Two Beethoven works that are heroic in tone and both bear the number three, together with a further festive collaboration between the firm Budapest favourite Khatia Buniatishvili, András Keller and Concerto Budapest – this time in the spirit of Brahms. The greater part of this programme marks the Beethoven bicentenary with the composer’s monumental compositions from the middle of the first decade of the nineteenth century. The opening work is the outstanding outcome of the successive revisions of Fidelio and tackles its chronic overture problem: the Leonore Overture No. 3, which compresses the totality of Beethoven’s only opera into just a quarter of an hour. A similarly intense and thrilling experience, but this time lasting nearly an hour, is promised by the Eroica, famously dedicated in its original form to Napoleon Bonaparte, as the concert’s closing work. Between these two pieces, we welcome to the stage the ever-astonishing Georgian-French musician Khatia Buniatishvili, a worthy soloist for Brahms’s Piano Concerto in B-flat major. As a major event in Hungary’s musical history, the public premiere of the concerto took place in Budapest in 1881 – with the composer himself at the piano.

Presented by: Concerto Budapest