The Royal Danish Orchestra celebrates its 575^th anniversary with Bach, Brahms and Bartók

Conductor: Gábor Takács-Nagy

The orchestra’s history dates back to 1448 to the trumpet corps of the royal court of Christian I. The season’s second symphonic concert celebrates the orchestra’s 575 amazing years of music spanning three centuries.

Experience music that echoes the Royal Danish Orchestra’s unique history. Conductor Leopold Stokowski’s version of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor blends sonorous late Romanticism with Bach’s dynamic pulse. Stokowski conducted the piece on his visit to the Royal Danish Orchestra in 1939, and many are probably familiar with the music from Disney’s Fantasia. 

One of the masters of Romanticism, Johannes Brahms wrote his Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor at the impassioned and tender age of 28. His unattainable love was his confidante Clara Schumann, a married woman and a distinguished pianist. Arnold Schönberg, one of the most prominent composers of the twentieth century, greatly appreciated Brahms’s quartet and orchestrated it with the colourful tonality of our times.

Hungarian Gábor Takács-Nagy, star conductor and music director of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, will round off the celebratory concert with his own specialty, fellow countryman Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra with full orchestral sound and 100 musicians on stage. 

Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata and Fugue, D minor, BWV 565, orchestration by Leopold Stokowski

Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1, G minor, opus 25, orchestration by Arnold Schönberg

Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra