Interview
Murray Perahia in conversation with Sarah Willis Murray Perahia with works by Mozart and Schubert
Murray Perahia is one of the great pianists of our time, and has often appeared with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In this concert, he makes his debut with the Philharmoniker as a conductor where in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 he, of course, is also the soloist. The second part of the concert sees Franz Schubert’s rarely performed Grand Duo in the arrangement for orchestra by Joseph Joachim.
In the 2013/14 season, Murray Perahia was the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Pianist in Residence, the high-point of a 35-year collaboration between the American pianist and the orchestra dating back to 1977, when they performed Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto under the baton of Riccardo Muti.
Here the musician again chose a work by Mozart, his last piano concerto, K 595 in B flat, a work that demonstrates the composer’s unsurpassed mastery of the genre. Eschewing all external effects, the work strikes a tone of simplicity and optimism as well as intimacy. The songlike theme of the rondo became famous when Mozart used it as the melody of his lied Komm, lieber Mai not long thereafter.
The Grand Duo composed by Schubert as a sonata for piano fourhands, performed in an orchestrated version by the great violinist, composer and friend of Brahms, Joseph Joachim, who detected in Schubert’s original a “veiled symphony”. At this concert the Berliner Philharmoniker and Murray Perahia offer a rare opportunity to hear this beautiful work.
Berliner Philharmoniker
Murray Perahia
© 2013 Berlin Phil Media GmbH
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