October Concert:
Sorcery & Spirits

Maestra Green

Program

Kennett Symphony of Chester County
Mary Woodmansee Green, Music Director
 
Konstantin Soukhovetski, piano
 

OFFENBACH
Busch

Orpheus in the Underworld

CHOPIN

Grande Polonaise, Op. 22

DUKAS

Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Scherzo after a Goethe Ballad

MUSSORGSKY
Rimsky-Korsakov

Night on Bald Mountain

GLUCK

Dance of the Blessed Spirits (from Orfeo ed Euridice)

LISZT

Totentanz, G. 126

Konstantin Soukhovetski

Soloists

Konstantin Soukhovetski, piano

Konstantin Soukhovetski is rapidly earning a reputation as a “young pianist who captivates” with his “distinctive lyricism”, “immaculate technique” and “vigor…refinement… and drama..

Mr. Soukhovetski won the First Prize and Audience Prize at 2007 New Orleans International Piano Competition and can be heard this season with Asheville Symphony, NC; Louisiana Philharmonic, LA; Kennett Symphony, PA; Baton Rouge Symphony, LA; Acadiana Symphony, LA and Auburn Symphony Orchestra, CA as well as solo recitals at "World of Piano" Series at Shenandoah University; Arium, NYC; North Dakota Museum of Art Concert Series, Grand Forks, ND; The Prizrey, South Boston, VA; SOPAC, South Orange, NJ; Haywood Arts Council Piano Series, Waynesville, NC; Goddard Riverside concert series in New York, NY; YPS Series in Knoxville, TN and at Loyola University’s Roussel Hall presented by the Music Society of New Orleans.

Mr. Soukhovetski’s 2006 William Petschek Debut Recital Award recital at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, NY was received with tremendous success and garnered The New York Times headline “…Romanticism so intense it warms up Philip Glass.”

Mr. Soukhovetski has worked with the array of the distinguished conductors, among whom are Daniel Meyer, Gérard Korsten, Enrique Bátiz, James DePriest, Emmanuel Siffert, Jahja Ling, François-Xavier Roth, Doron Salomon, Timothy Muffitt,  Conrad von Alphen, Michael Goodwin, Steven Ramsey, Mary Woodmansee Green, Alan Stephenson and David Scarr.

Together with acclaimed Russian pianist Vassily Primakov, Mr. Soukhovetski presented a number of four-hand piano programs for Manchester Music Festival in Manchester, VT; at “Ridotto” concert series in Huntington, NY; Appollo-Isis series in Oregon House, CA; Port Jefferson Arts Council series in Orient, NY and Bonita Springs, FL. Both pianists will be seen this fall at gala performances at The Prizery, South Boston, VA as well as on the Silver Seas’ Alaska Cruise in August of 2008.

Highlights of 2006-2007 season include: Juilliard Symphony, NYC; Johannesburg Philharmonic, South Africa; Eastern Cape Philharmonic, SA and KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic, SA; Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, LA; 14-performance tour of South Africa in March 2007; Rockefeller University, NYC; Louvre Museum, Paris; St. Vincent College, Latrobe, PA; McInnes Auditorium Eastern University, St. David's, PA.

Mr. Soukhovetski’s Johannesburg Debut Recital was voted the third of ten top most important cultural events of the years 2005 and 2007 by South African National Newspaper Die Burger.

Mr. Soukhovetski’s US debut as a composer took place at New York Winter Salon at Steinway Hall in December 2007 with world premieres of transcription of the last scene from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin for violin and piano and the choreographed scene for piano, soprano and the dancer “Olympian Dream.”

His radio appearances have included a one-hour live performance on NPR’s Performance Today hosted by Fred Child; a feature on WQXR’s Young Artist Showcase and a TV appearances on South Carolina’s Talk of the Town and Lowcountry Today talk-shows.

Before coming to the US in 1999, Konstantin toured France, Italy, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and North America. Prior to entering The Juilliard School where he has earned his AD, BM and MM degrees and in 2003 received Arthur Rubinstein Prize Mr. Soukhovetski studied at the Moscow Central Special Music School under the auspices of Moscow State Conservatory with Anatoly Ryabov.

Among over 10 awards Mr. Soukhovetski has received are:  First Prize and Audience Prize at 2007 New Orleans International Piano Comeptition, 2006 William Petschek Debut Recital Award; Second Prize at 2004 UNISA International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa, Third Prize at 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition, Winner of Juilliard’s 2003 Gina Bachauer Competition, First Prize winner at the 2002 Hilton Head International Piano Competition, Second Prize at the 2002 Walter W. Naumburg International Piano Competition and 2004 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for new Americans.

Mr. Soukhovetski was born in Moscow in 1981 to a family of artists and began his music studies at the age of four. His family resides in Moscow, Russia.

About the Music...

Jacques Offenbach

Orpheus in the Underworld

Listen to an excerpt

From Wikipedia (see full article)

Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld), opéra bouffe (or opéra féerie in its revised version), is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux.

