Rachmaninow & Hindemith im Wiener Musikverein

About the Event

Hardly any other conductor has been as closely associated with the Tonkünstler Orchestra for as long as Hans Graf: since his debut in 1980, the Austrian, who is celebrated from the USA to the Far East, has enjoyed working with them time and again. Sergei Rachmaninoff, who left Russia in the wake of the 1917 revolution, was denied such a return to his beloved homeland at the time: In exile in the USA, he suffered greatly from this separation and also processed this melancholy in his music – for example in his large‐scale Third Symphony, which wonderfully evokes late Romantic melos without denying its classical roots. The juxtaposition with the only completed movement of Rachmaninoff's Youth Symphony, which he had written 44 years earlier as a student, is also moving, as is the entire program, a heartfelt wish of Hans Graf. Only a few years younger than Rachmaninoff's Third is Paul Hindemith's Violin Concerto, composed in 1939 – Hindemith was also an emigrant against his will after the Nazis branded him a “cultural Bolshevik.” Austrian‐Chinese violinist Ziyu He, born in 1999, makes his debut as a musician with this gripping work, which combines longing, virtuosity, and grandeur.

Wiener Musikverein

The Wiener Musikverein is one of the world's great concert halls. The home of the Vienna Philarmonic Orchestra and the centre of Viennese musical life, the building was opened in 1870 as a part of an ambitious plan to create an elegant cultural boulevard along the Ringstrasse. Designed in the Neo‐Classical style to resemble an Ancient Greek temple, the Great Hall of the Musikverein is deemed to be one of the best music halls in the world thanks to its impeccable acoustics.
In 2004 four new halls were added to the building. The Austrian architect Wilhelm Holzbauer recognised the aesthetic importance of the existing building and sought out ways to echo the style in a modern language of form. Each of the four New Halls focuses on a different material — glass, metal, stone, and wood.