Concerto "Hommage à Dimitri Chostakovitch" - Festival Musiques Interdites

Concerto "Hommage à Dimitri Chostakovitch" - Festival Musiques Interdites Two of Shostakovich’s final masterpieces, ushering in a new and intensely dramatic, profoundly human style of writing at the end of his career. The Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok: a song cycle based on verses by the poet Alexander Blok, composed in 1967 for Galina Vishnevskaya, who gave its premiere on October 25, 1967 at the Moscow Conservatory Hall, accompanied by Mstislav Rostropovich on cello, Mieczysław Weinberg on piano and David Oistrakh on violin. The cycle consists of seven parts: Ophelia’s Song, Gamayun, the Bird of Prophecy, We Were Together, The Sorrow Envelops the Sleeping City, The Storm, Secret Signs and Music. With Irina Stopina (Soprano) - Olivier Lechardeur (Piano) - Xavier Chatillon (Cello) - Laura Jaillet (Violin) Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto in G minor (Op. 126): one of the composer’s final works (1966), presented in a chamber version for cello accompanied by seven instruments. It is often said that this concerto is for cello, two horns, percussion and orchestra. Composed in spring 1966 during a stay in Crimea, the concerto is dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave its premiere on September 25, 1966 under the direction of Ievgueni Svetlanov, conducting the Russian Federation Symphony Orchestra in Moscow. Writing this concerto caused Shostakovich great difficulty, as he was then undergoing a stylistic change. In a letter to Glikman dated April 27, 1966, written from a sanatorium in Crimea, Shostakovich described his progress: “I have just finished my second concerto for cello and orchestra. As this work has no text or literary program, I find it difficult to write anything about it. It is large in scale. It has three movements. The second and third movements are performed without a break. In the second movement and at the climax of the third, there is a theme that is very similar to the popular Odessa song ‘Kupite bubliki’ (‘Buy our pretzels’). I could not begin to explain what prompted me to do this. But it really is very similar.” This is one of Shostakovich’s richest and most appealing works. With Xavier Chatillon (Cello) - Olivier Lechardeur (Piano) - Julien Desplanque and Ruben Garcia Domenech (Horns) - Mathieu Schaefer and Aurore Bassez (Percussion) - Virgile Aragau (Flute and Piccolo Flute) - Frédéric Baron (Bassoon and Contrabassoon)