Archived event
Performance details
Friday 15 September 2023 at 7.30pm
Saturday 16 September 2023 at 7.30pm
Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall
Featuring
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Xian Zhang conductor
Joyce Yang piano
Program
Tchaikovsky Eugene Onegin: Polonaise
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.3
Smetana Má vlast (Vltava, Blaník and Šárka)
About this performance
Perfect for first-time and long-time concertgoers alike, deep connection to place and warm nostalgia are at the heart of this exceptionally beautiful, lyrical program of music inspired by the composers’ homelands.
- Tchaikovsky's ear-worm of a Polonaise (a dance of Polish origin) depicts a lavish ball scene in his 1879 work Eugene Onegin – an opera based on Pushkin’s verse novel of the same name.
- Following a long concert tour of America in 1909, Rachmaninov returned home to Russia where he spent the summer in the countryside outside of Moscow. This time at home not only renewed his spirit, but the natural landscape inspired the lyrical melodies of his Piano Concerto No.3 – one of the most memorable (and hummable) works for piano and orchestra. The extraordinary South Korean pianist Joyce Yang joins the MSO to perform this incredible work.
- Despite becoming deaf almost as soon as he started writing Má vlast (My Homeland), Czech composer Smetana’s intimate and powerful expression of his homeland became one of his most celebrated works. The ebb and flow of the Moldau (Vltava) river running through Prague, a folkloric tale of a slighted girl’s revenge, and a poem depicting a mystical mountain and its sleeping army are all part of this work that heavily inspired the development of film composition in the 20th century.
Duration: approx. 2 hours including interval
