大象传媒

The 大象传媒 Philharmonic - Live from MediaCityUK, Salford, presented by Tom Redmond

George Antheil - radical American composer and a performing pianist, once took to the stage armed with a revolver concealed under his concert dress for a concert tour of 1930s Germany - as a "degenerate" artist he wanted to defend himself if any Nazis stormed the stage.

Hindemith also felt the disapproval of the Nazi party. He wrote his symphony based on themes from his opera "Mathis der Maler" (Mathis the Painter) for Furtw盲ngler and the Berlin Philharmonic to perform in 1934, but both Furtw盲ngler and Hindemith faced official censure as Hindemith was already considered a composer of "degenerate" music - and the message of the opera was that the artist must follow his own conscience and the the instruction of his political masters.

By the 1960s, Shostakovich was past the worst of what the Soviet State could throw at him, so it seems a pity that his Second Cello Concerto should have caused him so many problems musically. He struggled with the first movement, which had been originally destined as a new symphony, and threw out a completed final movement and started again from scratch.

Live 大象传媒 Philharmonic

2pm
Antheil
Serenade No 1 for strings [1948]

Shostakovich
Cello Concerto No 2 in G major, Op126
Leonard Elschenbroich (cello)

Hindemith
Symphony 'Mathis der Maler'

大象传媒 Philharmonic
John Storgards (conductor).