Henri Dutilleux. Symphony No 2 Le double
Igor Stravinsky. Jeu de cartes. Ballet in three hands
Soloist: Boris Andrianov
Sergei Rakhmaninov. Piano Concerto No 3 in D Minor
Soloist: Alexander Romanovsky
Maurice Ravel. Bolero
Gergiev is known for the sheer emotion he brings to conducting and as a larger-than-life, passionate Russian who leads with his chest like a wrestler and talks in terms of the visceral: he once took pride in being able to ''smell the blood'' in his version of The Rite of Spring. These days, he insists life is simmering down a bit.
The Miami Herald
The special virtues of the Mariinsky are its depth of ensemble across the sections of the orchestra and its special color; there is a warmth to the strings and woodwinds that strikes me as more intimate than the colder precision you often hear from major orchestras.
South Florida Classical Review
Sergei Vasilievich Rakhmaninov wrote his Piano Concerto No 3 at
a time when his skill was at last freed from the web of doubts,
self-limitations and external hindrances and ha had become truly mature
and powerful. The Concerto’s premiere took place during an American
your on 28 and 30 November 1909 in New York. The music of the Concerto
clearly depicts not just the maestro’s maturity, but also some new kind
of scale, breadth and freedom… It is one of the composer’s most
“Russian” works. It is often referred to as a “concerto of songs” and a
“poem about home”. The musical tale, dramatic, with tragic episodes,
always lyrically decorated, may be likened to a “struggle between light
and shadow”. “Light’s conquest” in the Finale is a veritable hymn of
joy, one that was particularly resonant in the atmosphere of Russia in
the late 1900s. The middle section, the intermezzo – a sphere that is
deeply personal, music where the present and memories of the past are
miraculously interwoven – resounds as an enigma and, to a great extent,
a herald of the future (not just the “dénouement” of the Concerto, but
also in subsequent works by the composer). | “In 1928, at the request of Mme Rubinstein, I composed Bolero for
orchestra. It is a dance in measured tempo, utterly unchanging, in
terms of melody, harmony and rhythm, and the rhythm is constantly
beaten out by a drum. The only element of variety is brought in by the
orchestral crescendo,” wrote Ravel twenty years later in his Autobiographical Notes.
The restrained, mournful and impossibly elongated melody (thirty-four
bars!) with its unchanging theme is placed on top of the consistently
repeated rhythm… When, after the consistently repeated use of the
theme, the sound attains apocalyptical power, when the melody suddenly
begins to split into separate intonations, when the unexpected shift of
tonality almost tears the theme from the steel carcass of the rhythm
and throws it into the precipice of impending catastrophe – we are left
with the sensation that the world is crashing down around us… |
| user_name | | Exit |
