Programme:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 23 in A Major K 488
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor

Cast:
Daejin Kim – piano and Conductor
Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava

This performance of the popular Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 will be a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the once-usual practice of conducting the orchestra from a keyboard instrument. Just like in lots of other compositions, feelings of doubt and melancholy may sneak into one’s mind after the first and especially the second movement. But then they immediately disappear with the influx of enthusiasm and joy in the final Rondo. The Second Symphony by Sergei Rachmaninoff is one of the longest symphonies ever to be created by a Russian composer, and it was very special to its author: at the time of its composition, he achieved his biggest successes as a conductor. However, it was success in composing that he particularly longed for but it would not come. Due to the failure of his first symphony 10 years earlier, he had been suffering from depression, writer’s block and low artistic self-confidence, and even the success of his Second Piano concerto did not help. With the use of hypnosis, he finally managed to overcome feelings of hopelessness and melancholy, and after the triumph of the ambitious Second Symphony in February 1908 in St. Petersburg, he recovered and again became an active composer.