A return to the Classical Era

The Mahler Chamber Orchestra is a brilliant ensemble which was founded in 1997 by the legendary Italian conductor Claudio Abbado, alongside members of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra. Having reached the age limit of the youth orchestra, some of its frustrated members decided to create another ensemble to continue playing together. Made up of basically 50 musicians, this orchestra has collaborations with high level artists such as Marc Minkowski or Jonas Kaufmann.

The orchestra comes to Seville under one of the great European conductors, the Italian Daniele Gatti (1961), who has led the Zurich Opera, the Orchestre National de France and the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.

On the music stands, is an intelligent programme that combines a tour around the legacy and return to Classicism which, in the Europe of the 1920s and 30s was the Neoclassical movement. The concert begins with the sparkling, lithe and danceable Symphony No. 1 “Classical”, premiered by Sergei Prokofiev in 1918, one of his most popular works. In a way, Prokofiev proposes a game of imagining what a Haydn symphony would have sounded like – with some variations – had it been composed amid the 20th century. The result is jubilant.

The 1792 Sinfonia Concertante Hob 1/105 of Joseph Haydn belongs to the first period of the composer in London. Conceived as a showcase for its four soloists - violin, cello, oboe, and bassoon -, it is a straightforward and entertaining work, which alternates the dramatic with the burlesque.

To conclude, the Symphony in C+ by Igor Stravinsky, completed in California in 1940. It is a radically antimodernist piece, that was written – paradoxically - by the most innovative and unconventional composer of the beginning of the 20th century. It is a very refined formal exercise, alternating brusque and radiantly graceful moments. Modelled on Haydn and Beethoven, it did not become an extension of the Classic model but rather its transformation.