The Philadelphia Orchestra performs Beethoven, Strauss and Shostakovich for Carnegie Hall Live

The intrepid Philadelphia Orchestra, under the direction of its fearless Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin, returns to Carnegie Hall with a program of some of the most profoundly emotional meditations found in the orchestral repertoire. The performance includes Beethoven's deeply felt "Eroica" Symphony, whose funeral march has rhythmic patterns echoed in Strauss's post-war lament Metamorphosen. Also on the program is Shostakovich's playfully dark and virtuosic Cello Concerto No. 1 with Johannes Moser.

Hear it live at 8:00 p.m. EST on February 21, 2014.

Program at a Glance

RICHARD STRAUSS Metamorphosen, A Study for 23 Solo Strings Tonight's concert opens with one of Strauss's last works, his Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings, composed in the wake of German defeat in the Second World War and amidst the cultural and physical destruction of the composer's world. The qualities of elegy and lament become explicit at the end, when Strauss briefly quotes the opening of the funeral march from the "Eroica" and at that point in the score marks IN MEMORIAM!

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 107 Shostakovich wrote two cello concertos for his compatriot and friend Mstislav Rostropovich. One month after the First Concerto's successful premiere in Leningrad in October 1959, the great Russian cellist performed the US premiere in the Academy of Music with Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Shostakovich was present, and then oversaw the first recording of the piece with those same forces.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, "Eroica" Beethoven's Third Symphony, the monumental "Eroica," marked a turning point in the composer's life as well as in the history of the symphony. It was the signal work that ushered in his "heroic" middle period and broke with many of the expectations of what a symphony should be. The piece at first baffled many because of its length, complexity, and unusual form--an imposing first movement, a gigantic funeral march, a lively scherzo with playful horn trio, and a formidable concluding set of variations. Despite some of the initial bewilderment, the symphony became within a few years one of the most performed and influential pieces of orchestral music ever composed.