Concert news: Han-na Chang at the Festival Hall

Lorin Maazel, the man who took the New York Phil to Pyongyang last year, has had a long association with music in London. It’s 50 years since he first conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra, and to celebrate he’s doing a series of three concerts which contain an “emotionally-charged trilogy of concertos” composed by Maazel himself. In a happy coincidence which links two concerts by outstanding Korean soloists, it was listening to Maazel’s Music for Cello and Orchestra (to be performed by Han-na Chang 장한나 on 7 April) which led the world famous flautist James Galway to commission Maazel to write a flute concerto for him (to be performed on 5 April as part of this series); and it was listening to James Galway which provided the early inspiration for Jasmine Choi as she started her musical journey which brought her to the Wigmore Hall earlier this week.

Details of the Maazel concert below:

Tuesday 7 April 2009, 7.30pm
Royal Festival Hall

Lorin Maazel Monaco fanfares
Lorin Maazel Music for Cello and Orchestra
Dimitry Shostakovich Symphony No.5 in D minor

Lorin Maazel conductor
Han-Na Chang cello

Shostakovich composed his Fifth Symphony in 1937 under Stalin’s Great Terror. A conscious attempt at rehabilitation after the official condemnation of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk one year earlier, Shostakovich re-established his credentials as a Soviet composer with a work that outwardly conformed to the Politburo’s dictum that ‘all aspects of music should be subordinated to melody and such melody should be clear and singable’. However, the irony of the optimistic tone does not go unnoticed.

Maazel’s Music for Cello and Orchestra (op 10) was commissioned by Mstislav Rostropovich, who premiered the work on May 12, 1996, with the Pittsburgh Symphony, under the composer’s direction. Monaco Fanfares was composed in 1993.

Han-na Chang, born in 1982, made her recording debut with Rostropovich in 1995, and has been a regular recording artist with EMI ever since.

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