Yuja Wang joins the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and conductor Alan Gilbert this month for two performances part of the “Klingt nach Gilbert” festival at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. The three-week-long inaugural festival presents six exciting and multi-faceted programs in eight concerts to welcome Alan Gilbert as the new chief conductor of the NDR EO.
With performances on September 12 & 13, Yuja interprets two prized works of Shostakovich: his First and Second Piano Concerto. Both works showcase Shostakovich’s lightheartedness and wit, yet also feature stunning elegiac moments. His First Concerto experiments with a neo-baroque combination of instruments, while the Second Concerto is an unrestrained delight from start to finish, written in 1957, four years after the death of Stalin. Trumpeter Pedro Miguel Freire is an additional soloist in the Piano Concerto No. 1.
Completing the program is Magnus Lindberg’s tremendous opus, Kraft, for solo ensemble, live electronics, and orchestra. The work features Mr. Lindberg as the piano soloist, as well as clarinetist Gaspare Buonomano, cellist Andreas Grünkorn, drummers Thomas Schwarz and Stefan Cürlis, and live-electronics by Juhani Liimatainen.
The concert will be broadcast via NDR Kultur on September 20 at 20:00.