Due to reasons beyond the Warsaw Philharmonic, Ken-David Masur will not perform in concerts on 18 and 19 March 2022. Maciej Tomasiewicz will replace him and conduct the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert program and the soloist remain unchanged.

Beethoven’s Seventh is one of his works that has attracted most commentary – in contrast to the programme Sixth or the Ninth, which is expressed through text, the author himself did not explain his conceptual vision for the Seventh, and yet the music with its astonishing power of expression seems to suggest his ideas very clearly. Thus, some have described the work as an “apotheosis of dance” (Wagner) and a tribute paid to the elements; others have found references to the great works of literature and detected inspiration from antiquity… The symphony does not reveal its secrets directly, and yet it has always delighted and moved listeners through its emotive power – the spontaneous, unbridled joy of the first and last movements and the profound nostalgia of the elegiac Allegretto. It was this movement that particularly delighted the audience at its premiere (it received an encore) and contributed to the symphony’s huge appeal. Public acclaim did not come immediately, however – while in Vienna the work was praised, outside the imperial capital it was received less enthusiastically, with German critics in particular sparing no malice. It was not until late Romanticism that the significance of this truly epoch-making contribution to the genre was fully grasped.

The eminent composer and organist Joseph Jongen is well-known especially in his native Belgium; however, his colourful and striking Symphony Concertante for organ and orchestra has also been performed quite frequently outside his homeland. The piece was commissioned by the American businessman Rodman Wanamaker, the owner of a chain of department stores, in 1926 when work on the extension of the great organ located (to this day) in one of those stores in Philadelphia, was completed. The commission inspired the composer to create a work that would exploit the possibilities of the “symphonic organ” as comprehensively as possible and confront its sound with a large orchestra. Delighted with the piece, Jongen’s compatriot and friend, the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, called it “a work essentially for two orchestras”, since the two sound components are placed on an equal footing here.