成人快手

John Toal introduces the Ulster Orchestra, conducted by their Chief Conductor Rafael Payare, live from the Ulster Hall as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival. The programme features works by Smetana, Tchaikovsky, Schnittke and Shostakovich.

Smetana: Overture - The Bartered Bride
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23

8.25: INTERVAL

8.45
Schnittke: Moz-Art 脿 la Haydn
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9 in E flat major, Op.70

Vikingur 脫lafsson Piano
Ulster Orchestra
Rafael Payare Conductor

This evening's programme begins with the Overture to Smetana's most famous opera, The Bartered Bride. It is sparkling, uplifting and quintessentially Czech. Written in 1863, before Smetana had composed the opera, it's one of the most popular of all curtain-raisers. From its opening gesture of a jubilant crowd on carnival day, to its bustling string fugues suggesting the village gossips at work, it perfectly establishes the mood of the high-spirited comedy to follow.

Fast-forward 11 years to Christmas Eve 1874 and Tchaikovsky's play-through of his First Piano Concerto for Nikolai Rubinstein, a colleague at the Moscow Conservatory. Rubinstein pronounced the new work vulgar and, save "two or three pages", worthless. The composer was mortified but refused to change a note, and he was right: since its premi猫re in Boston in October 1875, with Hans von B眉low at the piano, the concerto has been one of the most popular in the repertory. Even Rubinstein was eventually won over. The work is now a perennial favourite, an archetype of the great Romantic concerto, with an immediately recognisable opening.

During the interval John Toal talks to this evening's soloist, the Icelandic pianist Vikingur 脫lafsson, and features a selection of his chamber music recordings.

We stay with Russian music for the second half of the programme, which opens with Alfred Schnittke's Moz-Art 脿 la Haydn - a witty, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the music of Mozart and Haydn, composed in 1977. It's followed by Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony. Written in 1945, the piece was intended to commemorate the Soviet victory over Germany in the Second World War. The composer himself had said two years earlier that the symphony would be a work for large forces including orchestra, soloists and chorus with the idea of celebrating the Russian people and the Red Army's liberation of their homeland. However, when it finally appeared the Symphony was without parts for either soloists or chorus, and the work's "light" style surprised many. Shortly after its premi猫re, the work was censored and banned from performance by the Soviet authorities.