Garrick Ohlsson, piano | © Dario Acosta

Garrick Ohlsson Plays Beethoven

Fri Apr 28 — Sat Apr 29, 2023

Orchestra Hall

~2 hrs, including intermission

A solemn memorial, a symphony of blazing brass and an unpredictable piano concerto come together under the baton of Juanjo Mena, who makes a return to Orchestra Hall for a special treat: Bruckner’s sonorous Sixth Symphony. First, Philip Herbert’s Elegy pays tribute to the late Stephen Lawrence, who at 18 years old was killed in an act of racial violence. Then, world-renowned pianist Garrick Ohlsson plays Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, an animated showpiece for piano filled with musical humor.

The Friday night performance will be broadcast live on YourClassical Minnesota Public Radio. Find your station or listen online.

A Few Things To Know

Juanjo Mena “showed himself as quite the podium dancer in a series of impromptu pirouettes and jump-like maneuvers,” read a Star Tribune review after Minnesota Orchestra concerts in 2019. “There wasn't a line of music that he didn't energize.”
Juanjo Mena conducted the Orchestra’s historic radio broadcast-only concert (with no audience in the Hall) on March 13, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic first made waves across the U.S.
Garrick Ohlsson first performed with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1971, before the construction of Orchestra Hall. His first gig with the Orchestra involved a U.S. tour led by then-conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.

Buy Tickets Subscribe

Date & Time

Program

HERBERT

Elegy: In Memoriam—Stephen Lawrence
1 min note

One Minute Note

Elegy memorializes Stephen Lawrence, a Black British teenager murdered in April 1993 by a gang of young white men. The music is full of soulful harmonies with gentle dissonances in sonorous chords, under a plaintive melody, which characterize the heavy emotions brought to mind by this tragedy.
BEETHOVEN

Piano Concerto No. 1
1 min note

One Minute Note

In his First Piano Concerto, Beethoven’s intent was simply to please his audience with enjoyable music and to promote the orchestra to a more equal status with the soloist. The piece is full of heroism, grandeur and a touch of humor; listen in the Largo for the clarinet’s important role.
BRUCKNER

Symphony No. 6
1 min note

One Minute Note

One of Bruckner’s less-heard symphonies—the Minnesota Orchestra has programmed it just three times before this week—the Sixth Symphony has a tone which is unmistakably Brucknerian, from blazing brass and strings to sonorous woodwind solos, with an ostinato rhythm that unites the work’s beginning and end.