Concert information
Info
While the Napoleonic Wars raged, Ludwig van Beethoven composed one of his most radiant works: the Fifth Piano Concerto. With its heroic, optimistic character, it faces the challenges of the time, yet also transports the listener with transcendent melodies to better worlds. Víkingur Ólafsson is the soloist. Semyon Bychkov then conducts Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, composed in the shadow of Stalinist terror. At first glance monumental and triumphant, it reveals an ironic double meaning – a subversive work that feigns jubilation while simultaneously undermining it.
Artists
Berliner Philharmoniker
Semyon Bychkov conductor
Víkingur Ólafsson piano
Programme
Ludwig van Beethoven
Coriolan Overture in C minor, op. 62
Ludwig van Beethoven
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in E flat major, op. 73
Víkingur Ólafsson piano
Interval
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 5 D minor, op. 47
Additional information
Duration ca. 2 hours and 10 minutes (incl. 20 minutes interval)
Dates and tickets
Main Auditorium
27 to 86 €
Introduction
19:15
with Frederik Hanssen
Series L: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Main Auditorium
27 to 86 €
Introduction
19:15
with Frederik Hanssen
Series D: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Main Auditorium
27 to 86 €
Introduction
18:15
with Frederik Hanssen
Series B: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Background
Lightning-fast keyboard wizardry
Ludwig van Beethoven the pianist
Ludwig van Beethoven was a piano prodigy; he enjoyed the greatest successes of his early career as a pianist. Because of this, he composed mainly for himself. However, as his hearing deteriorated, this changed.
Biography
Semyon Bychkov
In 1985, Semyon Bychkov stepped in at short notice for the indisposed Riccardo Muti, giving a highly acclaimed debut at the helm of the Berliner Philharmoniker that marked his international breakthrough. Since then, the Russian-born conductor – who emigrated to the United States in 1975 and became an American citizen in 1983 – has been a regular guest with the orchestra. Semyon Bychkov is especially admired for his interpretations of Russian repertoire and of the Austro-German symphonic tradition from Brahms to Mahler. Of Russian music, he has said: “Not all music composed in Russia is particularly central to my life. Only the greatest of it really interests me, so of course I think of Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Rachmaninov, and, naturally, Shostakovich.”
Semyon Bychkov studied with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory and won the Rachmaninov Conducting Competition in 1973. He later continued his training in Vienna, Moscow and the United States, where Leonard Bernstein became an important artistic influence. He has served as chief conductor of the Orchestre de Paris, the Semperoper Dresden and the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, and has enjoyed a close association with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, ++Musical America++ named him “Conductor of the Year”. He is currently music director and chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.
Víkingur Ólafsson
The Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has become one of the most distinctive musical voices of his generation. Gramophone named him Artist of the Year in 2019; further honours include the 2022 Rolf Schock Prize, two Opus Klassik awards for solo recording and a Grammy Award in 2025 for his recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. His wide-ranging discography includes music by Philip Glass, Claude Debussy, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach.
A graduate of the Juilliard School in New York, Víkingur Ólafsson performs regularly with orchestras including the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Czech Philharmonic. He made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in December 2022 as soloist in John Adams’s Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?
Alongside his work as a performer, Ólafsson is also known for his ability to communicate music to broad audiences through radio and television projects. During the coronavirus lockdown, he served as Artist in Residence for the BBC’s classical music programming, appearing for three months on Front Row from Reykjavík’s empty Harpa Concert Hall and introducing audiences around the world to music especially close to him.
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