Join conductor Thomas Søndergård and pianist Dejan Lazić November 13 and 14 with the NAC Orchestra for "All Beethoven Celebration!"
"It's thrilling for me to be returning to Ottawa for an all-Beethoven program this season. I greatly look forward to collaborating with my friend and colleague Dejan Lazić once more and bringing the Ottawa audience our interpretation of this most sublime classical repertoire."
-Thomas Søndergård, conductor
When I was ten years old I remember taking part in the annual closing concert of my piano class. After the intermission I wanted to hear other students perform, and this is when I heard Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto for the first time. Already during the first orchestral tutti I was totally absorbed by this extraordinary, and in many aspects revolutionary, concerto. After the performance I promptly asked my teacher whether I may learn it and perform it at the next year's closing concert. Thankfully, the answer was yes but I was also warned that I'd have to invest a lot of time and work. While learning it I was so inspired by its forceful and energetic first movement, lyrical, divine second, and spirited Rondo in the final, third movement, that I actually didn’t notice any hardship in the process. . .
With time I have learned that this concerto never becomes any easier to perform, it is always a challenge: musically, emotionally, intellectually, technically. I have also written my own cadenza for the first movement, knowing that Beethoven encouraged other performers of his concertos (including young Franz Liszt!) to do so and, like this, be creative themselves.
-Dejan Lazić, piano
