Christoph Eschenbach will conduct the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic in works by German composers. The first is Max Bruch, active in the Romantic era, and the second is a  20th-century classic, Paul Hindemith. The solo part in the piece that opens the concert will be performed by the Swedish virtuoso Daniel Lozakovich. This artist, born in 2001, signed a contract with the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label at the age of fifteen, which opened the door to a brilliant, dynamically developing career. He has five albums to his credit and also plays at important events – one of them was a performance with the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France on the occasion of the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, reconstructed after a fire. 

The first piece in the program will be Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor – one of the most popular works written by the artist. It was composed in 1866, when he was twenty-eight. Although he later created many other works (including two more violin concertos), none of them matched the popularity of this composition. It is light, sunny, full of charm and energy, and the solo part is definitely more lyrical than spectacular. The composer’s great melodic inventiveness also had a great influence on the success of the work. But the success of this particular piece irritated Bruch, who often complained that his other pieces were definitely better than the First Violin Concerto. However, history has passed a different judgment. 

The 1951 symphony Die Harmonie der Welt was used by Paul Hindemith to create a five-act opera of the same title six years later. Both of these works were based on his fascination with the figure of the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who lived at the turn of the 17th century. He was the author of a treatise titled Harmonices mundi, in which he presented his concept of planetary motion and attempted to scientifically justify the idea of the harmony of the spheres. Hindemith’s symphony consists of three movements, and their order and form have no connection with the plot of the opera. Their titles refer to the concept of types of music developed by the Roman philosopher Boethius. The first is instrumental and vocal music created by humans, the second is the harmony of body and soul, and the third, inaccessible to human senses, is the harmony that orders the movement of celestial bodies.