István Várdai and Lawrence Foster
This concert will feature one of the most successful young Hungarian musicians playing the extremely virtuoso cello concerto that Haydn composed for the Esterházy’s court cellist, and which was only discovered in 1951. Unemployed and on a European job-seeking tour (unnecessarily, as it transpired), the other member of the Viennese triad, Mozart composed the impressive D-major symphony in Paris. The other symphony in the programme was written over a 110 years later. It was conceived in the high Romantic era, with flowing, broad, warm melodies, intimate lyricism and optimism, unlike Dvořák’s most often played Ninth. The concert will be conducted by a returning guest, the American Lawrence Foster, musical director of the Marseilles Opera and honorary conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon.