HPO: Petrushka

Stravinsky used the collage technique in his Petrushka, which showed that he was up to date with the times: at the same time, artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were using newspaper clippings as material for their works. Witold Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto begins in a striking way: the cellist plays the D note alone, monotonously, every second. Lutosławski’s own view of the situation resembles a description of the meditating mind: “I think of the D note as a moment of complete relaxation or even distraction. The performer abandons this state of mind as soon as something else starts happening and returns to it several times during the introduction.”