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The Hallé
Sir Mark Elder - conductor
Eric Lu - Leeds International Piano Competition Winner 2018
Mozart - Piano Concerto No 23, K488 Listen
Shostakovich - Symphony No 8 Listen
Free pre-concert talk at 6.45pm by David Fligg.
The concert will be finished by approximately 9.25pm.
Written in Vienna during the final decade of Mozart’s all too brief a life (he died aged just 35), his Piano Concerto No 23 is filled with beauty and heart-rending expression. Perfect in its proportions and range of expression, its popular appeal – which has endured through the centuries – was shared by the composer who kept it in a stash of “compositions that I keep for myself or for a small circle of music lovers and connoisseurs (who promise not to let them out of their hands)”. Showing off Mozart’s unique creative genius, Winner of the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition, Eric Lu makes his first return to Leeds Town Hall to perform with The Hallé.
The evening continues with Shostakovich’s intensely dramatic eighth symphony, one of his most profound and emotional works. Written in 1943, the piece reflects the tragic intensity of war and includes some of the composer’s most terrifying and powerful music. The naturalism of the music expresses terrible visions leaving a fearful, almost catastrophic, impression. Yet, in typically cryptic fashion the composer summed up its message in just three words; ‘life
is beautiful’.
