Phoenix Symphony - Beethoven Piano Concerto

Stephen Hough Performs Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1

The Phoenix Symphony and resident music director Tito Munoz welcomes accomplished pianist Stephen Hough, marking his debut with the world class ensemble by performing Beethoven's ebullient First Piano Concerto. Produced in the composer's early period, the concerto began sowing the seeds of the Romantic musical revolution with its lyrical melodies and light, rapid piano passages that shine a light on both Beethoven and the concerto performer's virtuosic abilities.

Munoz will also lead the orchestra through Strauss' epic and technically demanding tone poem Ein Heldenleben, a title that translates to 'A Hero's Life'. A grand sonic self-portrait, the symphony certainly backs up its composer's apparent lack of false modesty with its soaring orchestrations of a Nietzsche-inspired quest of fulfilment, journeying through his life, loves and triumphs, as well as summing up the career that preceded it with familiar quotations from earlier works.