Classical Showcase Features the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Classical Showcase continues its series of concerts from the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland on Friday evening at 7 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Mariss Jansons.  They'll play a program of music by Brahms, Shostakovich and Ravel. Johannes Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn is one his most popular and enjoyable works.  Composed in the summer of 1873, it's one of the first independent set of variations for orchestra in the repertoire.  It turns out, however, that the theme Brahms borrowed was not not actually written by Haydn.  Haydn had  supposedly borrowed a theme called the St. Anthony Chorale for use in a wind divertimento that was attributed to him.  More recent research has shown that the divertimento was probably written by one one Haydn's students, Ignaz Pleyel.  So the title Brahms chose is wrong on a couple of counts, but the music he wrote is right in every way. The First Symphony from 19 year old Dmitri Shostakovich propelled the young Russian composer to international attention in 1926.  This half hour work was written as his graduation piece at the Petrograd Conservatory. French composer Maurice Ravel wrote music that could embrace the extremes of  the spikiness of the Jazz Age of the Roaring 1920's and turn out some of the most lush and ravishing orchestral sonorities imaginable.  There will be some of both in this concert from Lucerne.  The Piano Concerto in G was written after Ravel's visit to the United States, and the influence of American jazz and George Gershwin is unmistakable in the first movement.  The very fine  Jean-Yves Thibaudet will be the soloist. Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2 is drawn from the complete hour-long 1912 ballet Daphnis et Chloe, whose score is the apotheosis of impressionism in music.  The story from the 2nd century AD. is a classical romance with nymphs and the god Pan intervening in the affairs of humans.  Ravel wrote some of his best music for this work, and the 15 minute suite opens with a sumptuous musical sunrise. Classical Showcase airs Friday evening at 7 pm on Classical 101.