From Haydn to Schubert

Eerie depths, restless melancholy, wistful consolation – and harsh drama: In his most famous symphonic fragment, the so-called «Unfinished» in B minor, Franz Schubert formulated the basic features of Romanticism more compellingly than anyone else. Before the interval, Polish conductor Marzena Diakun devotes her Tonkunstler debut entirely to Viennese Classicism. The soloist, her fellow Pole Szymon Nehring, also a debutant, has chosen the Piano Concerto K. 271, the work with which Mozart raised this genre to a new, highly individualised level. For many years it bore the incorrect nickname «Jeunehomme», and it was not until 2003 that it was proven to have been written for a virtuoso from Strasbourg named Victoire Jenamy. What remains undisputed, however – due to the performance of the work in the university city where the composer was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1791 – is the addition «Oxford» to Joseph Haydn’s symphony with the number 92. In it, Haydn proves he knows how to entertain both scholarly and lay audiences.