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Pianist Menahem Pressler has made recording and interpretation history for more than half a century with the Beaux Arts Trio, which he founded in 1955. Pressler was born in Magdeburg in 1923 and fled the National Socialist regime with his family. The grand seigneur of piano gave his long-overdue debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in January 2014 with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G major, K. 453. The audience hailed Pressler with a standing ovation; the press raved about the “masterful exhilaration” of his musicality and his “unique tone, as full as it was intimate”. For his appearance at this year’s New Year’s Eve Concerts in the Philharmonic Hall, Pressler has selected Mozart again: the Piano Concerto in A major, K. 488, composed during Mozart’s prime in Vienna and one of his most beautiful contributions to the genre.The New Year’s Eve Concerts open with Sir Simon Rattle conducting music by Jean-Philippe Rameau: a suite of instrumental pieces from the opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes show French Baroque music at its finest. Following the intermission, the musicians ring in the new year in a lively way with Slavic strains: an orchestral suite from Zoltán Kodály’s charming folk opera Háry János as well as a selection from the popular Slavonic Dances by Antonín Dvořák.