On Sunday 20 July maestro Gergiev will be conducting the World Orchestra for Peace for the fourth time as part of a series of BBC Proms concerts held annually at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
The World Orchestra for Peace was founded by British conductor Sir Georg Solti in 1995 to commemorate fifty years since the founding of the UN. In 1997, following Solti’s death, Valery Gergiev was appointed Director of the ensemble. The World Orchestra for Peace consists of musicians of more than forty various ensembles, many of whom are concert masters and leaders in their own orchestras. The World Orchestra for Peace comes together only a few times a year under special circumstances.
This time the main focus of the evening and the concert programme will be the commemoration of one hundred and fifty years since the birth of Richard Strauss, to whom the World Orchestra for Peace headed by maestro Gergiev will dedicate their performance of a fantaisie symphonique based on themes from the opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (in 2009 Valery Gergiev was Musical Director of the first and to date the only Russian production of this incredibly demanding opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, while in 2013 the Mariinsky label released a recording of Die Frau ohne Schatten in DVD and Blu-ray formats).
Another important event at the concert will come with the European premiere of a work commissioned by the World Orchestra for Peace from British composer Roxanna Panufnik (the daughter of Polish-UK émigré composer Sir Andrzej Panufnik). The work, the world premiere of which was performed by the World Orchestra for Peace under the baton of Valery Gergiev in 2008 in Israel, is called Three Paths to Peace and embodies the composer’s aim for a universal and global composition style; based on the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac, it combines the music traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
The evening will conclude with a performance of Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, Tragische.
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