Palace Concerts

Artists

Orquesta Ciudad de Granada

Klaus Mäkelä, conductor

Programme

Jörg Widmann (1973)

Con Brio (2008)

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

Divertimento, Sz. 113 (1939)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 (1811)

An Apotheosis of Dance

The second appearance of the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada at the Festival will be under the baton of the dazzling young Finnish talent Klaus Mäkelä, for a program ending with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, a work so marked by its rhythmic force that Wagner, who is said to have danced to it once while Liszt played it on the piano, considered it an “apotheosis of dance.” Coherently, the concert opens with one of Jörg Widman’s most popular pieces, Con brio, written precisely to pair it with a performance of the Seventh. In between them, a work that Bartók composed in 1939, before leaving for his American exile, commissioned by one of his main benefactors, the conductor Paul Sacher, and which is strongly anchored in the classical tradition of divertimento. Some joyful music for this program, a joie de vivre as necessary as it is cathartic.