Interview
Guy Braunstein and Semyon Bychkov in conversation with Terry Martin Works by Dmitri Shostakovich and Arnold Schoenberg with Semyon Bychkov and Guy Braunstein
For regular concert goers to Berlin’s Philharmonie he was a well-known face for many years: Guy Braunstein, who was the orchestra’s 1st concertmaster from 2000 to 2013. Here he is the soloist in Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, a work characterised by Jewish folk music, with its shifts between cheerfulness and anguish. Semyon Bychkov also conducts Arnold Schoenberg’s expressive classic Verklärte Nacht.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto is one of the composer’s most concentrated works, strictly structured and of controlled expression. Its particular flavour is won through its similarities to Jewish folk music, with its shifts between cheerfulness and anguish. Folk influences can also be found in the first item on the evening’s programme, the Symphonie d’instruments à vent from Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Russian phase’, which also produced the ballets Petrushka, The Firebird and Le Sacre du printemps.
The second item is Arnold Schoenberg’s tone poem Verklärte Nacht. The composer himself reported that, at the time of its first performance, it seemed to the audience “as if an orchestra playing Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde had got confused and their playing had fallen apart.” Today, on the other hand, the work is widely regarded as one of the most powerful masterpieces of the modern age.
Berliner Philharmoniker
Semyon Bychkov
Guy Braunstein
© 2009 Berlin Phil Media GmbH
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