Archived performance
Performance details
10 May 2019 at 7.30pm
11 May 2019 at 7.30pm
13 May 2019 at 6.30pm
Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
About this performance
Program
Mussorgsky Night on Bald Mountain (original version)
Chopin Piano Concerto No.1
Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet (excerpts)
Featuring
Stanislav Kochanovsky conductor
Yulianna Avdeeva piano
The concert
After his memorable debut conducting Rachmaninov with the MSO in 2017, rising Russian maestro Stanislav Kochanovsky returns to transport us to Shakespeare’s fabled tale of the star-cross’d lovers, Romeo and Juliet, in excerpts from Prokofiev’s masterful ballet score including the famous intimate balcony scene, dramatic climaxes like the Death of Tybalt and the pulsating beat of Dance of the Knights.
The eventual success of this powerful ballet which mirrors the bard’s tale with astonishing conviction, belies the tortured history of its creation in Soviet Russia when his early version of the score was heavily censored. This is Prokofiev at the height of his inspiration offering some of the composer’s most sensuous, melodic and dramatic music.
Mussorgsky’s A Night on the Bare Mountain, inspired by a witches’ sabbath in a story by Gogol, makes for an ominous, eerie curtain-raiser.
Pictured: Stanislav Kochanovsky | Image credit: Marco Borggreve
