Sinfoniekonzert04

“Gershwin has always been an important part of my life,” declares Jean-Yves Thibaudet. During the Gürzenich Orchestra’s fourth symphony concert, the internationally sought-after French “gentleman at the piano” plays the Concerto in F, which alternates between classical music and jazz and with which George Gershwin continued the success of his famed Rhapsody in Blue in New York in 1925. The electric guitarist and composer Steven Mackey, who is yet to be discovered in this country, unlocks the door to the American soundscape. His rhythmic fantasia Turn the Key, which explores sound and space, was composed in 2006 for the opening of the Performing Arts Center in Miami. Also “made in the USA” is Arnold Schoenberg’s sumptuous, multi-coloured, dazzling orchestral adaptation of Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet op. 25, which he arranged for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1937 during his exile in California and jokingly referred to as Brahms’s Fifth Symphony. 
Gilbert Varga, who has collaborated with the Gürzenich Orchestra for many years, can be deemed an authority on this American programme, since the elegant, precise and spirited Maestro is a regular guest with the great North American symphony orchestras from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.