Subscription Concert C Series

Subscription Concert No.1029 C Series

This concert is over. Date: Sat. 29. November 2025 14:00 (13:00)

Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre Venue Info Seat

Baby sitting Service

[PDF download]

Artists

Riccardo MINASI, Conductor
Sayaka SHOJI, Violin

Profile

Riccardo MINASI (Conductor)

Italian conductor Riccardo Minasi currently serves as Principal Guest Conductor of Ensemble Resonanz who are resident at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, and Artistic Director of Orchestra La Scintilla at the Zurich Opera House, positions he has held since 2022. His previous appointments include co-founder and conductor of Il Pomo d’Oro from 2011 to 2016, Chief Conductor of the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra from 2017 to 2022, and Music Director of Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa from 2022 to 2025.

In the 2025/26 season, Minasi is Artist in Residence at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie where he conducts four programmes with Ensemble Resonanz, including a concertante performance of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi and Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ. He also performs in Hamburg with Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen as part of his European tour with Beatrice Rana, followed by concerts in South America alongside James Ehnes.

Other highlights of the season include his first appearances with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, SWR Symphonieorchester, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Dresdner Philharmonie with Martin Fröst. He also leads Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No.3 with Marianne Crebassa in Essen, Dortmund and Köln and two symphonic programmes with the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra and Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

Photo ©Drew Gardner

Sayaka SHOJI (Violin)

Sayaka Shoji has become internationally recognized for her unique artistic versatility and detailed approach to her chosen repertoire. Born in Tokyo, Shoji moved to Siena, Italy when she was three. She studied at Accademia Musicale Chigiana and Cologne’s Musikhochschule and made her European debut with Lucerne Festival Strings at the Lucerne Festival and then at the Musikverein, Vienna at the age of fourteen.
Since winning first prize at the Paganini Competition in 1999, Sayaka Shoji has been supported by leading conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel and Yuri Temirkanov to name a few. She has also worked with renowned orchestras including Berliner Philharmoniker, Los Angeles and New York philharmonics, Wiener Symphoniker and The Mariinsky Orchestra.
Recent highlights include an Italian tour with Philharmonia Orchestra/Matias-Rouvali, and a collaboration with dancer/choreographer Saburo Teshigawara performing Bach and Bartok’s solo works at the Philharmonie de Paris.
Sayaka Shoji plays a Stradivarius ‘Recamier’ c.1729 kindly loaned to her by Ueno Fine Chemicals Industry Ltd.
photo ©Laura Stevens

Program

Mozart: Adagio for Violin and Orchestra in E major, K.261

Program Notes
Schumann: Violin Concerto in D minor

Program Notes
Beethoven: Symphony No.6 in F major, op.68, “Pastorale”

Program Notes

｜Mozart:Adagio for Violin and Orchestra in E major, K.261

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Born in Salzburg, January 27, 1756; died in Vienna, December 5, 1791

　Mozart was a violinist of enormous talent. His own father, Leopold, was one of Europeʼs most outstanding violinists and the author of a famous treatise published, significantly enough, in the year of his sonʼs birth, 1756. We are told that Wolfgang had mastered this manual well before his tenth year. Leopold wrote to his son in 1777: “You have no idea how well you play the violin. If only you would do yourself justice and play with boldness, spirit and fire, you would be the finest violinist in Europe.” That Wolfgang was seemingly indifferent to the instrument was one of Leopoldʼs great disappointments. The violin was the most popular instrument of the day, and the practical-minded father saw far more lucrative opportunities for his sonʼs career as a violinist-composer than as a pianist-composer.
　In 1775, Wolfgang finally managed to become concertmaster of the Salzburg court orchestra, a post he was later forced to share with Gaetano Brunetti, and which paid a pittance. In addition, he continued to compose prodigiously. Edward Cole writes that “the eighteenth century court composer almost literally was a human musical factory, grinding out product in quantity and, under unrelieved pressure. … Most of the breed merely ‘hackedʼ their way through. However, a few composers of real genius and sincerity … somehow amassed looming heaps of masterpieces … in spite of the unfriendly atmosphere of the creative clime.” In such an atmosphere, the nineteen-year-old Mozart composed, in rapid succession, at least four of his five authenticated violin concertos between April and December of 1775. (No. 1 may have come from two years before; two more spurious concertos also exist.)
　Though designed for Mozartʼs personal use as a soloist, his co-concertmaster in Salzburg, Brunetti, also had the honor of playing at least some of these concertos.
On one such occasion, in 1776, Brunetti asked Mozart to write him an alternate slow movement for the A-major Concerto (No. 5, K. 219), as he found the original “too studied.” Mozart obliged, although no one today can detect what might be less “studied” about the new movement, seeing as both are gems of Mozartʼs lyrical genius. What Mozart did change was the orchestration (flutes replace oboes) and the addition of mutes for the orchestral violins throughout, which would have put Brunetti more in the limelight. The substitute movement, the Adagio we hear at this concert, is also shorter. It is essentially in binary form (sonata form without a central development section).

