{"id":66784,"date":"2013-02-18T23:14:20","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T21:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=66784"},"modified":"2016-11-27T05:05:06","modified_gmt":"2016-11-27T04:05:06","slug":"russian-romantics-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/russian-romantics-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Verona, Teatro Filarmonico: Russian Romantics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Verona, Teatro Filarmonico, Symphonic Season \u00a02012\/2013
\n<\/em>Orchestra dell\u2019Arena di Verona
\n<\/strong>Conductor \u00a0Silvio Viegas
\n<\/strong>Piano\u00a0\u00a0Giuseppe Albanesi
\n<\/strong>Sergej Rachmaninoff<\/em>\u00a0: piano \u00a0Concerto n.2 in C minor
\nAlessandro Solbiati:<\/em>\u00a0Raggio
\nModest Petrovi\u010d Musorgskij: A Night on Bald Mountain
\nAleksandr P. Borodin:<\/em>\u00a0Polovesian Dances from the opera Prince Igor
\nVerona,\u00a0 16th February, 2013
\n<\/em>
\nExcept for a brief contemporary piece(now a fixed item at each concert) by the milanese conductor\u00a0Alessandro Solbiati,\u00a0\u00a0the\u00a0 8th<\/sup>\u00a0concert\u00a0 of the\u00a0Arena di Verona\u2019s symphonic season at the\u00a0Teatro Filarmonico,\u00a0was completely dedicated to Russian music. The programme included three works, which, thanks to their intensely melodic and romantic vein, are much-loved by audiences, and consequently have been used and abused in numerous film and television sound-tracks, and a Broadway musical score.
\nThe evening opened with \u00a0Rachmaninoff\u2019s piano concerto n.2,<\/strong>\u00a0 performed by the pianist\u00a0Giuseppe Albanese<\/strong>\u00a0with\u00a0 the\u00a0Arena Orchestra\u00a0conducted by\u00a0Silvio Viegas<\/strong>. \u00a0After the initial series of \u00a0solemn, \u00a0weighted chords growing progressively stronger, reminiscent of knolling bells, the pianist launches passionately into a turbine of an arpeggio accompaniment over which the warm dark sound of the strings sings an intense and nostalgic theme clearly inspired by traditional Russian music. The ensuing movement alternates heart-rending melodies charged with pathos, with strongly dramatic moments, where the virtuosic flourishes of the piano, often rhapsodic, are woven into the rich orchestral fabric. The introduction of ulterior beautiful secondary themes are often entrusted to individual string or wind sections. Likewise, in the second movement, one of the most beautiful and famous creations of the composer with its moving melodies in the great romantic tradition of Tchaikovsky,\u00a0 individual instruments have the pleasure of exchanging and dove-tailing exquisitely beautiful and expressive phrases,\u00a0 accompanied by the piano. After the flourishes and arabesques of the piano at the opening bars of the third movement, Allegro Scherzando, one of Rachmaninoff\u2019s most beloved themes appears, first on the oboe and violas in a full and singing sonority, before being taken up in an onirical mood by the piano.\u00a0 A rich and exciting build-up leads to a restatement of the luscious theme played majestically, before hurtling\u00a0 towards the exultant close.
\nThe soloist faced the technical challenge with panache, choosing rather fast tempos which highlighted his technical abilities and the virtuosic quality of the concerto though at the expense of an overall profounder sonority and a greater expressivity \u00a0in the more tender and lyrical moments. On the other hand his very direct dynamic approach, strong and tenacious to the end, \u00a0made no concessions to facile sentimentality. \u00a0The conductor, Silvio Viergas, at his debut with this orchestra, seemed to have a few difficulties establishing his tempos with the orchestra which, at the beginning, resulted in a moment of instability between the orchestra, whose\u00a0forte\u00a0in any case engulfed the\u00a0 sound of the piano, and soloist.\u00a0 In general, the string sections suffered from a scarcity of a well-knit sound, and the introduction to the fugue by the violins in the last movement \u00a0was untidy. The pianist received an enthusiastic reception, with repeated curtain calls, from the capacity audience, and rewarded them with three virtuosic encores including\u00a0Etincelles\u00a0by\u00a0Moszkowski,\u00a0and\u00a0Earl Wild\u2019s\u00a0brilliantversion of\u00a0George Gershwin\u2019s Embraceable You.
\nThe second half of the programme opened with a short incisive but refined work<\/strong>,\u00a0Raggio<\/em>, by the Milanese composer\u00a0Alessandro Solbiati<\/strong>,<\/strong>\u00a0 dedicated \u00a0to the composer Nicol\u00f2 Castiglioni. The piece is striking for a clear and recognizable structure which, through a sensitive and expressive use of luminous colours, crystalline instrumentation and well-balanced sonorities efficaciously combines contrasting and complimentary shadings building up to the climatic apotheosis, before slipping away in a release of tension to a quiet and suspended ending.\u00a0 A well-played and accurate performance by the orchestra who showed the work to advantage, capturing the nuances.The remaining part of the programme was dedicated to two enormously popular works;\u00a0Modest Mussorgsky\u2019s symphonic poem,\u00a0A Night on Bald Mountain<\/em><\/strong>,<\/strong>\u00a0inspired by Russian legends surrounding the celebrations of Walpurgis night, the witches\u2019 feast,\u00a0 suitably appropriated by Walt Disney as the sound-track for his film\u00a0Fantasia,\u00a0and\u00a0 the\u00a0Polovesian Dances\u00a0from the opera\u00a0Prince Igor<\/em>\u00a0by\u00a0Borodin.\u00a0<\/strong>Both these works are representative of the nationalistic movement in music,\u00a0the promoters of which sought vivid emotional expression rather than classic beauty, and employed melodic style and idiom distinctive to their own country. The two composers, as well as their orchestrator\u00a0Rimsky-Korsakov,\u00a0belonged to the group known as The Five, who established a Russian school of composition as a reaction to the reigning hegemony of the German school and these works reflect the strong influence of traditional Russian folk music with elements of both Russian and oriental melodies and rhythms. \u00a0Both works contain strong, driving rhythms which enrapture the audience, and the succession of such seductive and beautiful themes of the Polovesian Dances were so popular that they were adapted as an \u00a0successful and beloved Broadway musical.
\nThe orchestra had no difficulty sweeping the audience into the richly portrayed atmospheres of leggends, fairy-tales,sorceresses, exciting rhythms and poignant melodies of the two talented and original composers and their brilliant orchestrator friend and colleague. A special mention goes to the brass section, consistently precise and compact. The last dance propelled the piece precipitously to an exhilarating end, received with an ovation from the audience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Verona, Teatro Filarmonico, Symphonic Season \u00a02012\/2013 Orchestra dell\u2019Arena di Verona Conductor \u00a0Silvio Viegas Piano\u00a0\u00a0Giuseppe Albanesi Sergej Rachmaninoff\u00a0: piano […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":48364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3296,9503,14678,9354,6545,9502,7235,793],"class_list":["post-66784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-alessandro-solbiati","tag-alexander-borodin","tag-concerti","tag-foreign-readers","tag-orchestra-dellarena-di-verona","tag-sergej-rachmaninoff-it","tag-silvio-viegas","tag-teatro-filarmonico-di-verona"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}