A. Nelsons, D. Trifonov & Wiener Philharmoniker

Andris Nelsons, Daniil Trifonov and the Wiener Philharmoniker perform Prokofiev and Shostakovich at the Salzburg Festival.

The Wiener Philharmoniker, who celebrate their 175th anniversary at this year’s Salzburg Festival, join forces with the Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons and Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov for a concert featuring works by Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. The concert will open with Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2, one of the most brilliant and virtuosic of his concertos for both soloist and orchestra – and one of the least recorded. On the piano Daniil Trifonov, Gramophone Artist of the Year 2016, will give his debut at the Salzburg Festival with the Wiener Philharmoniker. The piece is dedicated to Maximilian Schmidthof, a close friend of Prokofiev and fellow pianist, who died in 1913. Prokofiev was striving for greater musical depth in the concerto and the tragic events which surrounded the writing of the piece give it a rather heavy and ponderous feel.

The second part is dedicated to Shostakovich with Andris Nelsons, one of the outstanding interpreters of Dmitri Shostakovich of our time, conducting his Symphony No. 7 in C “Leningrad”. The work was written during the Germans’ siege of Leningrad, and has been extremely popular since it was premiered in 1942. Its use as wartime propaganda gave it legendary status among symphonies composed during World War II. Yet despite its supposed simplicity, and widespread publicity of the symphony as a symbol of resistance, it remains an enigmatic work that takes on new meanings and interpretations over the years.

A. Nelsons, D. Trifonov & Wiener Philharmoniker
A production of UNITEL and BR/Arte