In the third and penultimate concert of the season, Maestro Daniele Giorgi, artistic and musical director of I Solisti di Pavia and the Orchestra Leonore, takes to the podium for the first time with the Symphony Orchestra of the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana, presenting a Romantic programme with a mid-20th-century American influence.
The concert opens with Johannes Brahms’ Tragic Overture, a highly incisive symphonic piece characterised from the very first notes by a powerful rhythmic energy. Next comes Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto (1947–1948), commissioned by the legendary ‘King of Swing’ Benny Goodman, with soloist Gil Shalev, a talented clarinettist and student on the Master of Arts in Specialised Music Performance programme.
The evening concludes with Brahms’s famous Second Symphony, a masterpiece composed prior to the Tragic Overture, deeply imbued with joy and peace, which Brahms himself had dubbed “a small, cheerful and innocent symphony” and had advised the Viennese orchestra members: “For a month beforehand, play nothing but Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner; only then will you understand its tender cheerfulness”.