Liszt: Klavierkonzert No. 1 - Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (Live)

In the first half of this exclusive concert for Apple Music Classical, two musical titans (and friends since childhood days in Argentina), ride the surging emotions and romantic impulses of Liszt’s First Piano Concerto. Martha Argerich dazzles and beguiles with her all-encompassing interpretation of the Hungarian composer’s work, commanding the score’s fiendish technical difficulties and shaping its sublime singing lines with tender care, while Daniel Barenboim and the Vienna Philharmonic add weight to its compelling musical argument. Mahler’s Seventh Symphony seems like a complex equation designed to reconcile the natural laws of the universe with the wild emotional instincts of humankind. It opens with music for vast orchestral forces before turning to the first of two introspective “Night Pieces,” each separated by a scurrying, spooky “Scherzo.” Mahler blows away the chamber music textures of the second Night Piece by enlisting what sounds like an imperial army on the march in the symphony’s last movement. The finale, restless, unpredictable, ecstatic, edges towards a triumphant conclusion capped by blazing trumpets, kettledrums, and bells. Vienna Philharmonic violinist and chairman Daniel Froschauer recalls Mahler’s close relationship with the orchestra during his decade in charge of Vienna’s imperial court opera. “He set the levels for our orchestra in terms of excellence and always trying to do the best. We played his Seventh Symphony for the first time in 1916. Often you hear the same notes played by different instruments in the Nachtmusik [Night Pieces], for example, so you hear a different colour. It’s an unusual work but it fits our orchestra’s sound perfectly.” Hear Daniel Froschauer’s personal insights into this concert on the final track of this album.