St Petersburg, Concert Hall

The Symphonica ARTica symphony orchestra and Rastrelli Cello Quartet


PERFORMERS:
Soloist: Ulyana Golikova (violin)

The Rastrelli Cello Quartet:
Kirill Kravtsov
Mikhail Degtyaryov
Kirill Timofeyev
Sergei Drabkin

The Symphonica ARTica symphony orchestra of the State Krivoshapko Philharmonic of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
Conductor: Fabio Mastrangelo


PROGRAMME:
Grant Grigorian
Concerto on Yakutian Themes for Violin and Orchestra in G Major

Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Romeo and Juliet, fantasy-overture

Alexander Borodin
Polovtsian Dances from the opera Prince Igor

Nikolai Mikheyev
Taas Haja (Stone Mountain) , symphonic fantasy

Euday Louis Bowman
Twelfth Street Rag

George Gershwin – Igor Frolo – Sergei Drabkin
Rhapsody on themes from the opera Porgy and Bess

Glenn Miller
Moonlight Serenade

Sergei Drabkin
Concerto Grosso à la Russe

Paul Desmond
Take Five

Bill Finegan – Sergei Drabkin
Song of the Volga Boatmen

About the performers

“They are men on a mission. The Rastrelli Cello Quartet is out to cross all genres.”
Strings Magazine (USA)

“Fiendish cello skills!”
Kieler Nachrichten (Germany)

“It is not so much the format of this ensemble that is unique, but rather the unusual skill of the musicians, the team spirit and the ability to entice the audience to follow them.”
Neue Züricher Zeitung (Switzerland)

The Rastrelli Cello Quartet is based in Germany, but in the music world they are known as a Russian ensemble. The name of Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, one of the architects who created the image of the historic centre of St Petersburg, did not appear in the ensemble’s name by chance: three of the musicians in the quartet trained in the St Petersburg cello school.
The Rastrelli Cello Quartet was formed in 2002. The idea of forming a quartet consisting only of cellos proved successful, and this orchestra became the first such ensemble in Russia to receive acclaim both at home and abroad. The geography of the quartet’s tours covers over thirty countries, from the USA to Australia. The ensemble has appeared at almost every major festival in Europe and given more than seven hundred concerts, some two hundred and fifty of them in the USA.
The quartet’s repertoire is highly diverse. Its members are convinced that the cello perfectly suits music of any movement or genre, from the classical legacy to jazz, the Argentinean tango and rock. The quartet only performs arrangements; all of the music at their concerts has been arranged by Sergei Drabkin.
The ensemble seeks out opportunities to combine the timbre of the cello with the sound of other instruments. The Rastrelli Cello Quartet performs programmes with symphony orchestras, appears with clarinettist Giora Feidman, violinist Gilles Apap, the King’s Singers chorus (Great Britain) and collaborates with Russian rock and pop musicians including Andrei Samsonov and Svetlana Surganova. Together with Sergei Shnurov the quartet recorded the album Small Leningrad Symphony, which in November 2014 was in the top ten list of the most popular compositions iTunes Russia for four weeks.


The Symphonica ARTica symphony orchestra of the Yakutia Philharmonic was founded in 2012.
The start of the orchestra’s activities can be linked with international concerts that took place on 10 May and 17 July 2012. These concerts featured musicians of the Yakutia Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Theatre, the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk and Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestras, the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, the State Hermitage Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Syria as well as performers from Spain and China.
In November 2012 as part of celebrations marking three hundred and eighty years since the inclusion of Yakutia into the Russian State, the Symphony Orchestra of the Yakutia Philharmonic performed at Gostiny Dvor in Moscow and at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. Symphonica ARTica is a regular participant at the annual international music festival The Northern Lights, which is dedicated to World Music Day. In 2012 at this festival, together with the State Hermitage Orchestra the ensemble took part in a world premiere of a production of Bortnyansky’s opera Creonte. In 2013 came a festival concert of the Symphony Orchestra of the Yakutia Philharmonic under Fabio Mastrangelo featuring Vladimir Mandrin. As part of the 2014 festival the orchestra performed two concerts – Vivat, the Arctic! with Aitalina Adamova, philharmonic soloists Andrei Dedyukin, Ulyana Golikova and Dmitry Rogov and the concert Enchanting Opera featuring Vladimir Magomadov, Daria Terekhova, Yulia Mennibaeva and Pavel Chervinsky.
In 2014 the musicians of the Symphonica ARTica and the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev performed at concerts of the XIII Moscow Easter Festival in Yakutsk. Also featured in the concerts were Denis Matsuev, Ivan Pochekin and the United Children’s Chorus of Yakutia.
In 2015 as part of the XIV Moscow Easter Festival the Symphonica ARTica orchestra gave a concert in Yakutsk with soloists of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers and the United Chorus of Yakutsk. The same year, on State Day of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Ekaterina Mechetina and the Symphonica ARTica orchestra performed under Natalia Bazaleva at a concert featuring the presentation of a Steinway & Sons piano.
The symphony orchestra works with such conductors as Alexis Soriano, Leo Kremer, Yevgeny Khilkevich, Vladimir Kudrya, Vladimir Shulyakovsky, Alexei Kudrya and Sergei Sviridov and the composers Vladislav Kazenin, Yaroslav Sudzilovsky, Pavel Karmanov, Yevgeny Petrov, Franz Cibulka, Zakhar Stepanov, Kirill Gerasimov, Vladimir Ksenofontov, Nikolai Mikheyev and Yegor Neustroev.
Alexander Trostyansky, Vasily Shcherbakov, Hugo Ticciati, Johan Bridger, Larisa Yudina, Khachatur Badalyan, Anna Kiknadze, Alexander Mitenyov, Anna Makarova, Olesya Tertychnaya, Antonia Cifrone, Boris Andrianov, Dmitry Illarionov, Vladimir Mandrin, Alexander Knyazev and Ivan Pochekin are among performers who have appeared with the orchestra.

 

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