Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin: Franz Schmidt & Béla Bartók mit Christian Tetzlaff

Music for the afterlife

A trumpet all alone opens the almost 50-minute Symphony No. 4 in C major by Franz Schmidt. The Viennese musician, a member of the Vienna Philharmonic under the aegis of Gustav Mahler, had to mourn the loss of his daughter, who had died after the birth of her first child. Gustav Mahler had also once had to bury a daughter. And he too had one of his symphonies, the one that has been associated with fate since Beethoven, begin with a trumpet solo: Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor.

As much as Schmidt appreciated Mahler as a conductor (an "earthquake of unheard-of intensity"), he was equally critical of Mahler's symphonies. He contrasted his worldview dramas with an imploding inner view, music that was as controlled as it was contemplative. This can be at least as moving as Mahler's! Both succeeded in taking the symphony far beyond the autobiographical moment into the 20th century - something that Arnold Schoenberg, for example, considered impossible. The music world celebrates Schönberg's 150th birthday in 2024. Schmidt was born in the same year, 1874!

Tetzlaff with Bartók

"One would have to get away from here, away from the neighborhood of that polluted country, far away..." It would not be long before this consideration by Béla Bartók became an unavoidable necessity: in 1940, he emigrated to the USA with his wife. The Violin Concerto No. 2 was one of the last works Bartók composed in Hungary in 1937/1938. More than any other work by Bartók, the Violin Concerto reveals a chapter of dramatic contemporary history and personal biography at the same time. Christian Tetzlaff, one of the great expressive artists on the violin of our time, will delight audiences in his sixth concert with the RSB.