresh from conducting Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Bayreuth Festival, Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen comes to Bergen to lead a concert culminating in Tchaikovsky’s own symphonic tussle with fate. The composer explained to his confidante Nadezhda von Meck that the opening notes of his Symphony No 4 represented his darkest thoughts and fears. Over the course of his 45-minute work, Tchaikovsky proves victorious over his demons in music of the utmost drama and honesty whose final pages of music veer towards unstoppable, ebullient joy.

Before this most beloved of symphonies, hot-property pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason joins Inkinen and the orchestra as soloist in Prokofiev’s fiendishly difficult and devilishly entertaining Piano Concerto No 3, while the concert opens with a work no less spectacular. Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s tribute to Beethoven Subito con forza is an explosive, jam-packed dance for orchestra that reveals the composer’s signature combination of structural severity and surface panache.