Asia Tour
Klaus Mäkelä
Nobuyuki Tsujii Dmitri Shostakovich
Richard Strauss

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his fast-paced and energetic Festive Overture in 1947. It was commissioned for the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution, but the commission came in very late, and Shostakovich finished the piece in three days. 

Shostakovich’s second piano concerto was composed for the composers’s son, Maxim, who gave the work's first performance as part of his examination concert at the Moscow Conservatory in 1957. Although Shostakovich himself claimed that the concerto did not have any artistic merit, it became immediately popular, and has remained in the core orchestral repertoire for more than 60 years. 

In the 1890s, Richard Strauss (1864-1949) reached new heights as a conductor and composer. In 1989 he finished the symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben in Berlin, where he was employed as a conductor of the court opera. Strauss also had to deal with the masterpieces of the past - especially Beethoven's third symphony Eroica. Both works deal with the heroic and the hero's life; Eroica was originally intended to be dedicated to Napoleon. There are many indications that Ein Heldenleben is a kind of self-portrait in which Strauss describes himself, his wife, and his fiercest critics in music.