The two masterpieces featured in Concerto Budapest's concert leading up to Christmas share many characteristics. Beethoven's close friends were puzzled as they watched the birth of the Ninth Symphony, and his pupil Carl Czerny, for example, was expressly opposed to employing a choir and vocal soloists in the composition. Tchaikovsky and his piano concerto were rejected by the artist to whom he had dedicated it, his friend Nikolai Rubinstein, who said, "The banalities must be eradicated and some unplayable parts made playable.” Neither Czerny nor Rubinstein proved correct, for in the end both works were performed in the form conceived by their unyielding authors and went on to achieve enormous and unflagging success to this day. While Beethoven's symphony starts out of nothingness, out of chaos, before reaching the ethereal loftiness of Schiller's Ode to Joy, Tchaikovsky's piano concerto progresses from dramatic hammer-pounding to the festive dance music of the finale, into which the Russian composer incorporated treatments of Ukrainian folk music. What could this be, if not an expression of the brotherhood of all the peoples of the world? And the message of Beethoven's music is made clear in the text: "Let all men be brothers.” One could wish for nothing more on the holiday in celebration of love.

Presented by: Concerto Budapest