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Following his successful debut with our orchestra in Bayreuth, Pablo Heras-Casado is now making his first appearance in Bamberg. The program includes John Adams' "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" from 1986, a vibrant, percussive work that is ideal for a thrilling chase. Adams explained that he wanted to convey a feeling of "being taken for a ride in a fantastic sports car, and at the end you wish you had never gotten in." However, we are happy to embark on this fast-paced musical journey – and then to disembark, in order to play the next piece together with Anna Vinnitskaya: a piano concerto that was premiered in 1932, in which she only uses one hand to play the black and white keys. Maurice Ravel composed it at the request of the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had been wounded in the First World War and, after that, wrote music history with only one arm. Many composers dedicated a work to him for the left hand – and Ravel's is full of stylistic variations: it was once described as "a tragic outburst" and ends with a finale full of overflowing jazz acrobatics. As a young artist, Gustav Mahler left an astonishing first impression with his symphony in 1888, which begins almost identically to Beethoven's Fourth – which he considered a great role model. The piece, titled "Titan" after the novel by Jean Paul, is an autobiography in sound, created in just a few weeks. In a letter, the composer's excitement and the forceful character of the music are evident: Mahler speaks of a "whirlwind of life."
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