Music by Elgar and Glière in Zaryadye

January 21, 2025 | Zaryadye Concert Hall
Soloist – Alexander Ramm, cello
Conductor – Arsenty Tkachenko
Elgar. Concerto for cello and orchestra in E minor, Op. 85
Glière. Symphony No. 3 in B minor («Ilya Mourometz»), Op. 42

BY TICKET

Conductor Arsenty Tkachenko has built the new program in the Zaryadye Hall of two extraordinary music works of the beginning of the 20th century written by an English and a Russian classics – Edward Elgar and Reinhold Glière. Both compositions despite their world fame are rare guests in Moscow. Moreover, they both, to a certain degree, followed the national traditions in classical music.

Edward Elgar's name is tightly connected with the so-called British Renaissance at the threshold of the 20th century, which overcame the crisis the British music had suffered for about 200 years after Henry Purcell's death. For English people Elgar's music even now is the epitome of the Golden Age of Romanticism while his Cello Concerto is considered to be one of his most important works. The Concerto was written in 1919, and the author reflected in it all his pains connected with World War 1 (Elgar stated that the central point of the composition was man with his contemplations of the sense of life.)

The legendary cellist Jacqueline Du Pré aroused the world fame of the Concerto at the beginning of the 1960s. The astounding debut of the 17-year-old artist in the London Wigmore Hall with the BBC Symphony Orchestra turned into triumph and the piece got to be her signature during all her too short career and became an indelible part of the repertoire of all great cello players.

In the Zaryadye Hall the soloist will be Alexander Ramm, one of most sought-after Russian cellists, Silver Award winner at the Tchaikovsky International Competition and awardee at many other music contests including those in Beijing and Paulo Cello Competition in Helsinki, winner of the RF President Award for young artists.

Part 2 will be given to Reinhold Glière's Third Symphony “Ilya Mourometz” written in 1911, - an outstanding event in the Silver Age music culture marked with the Glinka Award. The author provided the score with a detailed program in the bylina (folk story) style. It followed the traditions of the Mighty Five, including Borodin's epic “Heroic Symphony”, and developed the topic much in fashion in those times among artists and poets. Glière's symphonic composition is grandiose in both its idea and its length (70-80 minutes) with a four-time bigger orchestra which includes a lot of percussion instruments and a celesta.

All traditional four movements of the cycle were titled: “Wandering Pilgrims. Ilya Mouromets and Svyatogor”, “Solovei the Brigand”, “The Palace of Prince Vladimir”, “The Feats of Valor and the Petrification of Ilya Mouromets”. 'The spectacular breath-taking score yields nothing in its mastership and marvelous orchestral decisions to Stravinsky's “Fire-Bird”, written a year earlier, and may even be superior to it, - writes musicologist Anton Sofronov. - Some “wild” timbral chords anticipate even Prokofiev's “Scythian Suite” written soon after this symphony... Glière's music language fits the traditional frames but goes to their extreme borders with the help of harmonic findings which we are indebted to Rimsky-Korsakov.'

 

One thought on “Music by Elgar and Glière in Zaryadye

  1. Доставили огромное удовольствие! за редко исполняемые произведения.
    Благодарен за музыкальное действо! Техничное и живое, мастерство исполнения, с душой, восхищает. Большое спасибо за открытия, для нас, для меня –
    Симфония № 3 си минор “Илья Муромец”,[1] Соч. 42 – большое симфоническое произведение русского композитора Рейнгольда Глиера.
    Струнные и ударные, в Вашем исполнении, ещё долго будут звучать во мне.
    Удачи и берегите себя, для нас, рядовых слушателей

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