Haydn - Mario Brunello

In 1785, the Parisian concert organizer Concert de la Loge Olympique commissioned Haydn to compose six symphonies – including No. 82 – for its orchestra. “At home,” Haydn did not have access to a “sound machine” of such proportions, which opened up entirely new possibilities of orchestration for him.

“I consider it my moral duty to write about war and the horror that has descended upon humanity,” declared the Warsaw-born composer Mieczysław Weinberg in 1919 – one of the great unknown figures of the 20th century. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he fled to Minsk; following the invasion of the Soviet Union, he ended up in Tashkent before Shostakovich brought him to Moscow.

In 1948, his father-in-law, the actor Solomon Michoels, was murdered by the Soviet secret police as a result of antisemitic smear campaigns. That same year, Weinberg wrote the Concertino for Cello and hid the score away in a drawer. In 1953, he himself was arrested on charges of being a “Jewish conspirator.” He was released only after Stalin’s death.

In the autumn of 1850, Schumann completed the cello concerto, which he called “Concertstück.” Until 1860, however, no one was willing to perform this highly demanding concerto. Today it is part of the standard repertoire and is among the favorite works of cellists.