Garrick Ohlsson Performs Beethoven
The Houston Symphony Orchestra welcomes special guest conductor Eno de Waart, who'll be taking a little time off from his duties as Music Director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to lead a rousing program of Beethoven and Elgar this winter. The ensemble will also host the prodigious talents of ivory-tickling virtuoso Garrick Ohlsson, the foremost Mozart and Beethoven instrumental interpreter in America whose masterful interpretations and technical prowess has earned him solo spots with many of the world's leading orchestras.
The program begins with Beethoven's celebrated Piano Concerto No. 3, a landmark work that helped to usher in the Romantic era and was directly inspired by Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, strengthening an artistic link and admiration between the two classical giants. Legend has it Beethoven himself performed the solo when it debuted in 1800 because he ran out of time to transcribe the piano part! The evening comes to a close with Elgar's First Symphony, an astonishing orchestral whirlwind that ends in a glorious, triumphant march.