Robin Ticciati Ludwig van Beethoven
Sergei Rachmaninoff

In the 1890s, Dvořák wrote multiple symphonic poems inspired by poems from the collection Kytice by the Czech folklorist and poet Karel Jaromír Erben. The Noon Witch from 1896 is about a well-known and scary figure in Slavic folk poetry. A mother tells her son to behave properly and threatens that otherwise, the Noon Witch will come to get him. But the son will not listen, and soon the creepy witch shows up. In the end, the witch kills the son and his mother, and the poem ends with the father's despair when he arrives home. 

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) grew up in the middle of a golden age where Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart set a new standard for what music could be. When Beethoven began to make a name for himself in Vienna in the 1790s, it was as a concert pianist and composer with Mozart as a role model. In 1795 he published his first works, a collection of piano trios. The year after saw the first piano sonatas, and it was at this time that Beethoven wrote his Piano Concerto No. 1 with himself in the demanding role of soloist. 

In the 1930s, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) had a summer house built near Lucerne in Switzerland. The summers there were both full of experiences and productivity. He started on Symphony No. 3 during the summer of 1935 and finished it the year after. The famous piano concertos and Symphony No. 2 had established Rachmaninoff as a composer with a flair for languishing melodies, strong emotions, and rich, romantic orchestral sound.

About Robin Ticciati

Robin Ticciati OBE has been Music Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin since 2017 and Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera since 2014. He was Principal Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 2009-18.

Born in London, Robin Ticciati is a violinist, pianist and percussionist by training. He was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain when, aged fifteen, he turned to conducting under the guidance of Sir Colin Davis and Sir Simon Rattle. He holds the position of ‘Sir Colin Davis Fellow of Conducting’ at the Royal Academy of Music. Robin was awarded an OBE for services to music in the Queen’s Birthday Honours (2019).

He is a regular guest conductor with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Guest-conducting highlights in recent years also include the Wiener Philharmoniker, Czech Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Staatskapelle Dresden.