Philharmonia Orchestra
Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen
Program:
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor ('Fate'), Op. 67
Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43
The story of this orchestra assembled not longer after World War Two primarily for the purpose of performing in the recording studio is a thrilling one. And no wonder, either, because it was established by EMI's legendary producer Walter Legge. Afterwards, of course, things did not go quite as planned: the orchestra became one of the most famous in the world in concert halls as well (with no little credit for this due to its first music director, Otto Klemperer). The one who will be at its helm at Müpa Budapest is one of the best in the world today: the innovation-minded Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, an illustrious representative of the renowned northern school of conducting.
Legge, who was also the husband of epochal soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, founded the Philharmonia Orchestra in London in the autumn of 1945. The list of luminaries who conducted the orchestra in those early years is enough to make one's head spin: Toscanini, Richard Strauss, Furtwängler, von Karajan. After the latter left to head the Berlin Philharmonic, Otto Klemperer became the orchestra's leader - and his name was virtually synonymous with it for nearly a decade and a half, from 1959 to 1973. Since then, the Philharmonia Orchestra has remained one of the world's most important symphonic ensembles, one that has played under the batons of such refined and skilled musicians as Riccardo Muti, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Christoph von Dohnányi. Today's music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, a product of the renowned school of Jorma Panula, has been conducting the ensemble for twelve years and is bidding it farewell this season. As a northern musician, it is no surprise that, along with Beethoven's classic Fifth Symphony to represent the core repertoire, he will also be conducting some Finnish music in the form of Sibelius's Symphony No. 2, a work whose engrossing emotional world makes it one of the most popular and powerful compositions in the composer's oeuvre.