The work is said to be the first classical full-length operetta. Offenbach's earlier operettas were small-scale one-act works, since the law in France did not allow certain genres of full-length works. Orpheus was not only longer, but more musically adventurous than Offenbach's earlier pieces.

Frédéric Chopin

Grande Polonaise, Op. 22

Listen to an excerpt

From Wikipedia (see full article)

The Polonaise Op. 22 is a work for piano and orchestra, although the piano part is often played on its own. This is usually considered to be one of Chopin's most difficult pieces for piano. Conjoined in performance, these works were born five years apart. The Andante Spianato (even or smooth) was composed for solo piano after Chopin received a long-awaited invitation to perform in one of Habaneck’s Conservatoire Concerts in Paris. It was premiered by the composer there on April 26, 1835.

The Grande Polonaise opens in fanfare. It moves into the ebullient and fearless dance form of which he was such a master. Chopin’s unexpected and brief excursions, the many electric shocks of surprise and alarm, and the sheer poetic gusto with which he approached these materials was astonishing and, for years, unequalled. In 1836 it became a piano quartet and, two years later, the solo piano work known today.

Consequently the polonaise has been regarded as one of the most famous and brilliant polonaise pieces.

Paul Dukas

Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Listen to an excerpt

From Wikipedia (see full article)

Although Dukas's musical piece, first published in 1897, was already quite well known and popular, it was made particularly famous by its inclusion in the 1940 Walt Disney animated film Fantasia, in which Mickey Mouse plays the role of the apprentice. Its popularity caused it to be used again in Fantasia 2000.

L'apprenti sorcier is subtitled "Scherzo after a ballad by Goethe," perhaps indicating that it was intended as a scherzo of Dukas's untitled symphony, with which it has some thematic similarity. On the other hand, L'apprenti sorcier is clearly program music while the symphony is abstract.

Modest Mussorgsky

Night on Bald Mountain

Listen to an excerpt

From Wikipedia (see full article)

Inspired by Russian literary works and legend, Mussorgsky made a witches' sabbath the theme of the original tone poem, completed on June 23, 1867 (St. John's Eve).

As with so much of Mussorgsky's music, the work had a tortuous compositional history and was arranged after his death in 1881 by his friend and fellow member of the The Mighty Handful Rimsky-Korsakov. It was never performed in any form during Mussorgsky's lifetime. The Rimsky-Korsakov edition premiered in 1886, and has become a concert favorite.

Christoph Gluck

Dance of the Blessed Spirits

Listen to an excerpt

From Wikipedia (see full article)

Orfeo ed Euridice (English translation: Orpheus and Eurydice) is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing. The piece was first performed at Vienna in 1762. Orfeo ed Euridice is the first of Gluck's "reform" operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of opera seria with a "noble simplicity" in both the music and the drama.

Though originally set to an Italian libretto, Orfeo ed Euridice owes much to the genre of French opera, particularly in its use of accompanied recitative and a general absence of vocal virtuosity. Indeed, twelve years after the 1762 premiere, Gluck re-adapted the opera to suit the tastes of a Parisian audience at the Académie Royale de Musique. This reworking was given the title Orphée et Eurydice, and several alterations were made in vocal casting and orchestration to suit French tastes. The opera is the most popular of Gluck's works.

The second scene opens in Elysium. The brief ballet of 1762 became the four-movement "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" (with a prominent part for solo flute) in 1774. This is followed (1774 only) by a solo which celebrates happiness in eternal bliss (“Cet asile”), sung by either an unnamed Spirit or Euridice, and repeated by the chorus. Orfeo arrives and marvels at the purity of the air in an arioso ("Che puro ciel"/“Quel nouveau ciel”). But he finds no solace in the beauty of the surroundings, for Euridice is not yet with him. He implores the spirits to bring her to him, which they do (Chorus: “Torna, o bella”/“Près du tendre objet”).

Franz Liszt

Totentanz

Listen to an excerpt

From Wikipedia (see full article)

Some of the titles of Liszt’s pieces, such as Totentanz, Funérailles, La Lugubre gondola, Pensée des morts, etc., show the composer's fascination with death. In the young Liszt we can already observe manifestations of his obsession with death, with religion, and with heaven and hell: Liszt was an enthusiastic Catholic, and he devoured Dante's Divine Comedy. According to Alan Walker,[1] Liszt frequented Parisian "hospitals, gambling casinos and asylums" in the early 1830s, and he even went down into prison dungeons in order to see those condemned to die.

The Dance of Death (Totentanz) from Liber Chronicarum [Nuremberg Chronicle], 1493, attr. to Hans Holbein the YoungerThe traumatic impact of the Black Death inspired a rich tradition of "Totentanz", "Danse Macabre", or "Triumph of Death", paintings; and since the Middle Ages, throughout the Renaissance until today, painters, such as Bosch, Brueghel, Holbein, and many others, have ritually cleansed our subconscious of this archetypal fear with fantastic, and sometimes humorously horrible, images of dancing corpses and armies of skeletons. Those images contained a moral message as well: they were to remind us of how fragile our bodies were and how vain the glories of earthly life are.

Thanks to our sponsors