December 19, 2024 | Zaryadye Concert Hall
III Zaryadye Moscow Winter Music Festival
Soloist – Alexander Romanovsky, piano
Conductor – Vladimir Spivakov
Brahms. Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra in B-flat major, Op. 83
Tchaikovsky. Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
On December 19, the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia will take part in the 3rd Zaryadye Moscow Music Festival once again. The festival is combining in its programme operas in concert, symphony and chamber music of various eras and trends. The NPR with their Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Vladimir Spivakov will play in the second of the Festival concerts. The programme will include masterpieces by Johannes Brahms (Piano Concerto no.2) and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Symphony no.5).
Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2 will be performed in first part. This is a majestic lyrical-epic opus that amazed his contemporaries with its extraordinary beauty and complexity at all levels. The composer added a scherzo (Allegro appassionato) to the traditional three-part form of the cycle, bringing the structure of the whole closer to a symphony. To this day, Brahms's Concerto remains one of the most labor-intensive works for performers.
The soloist will be Alexander Romanovsky, winner of international competitions in Bolzano and Cantu, emeritus member of the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna, artistic director of the Vladimir Krainev Moscow Piano Competition. The New-York Times underlined the perfection of his playing, artistic individuality and noble manner, while British The Guardian called Romanovsky “the genuine champion of the great Russian piano school”. Alexander Romanovsky has been collaborating with Vladimir Spivakov and the NPR for many years both on stage and in recording studios (for instance, with his participation the orchestra directed by the maestro have recorded all Piano Concertos by Rachmaninoff).
The kernel of the concert will be Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony in Vladimir Spivakov's seminal interpretation considered to be one of the most poignant ever. It is one of the composer's most tragic works written in the period of his most intensive and profound contemplations about the main questions of being, that is about moral and faith, an artist's duty and mission, arduous life and dignified death, fight against or submission to fate.
Before the concert (at 18.00) in the Zaryadye Small Hall, Ada Aybinder, musicologist and great expert in Tchaikovsky's oeuvre, will deliver a lecture about the Fifth Symphony by Tchaikovsky. The concerts tickets allow admission to the lecture.