As part of the Witold Lutosławski World Days, the renowned Australian violinist and conductor Richard Tognetti, Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra will perform with the musicians of the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra. The musicians will reach for works from the Baroque and Classical eras as well as those closer to the present day.

The concert will begin with Concerto grosso in A major op. 6 no. 11 from the collection of twelve concerti grossi written in 1739 by George Frideric Handel. The Handel composition, intricate in expression, will precede Witold Lutosławski’s Partita, which was originally intended for violin and piano and dedicated to Pinchas Zukerman and Marc Neikrug. Not much later, Lutosławski created an orchestral version, this time with Anne-Sophie Mutter in mind. The Partita consists of five movements, the leading roles being taken by the first (Allegro giusto), the third (Largo) and the fifth (Presto). The remaining movements are in the style of short interludes. Throughout the score, Lutosławski goes back to the pre-Classical 18th-century tradition of instrumental music.

String Quartet no. 2 op. 56 by Karol Szymanowski was composed in the autumn of 1927 for a chamber composition competition organized by the Musical Fund Society in Philadelphia. The other contestants were, among others Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, and Béla Bartók. Although Szymanowski’s quartet was rejected, today it is considered one of the most avant-garde compositions in the rich oeuvre of the artist. Sonata in A major op. 47 by Ludwig van Beethoven, known as ‘Kreutzer’, owes its name to the then highly valued French violinist Rudoph Kreutzer. It is considered to be one of the most famous and at the same time the most powerful violin sonatas in music history. In the beginning, Beethoven dedicated it to the popular violin virtuoso active in England, George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower. However, shortly after the joint premiere of the work, the musicians fell out. When Beethoven published the piece, he wrote Kreutzer’s name on it, though, ironically, he was never to perform the work with him.