Belgian National Orchestra, Haenchen & Julien-Laferrière

Joseph Haydn’s Second Cello Concerto is one of the pearls of the early cello repertoire. The winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Victor Julien-Laferrière, already scored with this work in his semi-final in 2017 and now returns to Brussels for a new performance with the musicians of the Belgian National Orchestra. The German-Dutch conductor Hartmut Haenchen continues his Bruckner cycle with the last complete symphony: the monumental, all-encompassing Eighth Symphony. With this almost one-and-a-half hour long composition, the constantly self-doubting composer Anton Bruckner delivered his masterpiece: a mighty cathedral of sound that concludes the music of the 19^th century with, among other things, a funeral march and a transfiguration in downright magisterial fashion.