Christian Blackshaw, Sergei Redkin (piano) and Valery Gergiev

PERFORMERS:
Christian Blackshaw (piano)
Sergei Redkin (piano), recipient of the 3^rd prize at the Tchaikovsky International Competition (2015)
The Mariinsky Orchestra
Conductor: Valery Gergiev

PROGRAMME:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major, KV 595

Dmitry Shostakovich
Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op. 35

A refined programme has been chosen to conclude the festival – Mozart’s final piano concerto and Shostakovich’s first piano concerto. Mozart’s Twenty-Seventh, the embodiment of “pure order” (as expressed by the musicologist Mikhail Druskin), will be performed by Christian Blackshaw, a pianist who unites two schools – the British and the St Petersburg. A refined style and ideal aesthetic taste – Blackshaw’s finest features – emerged in his interpretations of all of Mozart’s sonatas. It is with eagerness that we await “his word” in the Mozart Concerto.

Sergei Redkin, a student of the St Petersburg Piano School (class of Olga Kurnavina and Alexander Sandler), also studied as a composer under Alexander Mnatsakanian. This may be observed in his impeccably balanced, intelligent and refined interpretations of contemporary piano music – concerti by Shostakovich, Shchedrin, Prokofiev and Kapustin. So, even physically similar to a young Shostakovich, he will be performing this music absolutely authentically.