NB: This concert will take place in the Great Hall, Cornerstone Building, Liverpool Hope University, 17 Shaw Street, Liverpool L6 1HP. Also please note Pre-concert talk at 6.45pm. Concert at 7.30pm.
Beethoven – Leonore Overture No.3
Saint-Saëns – Violin Concerto No.3
Brahms – Symphony No.3
Conductor: Sergej Bolkhovets
Violin: Sophie Rosa
Eyes down for all the threes! Dissatisfied with his original overture for the opera Fidelio, Beethoven ended up composing four versions. Leonore No.3 is one of them, and considered by many as the best and most dramatic. Of Saint-Saëns three concertos for violin, the last one is the most popular, and for good reason. Dedicated to the composer-virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, it combines technical fireworks with drama, melodic invention, and a beautifully serene second movement. Brahms wrote four symphonies but the renowned music critic Eduard Hanslick said that “the Third strikes me as being artistically the most perfect.” Full of the romantic drama you would expect from Brahms in the outer movements, the second movement shows Brahms’ more pastoral style and the third movement, instead of the rapid scherzo norm of the 19th-century, is an intensely lyrical Allegretto full of nostalgic yearning. For this concert, LMO welcome back the dream team of conductor Sergej Bolkhovets and violinist Sophie Rosa after their electrifying concert with LMO last season.
