The concert closing the season of the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra is worth attending, as there will be two premieres in its programme.  

Joseph Swensen, Artistic Director of the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra, is a highly respected conductor, and his interpretations of works belonging to the canon, as well as newer compositions, are well known to the Wrocław audience. This concert will be an opportunity to listen to the world premiere of his latest work, Mahler in Manhattan. The Austrian composer was associated with New York in 1908–1911. He was Head of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the main conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. Swensen’s composition alludes to this last stage in Mahler’s life.
Then we will listen to the Polish premiere of Michael Brown’s Piano Concerto with the composer performing as soloist. This American musician, born in 1987, is a graduate of the Julliard School of Music. His work includes orchestral, chamber and vocal compositions, as well as pieces intended for solo instruments. The Piano Concerto was written in 2019-2020, and its premiere took place in May 2020 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Composing it, Brown intended to pay tribute to his beloved Beethoven.

The last work in the concert programme is String Quartet No. 11 in F minor op. 95 by Ludwig van Beethoven. This quartet, performed for the first time in 1814, is sometimes referred to as "Quartetto serioso", which stems from the note defining its third movement. In one of his letters, Beethoven confessed that he intended this work for experts and that it should not be performed in public under any circumstances. This is one of Beethoven’s shortest quartets, and musical ideas are presented in a condensed way. The composer had an exaggerated fear about the quartet’s fortunes. It is a dramatic, effective work that draws the listener from the first sounds into a tense narrative in which there is not a single unnecessary note.