LET TIME STAND STILL FOR A BIT

There are moments in music when the world stops for a moment. The Andante in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 is such a moment, as is the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler's 5th Symphony: a love letter in tones that the composer wrote to his beloved Alma from his composer's cottage. Both works are at the centre of the Wiener Symphoniker's tour with conductor Omer Meir Wellber. "Music," he says, "must touch people, challenge them, be among them."

Omer Meir Wellber seeks precisely this self-evidence in his conducting, but also in his work as music director of the Volksoper in Vienna and the opera in Palermo. Gustav Mahler's music corresponds to Wellber's understanding of bringing the everyday into art. And he wrote down his deep attachment to Mozart, as well as his present-day view of the composer, in his book "The Fear, the Risk and the Love" when he conducted the DaPonte operas at the Semperoper. The Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki, whose career began with sensational Chopin interpretations, also seeks contemporary passion in Mozart.

The tour of the Wiener Symphoniker leads from Erlangen and Warsaw via Hamburg, Cologne, Barcelona and Zaragoza to Amsterdam. At the stop in the Berlin Philharmonie, the South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho will discover Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto with the orchestra, and Omer Meir Wellber will tap Beethoven's 5th Symphony for its presentness.