Program
Leonid Desyatnikov
Symphony for soloists, choir and orchestra
The Rite of winter 1949
Richard Strauss
Symphonic poem
Death and transfiguration
Details
Two symphonic compositions, created in the end of the 19th and 20th centuries, will be performed by the musicAeterna orchestra under the baton of Teodor Currentzis.
The music of contemporary Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov, who celebrates his anniversary this year, is often played at musicAeterna concerts, but the large-scale symphonic work for soloists, choir and orchestra, The Rite of Winter 1949, based on texts from a Soviet English schoolbook, will be performed for the first time.
The symphony’s title and lyrics outline a range of associations: the era, Stravinsky and his Rite of Spring, Tchaikovsky, Moscow and sport… However, behind this facade, which can mislead a superficial listener, the sensitive audience will reveal in the score’s transparent, finely delineated landscapes the deep true meaning of the most capacious and beautiful artistic study of our common past, distant to ones and always close to others – just say the password from the worn-out schoolbook: “Moscow is our Capital”.
The restrained tragedy of this music is particularly palpable in its dialogue with Richard Strauss’ symphonic poem Death and Transfiguration. In this case, the title reflects the composer’s intention more directly, but, as in The Rite of Winter, it remains only an external reason for the deep spiritual questions on which music can talk directly to the listener’s heart.
