Bertie Baigent and Olga Paschenko: Beethoven & Clara Schumann

Bertie Baigent, winner of the Rotterdam Conducting Competition, leads the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century in music by Beethoven and Mayer. Keyboard virtuoso Olga Pashchenko solos in Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto.

Bertie Baigent conducts Beethoven
English conductor Bertie Baigent is a rapidly rising star who made his mark last year with the glittering win at the International Conducting Competition Rotterdam, where he also led the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. Orchestra and conductor meet again in this concert that begins and ends with Beethoven. The opening piece is the Overture Coriolan, Beethoven's emotional take on Heinrich von Collin's tragedy of the same name.
At the premiere of that piece in 1807, Beethoven's Fourth Symphony also sounded for the first time. It is his most finely crafted orchestral work: "a Greek maiden between the two Norse gods of the Third and Fifth," as Schumann put it.

Olga Pashchenko plays Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto
Besides Beethoven, two female composers have important roles in this program. Long before she became Mrs. Schumann, the then 14-year-old Clara Wieck composed a mature and extremely virtuosic Piano Concerto, convincingly confirming her fame as a "keyboard lioness," alongside such luminaries as Liszt. The soloist is the Russian Olga Pashchenko, an internationally celebrated pianist who plays virtually everything keyboard, from organ and harpsichord to fortepiano and concert grand.
Today somewhat forgotten, but in life Emilie Mayer was at least as well known as her contemporary Clara Schumann, with numerous symphonies, chamber music and opera. Her Second Concert Overture combined the power of Beethoven with the élégance of Mendelssohn.