The soloist for the evening is Vadim Gluzman, a celebrated star of the major concert halls and orchestras of the international music scene. Gluzman will perform Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major, one of the most popular and technically most challenging violin concertos in the history of music.
Schubert never actually wrote a Rosamunde overture: his overture for the The Magic Harp fairy-tale opera, written in 1820, was first linked by a publisher to the incidental music for Rosamunde nearly 30 years after the composer's death. The Magic Harp/Rosamunde overture begins in a gloomy C minor opening, which is followed by a liberated C major Allegro. There is no lack of luxuriously orchestrated and alluring melodies: the overture, after freeing itself from its connection to the two unsuccessful theatrical productions, gained a deserved place among Schubert's most popular compositions as a stand-alone piece.
Tchaikovsky's violin concerto was composed in Clarens in Switzerland in the spring of 1878, and published with a dedication to Leopold Auer. Auer, however, found certain parts of the violin solo impracticable. The March 1879 date for the première was cancelled, and word spread that Tchaikovsky's violin concerto was unplayable. In the end, the Russian Adolph Brodsky performed the première in Vienna in 1881, with János Richter conducting, and a new version of the piece was published featuring Brodsky's recommendation for the solo.
The music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote the following on Brahms's Symphony No. 2 in D major, which premiered in 1877: 'The blood of Mozart flows through his veins... incontrovertible evidence that it is still possible to write symphonies - though naturally not everyone is capable of doing so.'

Presented by: Hungarian National Philharmonic