The Hallé

Sheffield International Concert Season 2023/24

Oval Hall | Sheffield City Hall

Pre-Concert Talk 6pm 

Anja Bihlmaier conductor

Maxim Rysanov viola

 

Beethoven Leonora Overture No.3 14’

Bartók Viola Concerto 20’

Unsuk Chin subito con forza 5’

Beethoven Symphony No.4 34’

 

From Germany, Anja Bihlmaier is Chief Conductor of the renowned Residentie Orkest, The Hague, and makes her much-anticipated debut with the Hallé tonight.

 

Central to this concert is Beethoven, with his Leonora Overture No.3, a powerful symphonic distillation of his opera, Fidelio, opening the concert. Commissioned to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, the hugely distinguished South Korean composer Unsuk Chin embedded her short, Beethoven-inspired subito con forza with various sly references to several of his works.

 

Performed here by the Hallé, as it was at its successful UK premiere as part of the 2021 BBC Proms, it is the perfect curtain raiser to the Master’s sunny, genial Fourth Symphony. Described in Gramophone as “a prince among viola players”, Ukrainian violist Maxim Rysanov appears with the Hallé for the first time playing Bartók’s Viola Concerto, a work that inhabits the gorgeously mellow sound world of his later music.