The second stop on our tour with Joana Mallwitz and Artist in Residence Alice Sara Ott as solo pianist takes us to the heart of the Ruhr region, to the Alfried-Krupp-Saal at the Philharmonie in Essen’s Saalbau. The original Art Nouveau building was destroyed in 1943, rebuilt in the 1950s, and renovated and brought up to the latest technical standards in the early 2000s.

Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto moves between darkness and bright lyricism. Mozart had already chosen the key of C minor for one of his two famous minor-key piano concertos, which the pianist Beethoven particularly admired. After that, the stage will be crowded. In 1905, Gustav Mahler still lamented about his Fifth: “[It] is a cursed work. Nobody gets it.” 120 years later, of course, that is no longer the case. With its five movements in three sections and the key changes that seemed jarring at the time, the symphony is now one of his most frequently performed works. The Adagietto is world-famous—the moment of calm in which only string instruments play. Film fans will likely immediately recall Visconti’s classic film “Death in Venice,” in which it is used with dramatic perfection.