A North American tour by the Mariinsky Orchestra and Stradivarius Ensemble

Under the baton of Valery Gergiev the musicians will be presenting a programme largely consisting of works by Richard Strauss, Dmitry Shostakovich and Igor Stravinsky as well as works by the contemporary composers Rodion Shchedrin and Matthias Pintscher.

The tour opens on 26 October with a concert by the Stradivarius Ensemble at the Koerner Hall, the new hall of the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. This will be the first such long-awaited appearance here by Valery Gergiev as a conductor, having expressed his wish to perform here several years ago during a visit while the hall was still under construction. The maestro specially arranged extra time for an open rehearsal and master-class to give students of the Royal Conservatory to hear not only the brilliant end result but also the laborious work that goes into producing a perfect sound in the conditions of a new space. The playbill includes Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen, Dmitry Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 110, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.

The next stopping point of the tour will be in Ann Arbor (Michigan), where on 27 October at the concert hall of the University of Michigan the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev will present Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben and Dmitry Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto with Denis Matsuev performing the piano solo. The highlight of the concert will come with a performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, marking the impending centenary of this revolutionary piece of music and its contemporary – the concert hall of the University of  A Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The same programme will be repeated the next day on 28 October in Newark at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

The Mariinsky Orchestra has prepared two rich evening programmes for American audiences in Chapel Hill at the Memorial Hall of the University of North Carolina on 29 and 30 October. The first concert will be a further tribute to mark the centenary of Stravinsky’s masterpiece: the concert will open with the A merican premiere of young German composer Matthias Pintscher’s orchestral work Chute d’Étoiles Part 1. Jointly commissioned by the North Carolina Performing Arts Center and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, this work was conceived as a unique tribute by its composer to Le Sacre du printemps and its brilliant creator, and it makes use of two trumpet themes from Stravinsky’s score. The concert programme also features Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto with Denis Matsuev and Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben.

The main event of the second evening will be the mono-opera Cleopatra and the Snake by Rodion Shchedrin, whose eightieth birthday is being widely feted by the Mariinsky Theatre throughout 2012. The ensemble’s performances in North Carolina come to a close with Le Sacre du printemps and Dmitry Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony.

The final stage in this marathon tour comes with a concert in New York on 31 October at Carnegie Hall. The Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev regularly perform here with programmes of symphony music by Berlioz, Mahler and Tchaikovsky. This time the maestro and the orchestra will be performing Rodion Shchedrin’s The Little Humpbacked Horse, Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony and Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben.