Strawinski: Feuervogel

The eternal human dream of flight, the frontiers of technology, youthful overconfidence:  the legend of Icarus, who dons artificial wings to take to the skies but then falls after flying too close to the sun and melting the wax that holds them on, still has the power to move all of us – including Lera Auerbach, although admittedly she only gave her work the title «Icarus» after finishing the composition. Our path takes us from Greek myth to Russian folk tales and Igor Stravinsky’s suite from «The Firebird», in which a single magic feather from the titular creature plays an important role throughout the ballet. In between, Sergey Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto begins with a weightlessly floating cantilena, going on to strike capricious sparks worthy of a firebird. There follows the clever musical argumentation of Samuel Barber’s «Second Essay», originally premiered by Bruno Walter in New York – at which point this glittering programme that sees the Tonkunstler debuts of Japanese-Canadian violinist Karen Gomyo and Russian-American conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya is complete.