Romantic at Semperoper with an Excursion to the Avantgarde

This morning I have been to a concert at the Semperoper Dresden. The festival orchestra conducted by Ivor Bolton and the violinist Thomas Zehetmair played three pieces if Brahms.

The first piece were variations of a theme from Haydn. At least Brahms thought so – later they found out that the original piece was from a scholar of Haydn. But that did not matter. The music is very light and easy to listen to.

The second piece was the concert for violin and orchestra in D major. The violin was played by Thomas Zehetmair, of whom I have some CDs at home. I was quite happy to listen to him live on stage. And I was not disappointed. He played wonderfully and got a lot of applause.

What I considered funny was that he played that he played an atonal piece by Bernd Alois Zimmermann as an encore. The lady sitting next to me was appalled. She complained that with the encore Thomas Zehetmair would have destroyed his positive performance completely. Obviously she was not willing to admit that so called classical music has developed further since the Romantic. And Mr. Zehetmair brought her out of her comfort zone. So he was exactly right. 

The last piece after the interval was the second sinfonie of Brahms. Again something that you could listen to easily.

Overall a very good concert of the late Romantic.