Beethoven 200: Leonskaja / Berecz / Concerto Winds

Concerto Budapest is dedicating this concert to Beethoven, the musical titan who, in this anniversary year of his death 200 year ago, defines the character of the entire season. The featured soloists are Elisabeth Leonskaja, the ‘grande dame’ of the piano and her young colleague Mihály Berecz. The 1796 quintet for piano and winds in E-flat major is one of the composer’s most popular early chamber music works and took inspiration from Mozart’s own work using the same instruments and in the same key.

It actually resembles a chamber piano concerto, as it is the piano that dominates, accompanied by a rich sound from the four wind instruments – here played by the Concerto Winds, a chamber music ensemble composed of artists from the Concerto Budapest symphony orchestra.

The Violin Sonata No. 9, one of the composer’s most significant and difficult, is a three-movement chamber work renowned for its overwhelming emotional power and groundbreaking, almost concerto-like, style. Although known as the Kreutzer Sonata after its dedicatee, Rodolphe Kreutzer, it is unlikely that the French violinist ever played the piece.