Denis Kozhukhin plays Beethoven

Two classics of the orchestral repertoire contrast with a heartfelt recent work by our Featured Composer Gabriela Ortiz.

The story goes that Beethoven’s fifth Piano Concerto got its nickname from a comment by an officer in Napoleon’s army, who attended one of the first performances and declared it ‘an Emperor of a concerto’. It gives soloist Denis Kozhukhin the opportunity to display the different facets of his skill, from the rule-breaking creativity of the first movement, through the serenity of the second, to the dancing virtuosity of the finale.

Touring Scotland, Mendelssohn wrote to his family of a visit to the ruined Holyrood Palace, erstwhile home of Mary Queen of Scots: ‘I believe I found today in the old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.’ There are echoes of lively Scottish folk dances in two of the four movements, and for many listeners the first movement evokes wild Scottish landscapes.

In Gabriela Ortiz’s Tzam, dedicated to the memory of three of her musical mentors, trumpets call interlocking fanfares across the orchestra, alternating with gently bubbling flutes and hushed, elegiac strings. “This piece has many different atmospheres,” says Ortiz, “like swimming in an ocean with each wave bringing another harmony, another colour, another sonic quality.”