A WOMAN’S LOVE AND LIFE

MAURICE RAVEL Le tombeau de Couperin
ROBERT SCHUMANN / arr. Takeshi Moriuchi Frauenliebe und -leben, arrangement for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra
JOHN ADAMS Eros Piano for piano and chamber orchestra
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Symphony No. 29 in A major

Markéta Cukrová mezzo-soprano
Filharmonie Brno
conductor Takeshi Moriuchi piano

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) worked during the war years on the piano cycle, Le tombeau de Couperin, in which he paid tribute to Francois Couperin, the leading proponent of clavecin music. In 1919, the composer arranged four numbers for a small orchestra. Piano music had long been the focal point of Schumann’s oeuvre, but his marriage to Clara in 1840 inspired him to write an unprecedented number of Lieder. In 1840, he composed several remarkable song cycles including Frauenliebe und -leben. The music of John Adams (born 1947), a major contemporary American composer, is something that the players of Filharmonie Brno have “under their skin”: recently they performed his Doctor Atomic Symphony, Chamber Symphony, City Noir and Harmonielehre. Written in 1989, Eros Piano is Adams’s first piano concerto, inspired by Toru Takemitsu’s piano concerto riverrun and Bill Evans’s piano playing. Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 is one of the most interesting and polished of the many he wrote during a two-year period particularly rich in works of this genre.