Concert Program: January 2026 A
Two of my favorite D minors, as borrowed from Chailly
It’s a whole new year.
(I’m going to try to experiment with popping these cover images into the articles themselves because they don’t display at all inside the article and I do spend quite a bit of time picking them and reach out to the photographers to say thanks for their work.)
I’ll admit that this programming comes directly from that video of Chailly and the Concertgebouw in an open rehearsal with Maria João Pires where she prepared the wrong concerto and played this one from memory on the fly.
But it is a spectacular program pairing, full of dark tones and tragedy and beauty and Viennese elegance.
And it sort of inspired the future pairings you’ll see of matching Beethoven’s piano concertos with Shostakovich symphonies and potentially Mozart with Mahler or Bruckner. I love that.
So that’s what we’ve got for January’s first program:
They do make for a long program. This playlist comes to right at 100 minutes, which I guess is fine: add 20 minutes for an intermission and another ten for shuffling and resetting between pieces and then you’re up to a two-hour program.
I try to keep these programs to around 70-80 minutes minimum, up to maybe 90 minutes, but 100+ minutes of playing time gets a bit to the long end of a program, I think.
In any case, this is what we’ve got for this month. Nothing here is groundbreaking or obscure or rare, but we’ll get there. I’ve taught both of these pieces before and adore them. They’re deeply satisfying, profound works that reward continued listening and exploration and meditation.
We’ll get around to some more obscure stuff later in the month, but for now, enjoy some wonderful classics.