With an impeccable execution, she earned standing ovation in both presentations
MOMENT. El Periódico de San Luis Potosí; Culture; May 17, 2018
San Luis Potosí, SLP. – As part of the Spring-Summer 2018 Concert Season of the San Luis Potosí Symphony Orchestra presented by the Ministry of Culture, last Friday, May 11 and Sunday, May 13, the Viennese pianist Hanna Bachmann shared for the first time her art in our city by performing the Third Piano Concerto in C minor, Op.37, by Ludwig van Beethoven, with refined technique and great musicality, which earned her the recognition of the audience in the two performances at the Teatro de la Paz.
Demonstrating why she has performed on numerous occasions at the Beethoven House in Bonn, at the Beethovenfest, as well as at the Beethoven@home festival and at the Beethoven-Campus, in Germany, as well as in her native Austria, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Slovakia, the Principality of Liechtenstein and Switzerland, Hanna Bachman showed great musicality, creativity and technical ability during the three movements that make up this Third Piano Concert (Allegro con brio, Adagio and Rondo), earning the public’s recognition with the standing ovation, which the pianist thanked by performing two pieces as encore in each of her presentations with the OSSLP.
The second part was no less brilliant, since the OSSLP, under the baton of its director, Mtro. José Miramontes Zapata, played the monumental Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 [of Johannes Brahms].
It should be noted that this program was integrated with two pieces gestated with a common axis: the authors’ admiration towards the creators who preceded them, and the innovation and evolution of the concert and the symphony, respectively, after their works. On the one hand, Beethoven’s fascination with Mozart made him state “we will never be able to create something like that!”, while he balanced himself marking the spellbound time when he heard a rehearsal of one of Mozart’s Piano Concertos. In 1803 he managed to create a work that, without going beyond the classical structures, gave greater importance to the melodic qualities of the solo instrument, taking advantage of the fact that at the end of the 18th century the piano record was extended, adding additional notes to the range of five octaves existing until then, so that Beethoven used for the first time the high note G in a concert. He also gave greater importance to the melodic qualities of the solo instrument, while using the different timbres of the orchestra, translating it as a great instrument, thus achieving a balance of sound with a new sensibility, giving way to the forced mould of the classic concert of Romanticism.
And on the other hand, Johannes Brahms’ statement to the German conductor Hermann Levi is well known: “You have no idea what it means to have a giant behind you” (referring to Beethoven). Although Beethoven was a character whom he greatly admired, he established in Brahms such a high standard that the young composer found his own creations as insignificant when compared with those of the genius of Bonn. Maybe that’s why it took him at least fourteen years to complete his First Symphony (the first sketches date from 1862 and the symphony was premiered on November 4, 1876).
However, Brahms creates one of the most amazing testimonies of all symphonic literature with his First Symphony. It is a tribute to Beethoven, and although he makes clear references to the works of the great composers that preceded him and builds his work in four movements, in the traditional way, Brahms imprints a mentality closer to the 20th century, which is why it got the nickname of the “Tenth Symphony” as it was considered by Hans von Bülow as the first work that deserved the name of Symphony after those of Beethoven. Von Bülow was a composer, pianist and one of the most famous German conductors of the 19th century, student of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, and then known by many others.
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