“It's like a great piece of art that you see on the wall. Every time you pass it, there's something new that you discover.” - Ken-David Masur
Johannes Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn is one of those works you may have heard a hundred times. But it offers a fresh perspective in every performance, says RPO guest conductor Ken-David Masur. Hear him lead the orchestra in a concert recorded in April of 2022 which includes a Rochester premiere, Rounds for Piano and String Orchestra, by Jessie Montgomery.
Pianist Awadagian Pratt premiered the work. He says it’s been touching listeners around the country. “I was talking to a flute player in the orchestra whose mother had been there. She said it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever heard,” Pratt told WXXI’s Julia Figueras. “She was crying through the whole thing. It’s very affecting to people.”
Guest conductor Ken-David Masur ends this performance with Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, “Reformation.”
"When you look at the overall structure," Masur said, "it's really from Old Testament to Martin Luther heralding the good news hero of the New Testament.”
“By the end, I call it just a drinking song to Jesus,” Masur said On Record.