Week of August 20, 2007
BBC Symphony Orchestra
at Royal Albert Hall
Yefim Bronfman, piano
Listen live from your local public radio station
Ravel: Le tombeau de Couperin
Salonen: Piano Concerto
Berlioz: Romeo and Juliet Excerpts
Yefim Bronfman and Esa-Pekka Salonen have known each other for years. Over the past two decades, they've recorded all of the piano concertos of Rachmaninoff, Bartok and Shostakovich. Knowing he was a fine composer as well as conductor, Bronfman began asking Salonen for a piano concerto, but Salonen was hesitant. He said that writing a new piano concerto is a risky business because many have been written, but few from the past 50 years are remembered. However, the New York Philharmonic also thought it was a great idea and commissoned him to complete it in 2006. The Philharmonic, Bronfman, and Salonen gave it a hugely successful premiere this past February, and the soloist and conductor brought it to life again this summer in London's Proms Festival.
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Images
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 Maurice Ravel (1912 portrait by Inconnu) |
 Hector Berlioz |
