The Hallé

Beethoven Overture: The Creatures of Prometheus 5’
Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 35′
Shostakovich Symphony No.5 46′

Beethoven’s exhilarating overture to his only ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus, starts the season and heralds Hallé debuts by two young Nordic artists. Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä may only be 23, but he’s already Chief Conductor Designate of the Oslo Philharmonic, while Víkingur Ólafsson has been described by the New York Times as ‘Iceland’s Glen Gould’. He plays Beethoven’s youthful, ambitious First Piano Concerto. After a savage, very public, dressing down by Stalin, Shostakovich responded with his Mahlerian Fifth Symphony. Superficially a traditional symphonic journey from tragedy to triumph, in reality it’s a work of subtle, undercover ironic defiance with hidden references known only to Shostakovich, as if he is saying ‘don’t you dare tell me what to write’.