Opening Concert

Pablo Ferrandéz
Riccardo Minasi
Chamber Orchestra of Europe

I was cut off from the world; no one around me could mislead or torment me, and so I had to become original,’ Joseph Haydn once wrote about his working environment. Yet it was precisely Haydn’s originality that made him the most famous composer of his time. The humorous Symphony Hob. I:88, for example, was composed for Paris, but it was also published in Vienna and London without Haydn receiving any royalties. His C major Cello Concerto, probably composed for Franz Joseph Weigl, principal cellist of the Esterházy court orchestra, was, by contrast, only rediscovered in Prague in the 1960s. And the brilliant ‘Jupiter Symphony’ by Haydn’s friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – his final work in this genre and composed at around the same time as Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 – may well have been performed in Dresden, Frankfurt or Vienna during Mozart’s lifetime. What is certain is that it has become the very epitome of the Classical period. And it is also certain that the cellist Pablo Ferrández, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Riccardo Minasi are interpreters with a deep understanding of the style, who present the brilliance and grandeur of Haydn’s and Mozart’s works with verve.