Beethoven’s Second Symphony, despite its air of good humour and optimism, was composed during a dark period of his life as he acknowledged the slow onset of deafness.
As part of the 2009 Beethoven Festival, Singapore Symphony Orchestra Music Director Lan Shui will conduct the SSO in the Second Symphony as well as Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony on January 17 – later described by Schumann as a "slender Greek maiden between two Norse gods" because it came in between two other symphonies, Nos. 3 and 5, both with formidable reputations.
In the same evening, Russian violin virtuoso Dmitri Makhtin will be the soloist in Mozart’s Strassburg Concerto. Born in St Petersburg in 1975, he started his musical education at the age of four with his parents, both professional violinists.
In 1989 he won the National Competition for Young Violinists in Novossibirsk, Russia, and subsequently made solo appearances with the St Petersburg Philharmonic and Novossibirsk Philharmonic Orchestras. -- www.sso.org.sg
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