Han-Na Chang conducts Beethoven

In her first performance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Han-Na Chang champions Beethoven’s lyrical Symphony No. 4. Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Phantasma was inspired by Beethoven and Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze on display in Vienna’s Secession Building. Phantasma made a big impression on audiences at its world premiere, performed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra in October 2022. Klimt’s idealised vision of the world, brilliant explosions of colour, symbols and even gold – Deutsch brings them all to life in the music.

Richard Strauss was unrivalled in his ability to make the most fantastic scenes come to life in music. Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote served as Strauss’s inspiration for his Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character. The adventures of the knight-errant and his faithful squire, as heroic as they are hilarious, come to life as the orchestra’s principal cellist Tatiana Vassiljeva and principal violist Santa Vižine, with support from the tenor tuba and bass clarinet, join their orchestra in battle. But who are they fighting? Windmills, sheep and, of course, the knight of the bright moon.

Han-Na Chang now makes her first appearance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra five years after it was originally scheduled owing to the coronavirus pandemic.