Thomas Adès | Prokofiev | Schubert at The Bridgewater Hall
Will Fulford-Jones
Thomas Adès – Three Studies from Couperin (14’)
Prokofiev – Violin Concerto No. 1 (21’)
Schubert – Symphony No. 9, ‘Great C major’ (48’)
So much of Franz Schubert’s later music seems to give off the impression that the composer knew he wouldn’t be long for this world. Little known during his life, the Austrian composer died in 1828 at the age of just 31 (and was buried next to his hero, Ludwig van Beethoven). As evidenced by works such as his towering Ninth Symphony, nicknamed the ‘Great’, he fulfilled much of his early promise, but he surely had plenty more to give when typhoid prematurely cut him down. The concert opens with a work that could hardly be more different in size and scale: Three Studies from Couperin, Thomas Adès’s elegant 21st-century homage to the French Baroque master. And in between, a landmark concerto from an era even more turbulent than the one through which we’re currently living: Alina Pogostkina is the soloist in Prokofiev’s edgy yet romantic First Violin Concerto, composed against the turbulent backdrop of the Russian Revolution. The conductor is Clemens Schuldt, who made a tremendous impression on his Bridgewater Hall debut with the BBC Philharmonic in April 2018.
Alina Pogostkina – violin
Clemens Schuldt – conductor