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

｜Schumann: Violin Concerto in D minor

Ⅰ In kräftigem, nicht zu schnellem Tempo
Ⅱ Langsam
Ⅲ Lebhaft, doch nicht schnell

Robert Schumann: Born in Zwickau, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, July 29, 1856

　Schumannʼs Violin Concerto is a dark horse among concertos, so dark that it had to wait nearly a century for its first public performance, and even then that was in defiance of a ban that it not be performed until 1956. The work was written in 1853 and sent to the famous violinist Joseph Joachim, who complained of “dreadful passages” for the solo instrument. In 1858, two years after Schumannʼs death, Joachim decided, with the concurrence of the composerʼs widow Clara and Johannes Brahms, that the concerto should not have a place among Schumannʼs collected works.
　When Joachim died in 1907, his son gave the manuscript to the Prussian State Library in Berlin, with the stipulation that the score not be performed or published until at least one hundred years following its authorʼs death. Through a rather involved and colorful sequence of events, including continued protests from Schumannʼs 85-year-old daughter Eugenie and an encouraging seance with a clairvoyant, the concerto was finally heard in public on November 26, 1937 with a German soloist, Georg Kulenkampff, and the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm. Yehudi Menuhin was to have played the world premiere, but Nazi politics intervened. However, Menuhin trumped the Germans by giving the first performance ten days later in Carnegie Hall (with piano replacing orchestra) as Schumann had written it. (What Kulenkampff had performed was a heavily edited version prepared by Paul Hindemith.) Menuhin also gave the first authentic performance with orchestra on December 23, 1937 with the St. Louis Symphony.
　The first movement is laid out in traditional form with two contrasting themes, one bold and dramatic, the other imbued with gentle lyricism. The development section is devoted exclusively to this second theme, and it is here that soloist and orchestra engage in the only true dialogue of the movement, which otherwise gives prominence to soloist or orchestra in turn but not together. The slow movement has been much praised for its songlike character. Brahms thought enough of it to borrow its theme for his piano variations Op. 23. The finale arrives without pause, a movement in the dancelike polacca rhythm. Two themes alternate throughout, each one slightly varied upon each return.
　Some complain that the solo writing is ungrateful, that the work has structural problems, that there is too much darkly brooding material. Others find in the music passages of great beauty and exaltation. Menuhin praised it for “the same human warmth, caressing softness, bold manly rhythms, the same lovely arabesque treatment of the violin, the same rich and noble themes and harmonies” as those found in the Brahms concerto. The ban is off, but performances of Schumannʼs concerto are still uncommon. Henryk Szeryng, Gidon Kremer, Joshua Bell, Baibe Skride, Thomas Zehetmair, Christian Tetzlaff, and Isabelle Faust have numbered among its champions, and all have recorded the concerto.

