The National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia will take part in the much-loved Great Instrumental Concertos series. The program features three great works of the Concerto genre written by a French, a Russian and a Czech composers, well known all over the world.
The night will start with the First Cello Concerto by Camille Saint-Saëns, the author of the famous miniature The Swan, whose preferred instrument was cello. Adam Carse, well-known English musicologist and expert in orchestration, called the First Cello Concerto by Saint-Saëns ’the only adequately orchestrated Cello Concerto of the 19th Century’ in which the author was most successful in ’light colors and restraint’.
The Variations on a Rococo Theme by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is a virtuoso work, which is compulsory for performing in the final tour of the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow. Academician Boris Asafiev wrote about the Variations that in them:
’there is heard the charm of the composer’s soul greeting affably the universe while the beauty of its sounds softly enwraps the will like the ivy wreathing a tree and makes it submit tenderly and languidly to audible visions-images. In addition, here virtuosity bows down before the simplicity of soulfulness and the poetry of sounds’.
Antonin Dvořák wrote his Cello Concerto for Hanuš Wihan, famous virtuoso, professor of the Prague Conservatory and the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg. The nostalgic tone of the Concerto was partly due to the composer’s longing for his country (Dvořák wrote it in New York) and partly due to the news of the death of his sister-in-law (whom he had loved in his youth). The result of his writing brought him satisfaction:
«The composition makes me happy and I think that I am not mistaken in my pride». Time has proved his rightness.
The soloist in all the three Concertos will be the NPR’s long-time partner, eminent representative of the Russian performing school, world-known master, People’s Artist of Russia Alexander Knyazev playing a Carlo Bergonzi cello from the Russian State Collection. Dvořák’s masterpiece belongs to the most beloved works of the cellist who considers himself to be an extremely Romantic musician and who invariably conquers the audience with his expressive interpretations.
«I would better play Dvořák’s Concerto for the 1001st time than any second-rate current music» — confesses the cellist.
On the NPR’s podium, there will appear Fedor Beznosikov, graduate and teacher of the Moscow Conservatory, laureate of many International and Russian competitions, Music Director of the E.V. Kolobov «Novaya Opera» Moscow Theater, who will become the Principal Conductor there in the next season.