This concert features wonderful musical works by German, French, Russian and Czech composers, all played with different combinations of instruments. Johann Sebastian Bach composed many of his concerto works for a famous Leipzig coffee shop that also hosted concerts and its resident orchestra, manned by university students. No matter what instrument they are played on, they always prove to be masterpieces. Max Reger's 1915 serenade for three instruments is one of the composer's final works. Pavel Haas, a major figure of Czech national music who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944, a victim of the Holocaust, combined elements of folk music and jazz in his compositions. His wind quintet being played at the concert dates from 1929, the same year that Marcel Tournier - a composer and harpist best known for pioneering new ways to play that instrument - wrote his Suite, a piece employing five instruments to evoke different moods with a very French sensitivity. Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1 in D major is best known for its melancholy slow movement, which the composer developed out of a Russian folk song that he had heard being whistled by a painter or carpenter renovating his sister's house. When the work was performed at a concert being held in honour of Leo Tolstoy, the writer started sobbing.

Presented by: Hungarian National Philharmonic