Concert Symphony Concert from the works of Rodion Shchedrin. David Geringas (cello). Anika Vavic (piano) World famous Mariinsky Ballet and Opera Theatre - Opera and Concert Hall
Schedule for Symphony Concert from the works of Rodion Shchedrin. David Geringas (cello). Anika Vavic (piano) 2022
Composer: Rodion Shchedrin Piano: Anika Vavic Cello: David Geringas
Orchestra: Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. Sotto voce concerto Soloist:
David Geringas (cello)
Piano Concerto No 4 Soloist: Anika Vavic (piano)
Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra
David Geringas is one of the most versatile musicians of our time. The cellist and conductor works with an unusually broad repertoire from early baroque to contemporary music. The native Lithuanian was the first to perform many compositions by Russian and Lithuanian avantgarde composers in the West. For his international engagement for Lithuanian music and composers he received the highest accolades from his native country.
Boris Tishchenko once said that in musical terms the 20th century ended
with the death of Shostakovich. Rodion Shchedrin refuted this in an
interview: “I think that Tishchenko, other contemporaries and myself, our art,
all form the branches of the tree of Russian music. Specifically
Russian, with its particular mentality, with its particular conformities.” This
is no mere vociferous statement. At the age of seventy-eight, Shchedrin has
written a vast number of works, and he continues to compose with
the same youthful energy and enthusiasm. His life covers an entire
era – from Shostakovich and Sviridov, who were his senior contemporaries,
to others the same age, such as Tishchenko, Slonimsky, Schnittke and
the next generation of Russian composers. But of course this is not what is
important. Shchedrin least of all resembles a “living classic” –
spirited and unconstrained, at interviews and press conferences he seems very
young indeed, a childishly simple and approachable man. His music is just
the same – always bright, lively and witty; charming, like
the man himself is charming, open to all and raising no barriers in his
intercourse. He does not try to write in a complex style, and he is far
from any “cerebral” approach, but the simplicity of his music has nothing
to do with primitiveness. It is the simplicity of a healthy creative
nature; of a musician who understands his calling as composers did in
the good old days when to be a creator one did not have to invent
unintelligible concepts or to saturate the music with allusions and
references to all possible eras and styles. And it is the simplicity of
a tremendously gifted man who can, as Haydn did before him, lean on his
predecessors and be intensely appealing. And, also like him, he can compose only
to order, in any genre proffered, and always with pleasure.
His commissions come from illustrious individuals as well as from all sorts
of organisations who want a new opus by an internationally renowned
composer in their collections. It is often other famous musicians who have been
the initiators of new works – it was Rostropovich who initiated
the creation of the opera Lolita, it was Lorin Maazel who
initiated The Enchanted Wanderer, and there are countless other
such examples. Being in such demand, it should come as no surprise that
the composer’s life is always on the move – constant tours and
travel, and the composer even has three permanent homes – in Moscow,
Munich and Lithuania. Movement also forms the essence of his music, which
is based on contrasts of rhythm and kinds of motion. Other typical features
include the vivid timbre thinking and expression of “Russianness”.
Shchedrin’s music is performed all across the globe, and may frequently
be heard in Moscow and St Petersburg. The Mariinsky Theatre is by no
means the least important concert venue for the composer. Connections
with the theatre date back to 1978, when Yuri Temirkanov, who conducted
the premiere of Dead Souls at the Bolshoi Theatre, brought
the production to the Mariinsky Theatre. Then the role of
Chichikov was brilliantly performed by Sergei Leiferkus, and this role remains
one of the greatest in the singer’s repertoire to this day. This
season, the opera was once again performed at the Mariinsky
Theatre – after languishing forgotten for almost thirty years, being
performed on extremely rare occasions in Russia. Last season, the theatre
staged the Russian premiere of the opera The Enchanted
Wanderer to great acclaim, as well as a new production of
the ballet The Little Humpbacked Horse with choreography by
Alexei Ratmansky, who is at present working on the ballets Anna
Karenina and Carmen Suite.
Schedule for Symphony Concert from the works of Rodion Shchedrin. David Geringas (cello). Anika Vavic (piano) 2022
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