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

｜Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F Major, op.68, “Pastorale”

Ⅰ Awakening of happy feelings on arriving in the country: Allegro ma non troppo
Ⅱ By the brook: Andante molto mosso
Ⅲ Merry gathering of country folk: Allegro
Ⅳ Thunderstorm: Allegro
Ⅴ Shepherdʼs song − Happy and thankful feelings after the storm: Allegretto

Ludwig van Beethoven: Born in Bonn, December 16, 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827

　The dividing line between program music and absolute music is a thin one, but Beethoven proved himself a master of both in his Sixth Symphony. Although the work has been produced with scenery, with characters who move about on stage, and as part of the cinema classic Fantasia, Beethoven took care to advise that the symphony is “more an expression of feeling than painting.” The composerʼs own love for the pleasures of the country are well-known. The time he spent in the woods outside Vienna offered his tortured soul precious solace and peace of mind.
To quote the composer: “How glad I am to be able to roam in wood and thicket, among the trees and flowers and rocks. No one can love the country as I do … In the woods there is enchantment which expresses all things.”
　The idea of depicting nature in tone was not new with Beethoven, of course.
Many composers both before and especially after him were inspired to create some of their best music in such fashion, Vivaldiʼs Four Seasons being one of the most popular examples. The repertory of Pastoral Symphonies alone is quite impressive, including one by Vaughan Williams (No. 3), Wilfred Josephs (No. 5), Alexander Gretchaninov (No. 2), Alexander Glazunov (No. 7) and Don Freund. Although not a symphony in the Beethovenian sense, one of the numbers in Handelʼs Messiah is entitled “Sinfonia pastorale.”
　The symphony received its first performance in Vienna as part of that incredible marathon concert of December 22, 1808 at the Theater an der Wien, an all- Beethoven concert that also included the Fifth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto, Choral Fantasy and some vocal and choral music.
　The symphonyʼs opening places us immediately in relaxed, beatific surroundings.
The day is sunny, warm, and abounding in natureʼs fragrances and gentle breezes. But aside from conjuring nature imagery, the music is remarkable for its motivic writing − virtually the entire movement is built from tiny musical cells found in the first two bars. Entire phrases and sentences are often formed from these motivic ideas repeated again and again.
　The second movement invites contemplation. To Donald Francis Tovey, this is “a slow movement in full sonata form, which at every point asserts its deliberate intention to be lazy and to say whatever occurs to it twice in succession, and which in doing so never loses flow or falls out of proportion.”
　The Sixth is the only symphony in which Beethoven departed from the fourmovement format. The remaining three movements are played without interruption.
Rough, peasant merry-making and dancing are portrayed, but the boisterous festivities suddenly stop when intimations of an approaching storm are heard. There is not much time to take cover; a few isolated raindrops fall, and then the heavens burst open. Timpani, piccolo and trombones, all hitherto silent in the symphony, now make their entrances. Storms have appeared frequently in musical compositions (in Verdiʼs Otello and Rigoletto, Wagnerʼs Flying Dutchman, Straussʼs Alpine Symphony, Berliozʼ “Royal Hunt and Storm” from The Trojans, etc.), but few have surpassed Beethovenʼs in power and fury.
　With the tempest over, a shepherdʼs pipe is heard in a song of thanksgiving for the renewed freshness and beauty of nature. Timpani and piccolo withdraw, but the trombones, whose sonority was traditionally associated with sacred music until well after Beethovenʼs era, are retained. The joyous hymn is taken up by the full orchestra as if, to quote Edward Downes, “in thanks to some pantheistic god, to Nature, to the sun, to whatever beneficent power one can perceive in a universe that seemed as dark and terrifyingly irrational in Beethovenʼs day as it can in ours. That a man of sorrows and self-centered miseries like Beethoven could glimpse such glory and, by the incomparable alchemy of his art, lift us to share his vision, even if only for a few moments, is a miracle that remains as fresh as tomorrowʼs sunrise.”

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

【Soloist Encore】（11/29up）
Schumann：Abendlied（arr by Sayaka SHOJI）
（Sayaka SHOJI, Violin）

Sold out（11/29up）

Purchase Ticket

Performers and programs are subject to change, or performances may be cancelled.
No refunds except for cancelled performances.