DELYANA LAZAROVA, Conductor 

ALEXANDRA DOVGAN, Piano

 

Clara Schumann: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 7

Emilie Mayer: Symphony No. 4 in B minor

Robert Schumann: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 54

 

“We understand music as a direct language of passion,” say members of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, who will appear in the Saturday at Lisinski concert series under the baton of the Swiss-educated Bulgarian conductor Delyana Lazarova. Joining them in two concertos on that same evening will be the very young yet already extremely successful Russian pianist Alexandra Dovgan, who will have the unusual opportunity to perform the piano concertos of the married couple Clara and Robert Schumann.

 

First, they will play the older concerto, that by Clara Schumann, who was also very young when she composed and premiered it – under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn. She was not deterred by the then prevailing belief “that women could not become composers.”

 

Alexandra Dovgan will also perform Robert Schumann's only piano concerto, which music critic Joan Chissell referred to as "a test of a musician rather than a technician", because virtuosity was not Schumann's top priority.

 

The Romantic triptych of this programme is completed by the Fourth Symphony by the lesser-known 19th-century German composer Emilie Mayer, who initially wrote under the influence of Viennese classical composers and then reached for elements of Romanticism. She composed as many as eight symphonies, as well as numerous chamber works, many of which have not yet been published.

 

A quote from the Basel Chamber Orchestra's website can also serve as the final announcement of the Zagreb concert: "We want listeners to step away from everyday life, to stir their emotions and thoughts."