Friday 18, July - 20h - Opéra Berlioz / Le Corum

Orchestre Philharmonique de l’Oural
Conductor DMITRI LISS

VADIM REPIN, violon

Boris Blacher
Variations Paganini


Serge Rachmaninov/Ottorino Respighi
Cinq Études-tableaux 

La mer et les mouettes en la mineur opus 39 n°2

La fête foraine en sol mineur opus 33 n°7

Marche funèbre en ut mineur opus 39 n°7

Le petit chaperon rouge et le loup en la mineur opus 39 n°6

Marche orientale en ré Majeur opus 39 n°9

Jean Sibelius
Concerto pour violon et orchestre en ré mineur opus 47

For his Etudes-tableaux, Rachmaninov took inspiration from various sources (genre scenes, tales by Perrault, Böcklin’s paintings…) whilst refusing to explain himself. To this is added an extra-musical idea, which, Rachmaninov was strongly convinced, ‘was his business alone’. When Respighi wanted to orchestrate five of these studies, Rachmaninov consented to give them titles, which are supposed to reveal the mysteries of his intentions. Respighi colours these tableaux in his own way, luxuriant, poetic and yet suggestive, as close as possible to the titles.

Sibelius Concerto: Violinist Viktor Nováček, who gave the premiere of this concerto, had deemed it too difficult so Sibelius was obliged to revise it. The work was then revived in 1905 by Karel Halĩr in Berlin, with Richard Strauss conducting.
This concerto has no other ambition than to express the emotion of the moment, that of a man who, deep in his retreat north of Helsinki, alone in his house surrounded by trees, thinks that he might have been a great violinist but became a composer. Here, Sibelius leaves his native Finland aside and endeavours only to promote his favourite instrument. The violin’s melody unfurls continuously, with considerable lyric generosity. Thus a tranquillity rises to the surface, belied by passages of considerable virtuosity. The orchestra also contradicts the violin’s seeming search for serenity, which Sibelius made the work’s dynamic and dramatic driving force. He thereby establishes new relations between the protagonists of the Concerto for an encounter that, in fact, occurs without particular clashes or tension; a symphonic fusion from which a violin, tender or heroic, emerges against a background of dark but warm colours. Its large, grandiose phrasings, poetry and rhapsodic character have made this concerto a repertoire staple.

 

Catherine Michaud