Orchestre National de France
death and resurrection
programme
valentin silvestrov
Hymn 2001
Leoš Janáček
Taras Bulba
Maurice Ravel
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major
Sergei Rachmaninov
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
about
Taras Bulba is one of the best works by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. In this rhapsody for orchestra in three movements, Janáček evokes the misfortunes of the Cossack Taras Bulba, drawing inspiration from the novella of the same name by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Taras Bulba is fighting the Poles. In the first movement he beheads his younger son because he was in love with a Polish woman, fought alongside the Poles and was therefore guilty of treason. In the second movement Taras Bulba is powerless as the Poles imprison, torture and finally execute his other son. As a true martyr, Tars Bulba never gives up the struggle. Janáček succeeded in expressing this colourful, romantic-nationalist story in music that that makes a deep and lasting impression.
Boris Giltburg, winner of the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition, subsequently performs the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand by Maurice Ravel. Ravel was commissioned to write this work by Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist who lost his right arm in the First World War and brother of the famous philosopher Paul Wittgenstein. It is a work in a single movement rich in jazz rhythms and harmonies.
The Orchestre National de France conducted by the Romanian conductor Cristian Măcelaru closes this opening concert of the 2022 Klarafestival with the Symphonic Dances by Sergei Rachmaninov. Rachmaninov composed this work in 1940 on Long Island (New York) and in it he looks back on a rich and varied life. In the first movement Rachmaninov quotes the main theme from his Symphony No. 1, which had received a disastrous premiere. In the third movement he quotes both the Dies Irae theme (a symbol of death) and the Alleluia from the orthodox liturgy (a symbol of resurrection).
Credits
coproduction
Klarafestival, Bozar
in the framework of
The European Galas
image
© Sascha Gusov
