Igor Stravinsky. Jeu de cartes
Ballet in three hands
Rodion Shchedrin. Piano Concerto No. 5
Igor Stravinsky. Oedipus Rex
opera-oratorio (сoncert performance)
Speaker: Alexei Emelianiov, Oedipus: Alexander Timchenko, Greon: Ilya Bannik, Jocasta: Nadezhda Serdyuk, Tiresias: Mikhail Petrenko
Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre
Principal Chorus Master: Andrei Petrenko
Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre
Matsuev, winner of the 1998 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, has much in common with Vladimir Horowitz: the flaring virtuosity, the range of sonority going from a golden whisper to a mighty roar. But Matsuev seems to command equal reserves of intelligent musicianship and fiery showmanship. |
His power: limitless. His octave and scale technique: without comparison. His touch: highly differentiated. Nobody plays quicker, bolder, more transparent. Betimes one has the impression; a five-armed juggler is juggling five barbells of 50 kilo each, as though they were paper balls. Similarly the young Horowitz must have sounded. |
“I date the start of work on Oedipus Rex to
September 1925, but at least five years before that I felt the need to
compose a large-scale dramatic work. Returning at the time from Venice
to Nice in September, I stopped in Genoa to refresh my memories of the
town, where in 1911 I celebrated my fifth wedding anniversary. It was
here in a kiosk selling books that I found a volume about the life of
Francis of Assisi, which I bought and read that very evening. It is due
to this reading that I owe the birth of the idea, albeit in ill-defined
forms, that had often appeared to me ever since I had become déraciné.
The idea was that the text used in the music could acquire monumental
status by means, so to speak, of reverse translation, from the secular
to the sacred... |
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“I wrote the Fifth Piano Concerto with ease, effortlessly. I only sweated a bit from the second cadence in the finale. If the degree of virtuoso effectiveness is insufficient, then the entire work can ‘sink’. I knew that well.
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