Beethoven, Cottis & Biss

with the NAC Orchestra

Jonathan Biss © Luis Luque
dscf0134-greggory-clark-1-cropped
Jessica Cottis © Curtis Perry
Music Classical music Masterworks Piano
  • LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15
  • SALLY BEAMISH City Stanzas (Piano Concerto No. 3)
  • Sergei Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100
  • In-person event
  • Bilingual
  • ≈ 2 hours · With intermission

In recognition and thanks for invaluable donor support, the NAC Orchestra and NAC Dance grants insider access to donors to audit a working rehearsal in Southam Hall. Often, an artist or member of the artistic team gives insights into the creative process and invites questions from donors. Seating is limited.

Three things to know ... 

  1. For pianist Jonathan Biss, the music of Beethoven "has been an obsession for as long as I can remember." 
  2. Jessica Cottis returns to the NAC to conduct the Orchestra's first performance of Sergei Prokofiev's fiery Fifth Symphony. 
  3. Prokofiev said his Fifth Symphony "glorifies the human spirit" — but with Stalin watching his every move, what else could he say? 

One of today's finest Beethoven performers, Jonathan Biss brings his "intoxicating sense of sweep and urgency" (San Francisco Chronicle) to the revolutionary composer's First Piano Concerto — a prime example of the elegant charm, biting wit, and profound spirituality audiences have come to adore in Beethoven's music.  

British composer Sally Beamish offers a contemporary response to Beethoven in City Stanzas, a work for solo piano and orchestra written for Biss. Exploring humankind's shared anxiety about the future, Beamish reimagines Beethoven's 18th-century concerto to channel the energy, glamour, and disconnection of city life in the 21st century. 

Anxiety was certainly coursing through Sergei Prokofiev's veins in 1944 as he composed his Fifth Symphony outside of Moscow. Although he wrote that the new symphony "glorifies the grandeur of the human spirit," Prokofiev laced his score with moments of overwhelming fear and terror — hallmarks of daily life in Stalin's Russia. Moving between sorrow and laughter, optimism and melancholy, Prokofiev's wartime symphony stands today as a symbol of hope and the resilience of the human spirit. 

Performance is approximately 2 hours including intermission

Artists

  • Conductor Jessica Cottis
  • jonathan-biss-credit-benjamin-ealovega
    Piano Jonathan Biss
  • bio-orchestra
    NAC Orchestra