Igor Stravinsky. Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra
Gustav Mahler. Symphony No 9
Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre
Work on the piano parts in the Piano Concerto and in Les Noces roused the composer’s instrument in this instrument. And his highly successful appearances as a soloist in his own concerto, performed over forty times in Europe and America, also increased Stravinsky’s taste for piano performance. In spending many hours at the piano, he played Czerny’s etudes with the greatest pleasure, perfecting his pianism. Invitations to perform continued to come, and the composer decided to write a new concert work – yet again on the basis of his performing skills. Nadezhda Kulygina | Comparing his Ninth Symphony with Beethoven’s “eponymous” Ninth Symphony in D Minor, Mahler
said to his friends “It, too, is in D! But in Major key!” The composer
wrote it knowing that he was doomed: doctors had found an incurable
heart disease. Out of superstition, fearing that the Ninth – as with
Beethoven, Schubert and Bruckner – would be his last, Mahler didn’t
give his preceding symphony a number, calling it Das Lied von der Erde
– a symphony for tenor, contralto and orchestra to texts by Chinese
poets. It was impossible to cheat Fate: Mahler’s Ninth Symphony,
written one year after, confirmed the composer’s fears. Mahler left the
score of his subsequent Tenth Symphony unfinished, in sketches. This annotation includes extracts from texts by Inna Barsova |