Göteborgs Symfoniker
Available until 23 May 2024

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 4

Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder is one of the most legendary soloists of our time and has been praised for his interpretations of Beethoven. He has devoted his nearly 60-year career to interpreting the classical repertoire and recorded all of Mozart’s major piano works as well as all of Beethoven’s sonatas and piano concertos.

The 43-year-old conductor Cristian Măcelaru is music director of the French National Orchestra (Orchester National de France) since 2020. He has been a guest of Swedish orchestras on several occasions and is Artistic Director of the Enescu Festival in Bucharest, where the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra was a guest in 2023.


Although in Vienna Beethoven became known primarily as a pianist, and composed many works in which he could show off, six years elapsed between the third (1800) and fourth piano concerto (1806). These years were filled with hard work and shattering personal experiences. He was very worried about his increasingly deteriorating hearing, and harbored doubts about his nephew’s development.

His despair resulted in suicidal thoughts, and in the famous will he wrote in his residence in Heiligenstadt, where he takes his leave of life. When the crisis was overcome, he decided in 1802 to “consecrate my life and my music to humanity”. He realized that his talent was unique, and that he had to develop it. During these years he wrote the fourth and fifth symphonies, the second version of the opera Fidelio, the Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas, the Rasumovsky quartets and much else that pushed his creation forward. As early as 1804, he had begun sketching the fourth piano concerto, and at the beginning of 1806 serious work began…

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Programme


Participants

Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra

Cristian Macelaru conductor

Rudolf Buchbinder piano