Zugló Philharmonics Budapest Presented by Liszt Academy

As they say, there won’t be a dry eye in the house. The arrangement for string orchestra of the slow movement of American composer Samuel Barber’s string quartet (Opus 11) generally brings a tear to the eye of even the least sensitive amongst us. The Adagio features as incidental music in numerous films – one just has to think of Amélie or Elephant Man – but its melody was heard at the funeral of Einstein and the announcement of the deaths of presidents Kennedy and Roosevelt. Austrian Gustav Mahler, outstanding representative of late Romanticism and at the same time its last great master, was engaged with the poetry of Friedrich Rückert from the age of 40. Among his unpublished verses there were 428 poems written while suffering the agonies of losing his two young children in 1833–34. Mozart’s art is full and complete even though God allowed him just 35 years in which to create his stunning oeuvre. The ‘Jupiter’ symphony performed at this concert is the final symphony Mozart wrote; it was composed in 1788, three years before his death. Even though symphonies had virtually poured out of him unchecked up to that time, for some reason this was to become Mozart’s final effort in the genre. Perhaps he felt that this work marked the high point of his classical symphony skills.