NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Frank Peter Zimmermann / Alan Gilbert

Make Peace with Fate? – Mazzoli's 'Orpheus Undone' In the myth, fate is irreversible: Orpheus had one last chance to rescue his beloved Eurydice from the underworld, but failed because he looked back at her. It is all the more difficult to come to terms with fate after such a missed opportunity. In her 2022 premiere work 'Orpheus Undone,' NDR Residenzkünstlerin Missy Mazzoli deals precisely with this emotional dilemma: She wrote the music from the experience that in moments of shock or trauma, different time speeds overlap – and that one would like to undo such moments (»undone«)… A bit more calmly, the British composer William Walton took his personal shock moment during a stay in the Italian Ravello in 1938: When the poor man was stung by a tarantula there, the unpleasant experience became a welcome inspiration for his Violin Concerto. Promptly, he inserted a »remarkably crazy« tarantella passage into the highly virtuosic Scherzo of the piece… Otherwise, this rarely performed work here is completely serious, indeed, »one of the best violin concertos ever written,« as the conductor of the premiere, through the dedicatee Jascha Heifetz, raved. Now, the »Heifetz of our time,« exceptional violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann, takes on this great discovery. To conclude the program, chief conductor Alan Gilbert conducts the well-known: Once, Mozart-f researcher Alfred Einstein described the three last symphonies of Mozart as »Appeals to Eternity.« Why the composer took on these demanding works three years before his death is unclear. He certainly did not follow a specific commission. Probably, he simply wanted to set a monument to his abilities for posterity – and what a monument! The finale of the C major Symphony No. 41 was declared not long after Mozart's death as the »Triumph of the New Music«. How effortlessly Mozart achieved this here, making the heavy seem light in an unprecedented way, is self-evident.