Performers
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor
Igor Levit, Piano

Program
IVES Decoration Day
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 3
BRAHMS Symphony No. 2

Solemnity, fury, and joy—sometimes in a single work—characterize the music on this program. Ives’s Decoration Day (now known as Memorial Day) with its allusions to church bells, hymns, and military band music evokes a mood of reverence. Brahms also conjures a serious tone in the second movement of his Symphony No. 2, but the work’s overall warmth and jubilant finale dispels all sorrow. Beethoven balances a stormy mood, melancholy, and high spirits in his groundbreaking Piano Concerto No. 3, a work played by Igor Levit, “one of the essential artists of his generation” (The New York Times).