EUROPE CONNECTS

Music as a connection: our guests tonight are the chamber orchestra of the Prenk Jakova School of Music from Gjakova in Kosovo, close to the Albanian border. The school takes its name from the celebrated Albanian composer, who lived from 1917 to 1969. The young musicians are making their debut in Vienna. The orchestra, performing under the baton of Johannes Fleischmann, performs Edvard Grieg’s romantic homage to the late baroque, his magical suite for strings “From Holberg’s Time”, which remains one of the Norwegian’s most popular pieces. The evening closes with an equally well-loved piece, Mendelssohn’s technically demanding Octet, heard here in its original arrangement for eight strings. Between these two works we hear the voices of Johannes Fleischmann’s solo violin and the solo viola of Mariko Hara Haselsteiner enter into a lively dialogue with the young musicians in Mozart’s “Sinfonia concertante”.