Beethoven, Cottis & Biss
with the NAC Orchestra
https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/36126
In-person event
Conductor Jessica Cottis leads guest pianist Jonathan Biss and the NAC Orchestra for two performances of a Beethoven classic opuses with a contemporary twist. Composer Sally Beamish’s wonderful City Stanzas answers Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with her own modern musical vision. Prokofiev said his tender, haunting Fifth Symphony glorified freedom and the purity of the human spirit—but under Stalin, what else could he say? Powerhouse conductor Jessica...
Southam Hall,1 Elgin Street,Ottawa,Canada
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- LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1
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SALLY BEAMISH City Stanzas (Piano Concerto No. 3)
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Sergei Prokofiev Symphony No. 5
- In-person event
- Bilingual
- ≈ 2 hours · With intermission
- Conductor Jessica Cottis leads guest pianist Jonathan Biss and the NAC Orchestra for two performances of a Beethoven classic opuses with a contemporary twist.
- Composer Sally Beamish’s wonderful City Stanzas answers Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with her own modern musical vision.
- Prokofiev said his tender, haunting Fifth Symphony glorified freedom and the purity of the human spirit—but under Stalin, what else could he say?
Powerhouse conductor Jessica Cottis inspires orchestras to new heights with her magnetism and energy. She has led some of the finest orchestras in the world, from London to Sydney to LA to Singapore. The NAC Orchestra is delighted to welcome her for these performances celebrating the fevered genius of Ludwig van Beethoven, who wrote the finale for his Piano Concerto No. 1 (which, confusingly, was not the first one he wrote) just two days before its premiere.
Beethoven dedicated the concerto to one of his pupils, Princess Anna Louise Barbara Odescalchi, known to her friends as Babette. Two centuries later, the concerto is reimagined by Sally Beamish, one of Britain's best-known contemporary composers, and brought to the stage by world-renowned pianist Jonathan Biss and the NAC Orchestra.
Composer Sergei Prokofiev left his native Russia in 1917 and found international success in the U.S. and Paris. But Stalin wanted him back and courted him for several years before Prokofiev finally returned to the USSR in 1936. He navigated better than most the dangerous and shifting cultural politics under Stalin, but all was not golden. Prokofiev’s rousing fifth symphony careens between tender and haunting and between joy and frenzy. Publicly, he described it as “glorifying the human spirit…praising the free and happy man,” but we might never know if that’s how he truly felt.
