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MAESTRO CONCERT SERIES
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The ERSO anniversary season opens with Heino Eller’s timeless symphonic poem Dawn, conducted by the orchestra’s Chief Conductor Olari Elts. In Schumann’s fantasy-like Piano Concerto, the soloist is South Korean pianist Yekwon Sunwoo, whose global career was launched by a spectacular victory at the Van Cliburn Competition in 2017. The concert concludes with Ludwig van Beethoven’s brilliant Fifth Symphony, featuring the iconic “Fate knocking at the door” motif known to every music lover.

“Mozart’s music is the great love of my life,” says pianist Kalle Randalu. He celebrates his upcoming 70th birthday with his most significant artistic partners – Maestro Neeme Järvi and ERSO. The program includes the Rondo in D major and the joyful Piano Concerto in F major, works that Randalu has also recorded with ERSO and Järvi. Additionally, the audience will hear the picturesque symphony In Autumn by German composer Joachim Raff.

In February, conducted by Chief Conductor Olari Elts, the orchestra performs Gustav Mahler’s grandiose and pantheistic Third Symphony, which, according to the author, reflects the harmony of the universe. While influenced by the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the direct impulse for the work was a poetic imagery of creation from the poem Genesis by the composer’s friend, Siegfried Lipiner. Mahler employs a massive orchestra, boys’ and women’s choirs, an alto soloist, and off-stage instruments to achieve a truly spatial sound.

Maestro Arvo Volmer, ERSO’s Chief Conductor in the 1990s, has programmed a work by his predecessor, another long-time Chief Conductor Olav Roots: Variations and Passacaglia on a Theme by Artur Kapp. Featuring the acclaimed violinist Benjamin Schmid as soloist, the program includes Niccolò Paganini’s virtuosic Violin Concerto No. 1. The second half of the evening is dedicated to Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Symphony from his youth, a work that blends vibrant, grotesque themes with intense lyricism and drama.

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