November 9, 2024 | Zaryadye Concert Hall
Soloist – Philipp Kopachevsky (piano)
Conductor – Arsenty Tkachenko
Chopin. Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra in F minor, Op. 21
Rott. Symphony No. 1 in E major
On November 9, the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia will give a concert in the Zaryadye Hall, which will start the series of events dedicated to the 200th birthday anniversary of Austrian composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), one of the great symphonists of the later Romanticism. On this night under the baton of Arsenty Tkachenko there will be performed the First Symphony by Hans Rott (1858-1884), a Bruckner pupil and student of the Vienna Conservatory, whose life was tragically ended at the threshold of great achievements.
At the Conservatory, which Hans Rott graduated in 1878, his teacher in composition was Franz Krenn (who also taught Gustaw Mahler, Rott's close friend and roommate) while with Bruckner he studied organ and improvisation. However, Bruckner's lectures on music theory meant to him (as also to Mahler) much more. Bruckner himself highly appreciated Rott's talent and prophesied a great future for him.
Rott submitted the first movement of his future First Symphony as a graduation exam work (the second stage of the exam was in the form of contest), however, despite Bruckner's active support, he got no prize at all. After completing the Symphony two years later in July 1880, he showed it to conductor Hans Richter and Johannes Brahms, but the former refused to perform it because of his busy calendar, while the latter disliked the score altogether and reacted in harsh words. Two weeks later Rott had a terrible fit of brain disorder and was committed to a mental hospital. He died there in 1884 being only 25 years old.
Not a single work by Rott was published during his life, and his name was forgotten until the 1970s when British musicologist (a Mahler specialist) Paul Banks found the manuscript of the Symphony in E major in the Austrian National Library. He tried hard to give it a concert life and published several articles about Rott. At last, on March 4, 1989, the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra premiered it with conductor Gerhard Samuel. The “Novaya Rossia” State Symphony Orchestra directed by Johannes Wildner first performed it in Russia in December 2005.
Only at the turn of the 21st century, the obvious significance and modern findings of the First Symphony by Hans Rott got appreciated as a link between the music worlds of Bruckner and Mahler. In 2002 the Hans Rott International Society was founded, his music is being played and recorded more actively, there exist over ten recordings of the First Symphony. Mahler's opinion on the Symphony is now widely cited: 'What music has lost in him cannot be estimated. Such is the height to which his genius soars in Symphony in E major, which he wrote as 20-year-old youth and makes him … the Founder of the New Symphony as I see it'.
The NPR's program will also include Piano Concerto No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin, the Polish classic called “a poet of piano” by his contemporaries. The composer wrote that the music of his Concertos reflected his admiration for operas by Vincenzo Bellini. The structure of Concerto No. 2 was influenced by Chopin's tender feelings towards Polish singer Konstancja Gładkowska. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, highly praising Chopin’s Concertos, remarked that they demanded from a pianist 'softness and fineness of touch, lyricism, taste and graciousness in details'. All these qualities will be featured by Philipp Kopachevsky, awards winner of international competitions, who was invited several years ago by the NHK Corporation (Japan) to make a CD recording with Chopin's works.