The Bridgewater Hall - Alive with Music

BBC Philharmonic

Steven Osborne, piano-image copyright Ben Ealovega

Tickets: £10.00 - £31.50

  • Juanjo Mena conductor
  • Steven Osborne piano
  • Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4
  • Bruckner Symphony No. 7

Sometimes it's the quietest gestures that are the most revolutionary, and here we can celebrate in two extraordinary works the remarkable talent of Juanjo Mena.

For all the comments about Orpheus taming the Furies in the tense second movement, it's in the very opening of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto that its most anarchic gesture lies. The usual orchestral introduction is replaced by quietly repeated chords, heard alone on the piano - far more challenging of the soloist's musicianship than many a more thunderous opening, and demanding playing of a particular subtlety for which Steven Osborne is renowned.

To partner this, the symphony that truly put Bruckner on the map: his Seventh. This, too, has a quietly revolutionary beginning, with its glorious rising motif that seems to echo upwards into eternity. The commonest analogy in Bruckner is 'cathedrals of sound', but perhaps still more apt is the idea of music born of the open air, unbounded by mere architecture; that's what makes a Bruckner symphony such an uplifting journey and these days, it's easy to forget how hard he had to struggle for acceptance by the musical establishment. The Viennese critics were particularly harsh, dismissing him as the ‘most dangerous of today's musical innovators'.