Hallé Summer Concerts - Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (2.15pm)

Wagner Siegfried Idyll 18′
Osvaldo Golijov Last Round 14′
Beethoven Symphony No.7 36′

Tabita Berglund conductor 

Making a welcome return to the Hallé, Tabita Berglund is an outstanding young Norwegian conductor with a growing international reputation. The concert opens with the Siegfried Idyll, Wagner’s gift to his wife Cosima, named after their son. First performed on Christmas Day 1870 as a birthday surprise, the Idyll’s tender music enshrines their love. Playing trumpet in that memorable premiere was the Hallé’s future Music Director, Hans Richter.

Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round epitomises the description of his music in The New Yorker as having ‘rhythms that rock the body into motion and melodies that linger in the mind’. He conceived it as a sublimated tango dance, in revered memory of fellow Argentinian, Astor Piazzolla, ‘the last great Tango composer’.

It was Wagner who described Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as ‘the apotheosis of the dance’ with its ‘Bacchanalian power’. Overall, it’s an explosion of energy, through the dynamic of rhythm reimagined in a ground-breaking way.