Staatskapelle Berlin, Elim Chan, Patricia Kopatchinskaja

With Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 8, Chan brings lyrical and folklorically inspired romanticism to the Berlin Philharmonie, and with Patricia Kopatchinskaja as soloist, Béla Bartók's highly virtuosic and dramatic First Violin Concerto, filled with the excitement of a fresh summer romance, will be performed.


"My confession" is what Béla Bartók wrote on the manuscript title page of his First Violin Concerto, which he wrote "as if in a narcotic dream" for his childhood sweetheart, the Hungarian violinist Stefi Geyer. The yearningly expansive melody, full of late-Romantic emphasis, is followed by a disconcerting fugato – the love remained unrequited. Yet Bartók had a sense of humor and was capable of self-irony:

Shortly after the beginning of the uninterrupted second movement, the highest note of a solo violin ascent in the orchestra is counteracted by an echo of Wagner's "Tristan" chord. One looks in vain for Wagnerian echoes in Antonín Dvořák's 8th Symphony.


The work was written for a tour of Russia planned for the spring of 1890, which is why the composer replaced the usual scherzo with a wistful waltz, whose extremely smooth melody is reminiscent of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's popular ballet music. The whole piece is rounded off by a rhythmically exhilarating finale, in which Dvořák once again paid homage to local folklore and vividly illuminated the broad palette of orchestral colors.


Béla Bartók (1881–1945)
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 (1907/08)


Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)
Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88 (1889)


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