Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre
Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre
Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre
16+
Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre
16+
Shpagin Plant, House of Music
Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971)
Symphony of Psalms for Choir and Orchestra (1930, second edition 1948)
Persephone, a melodrama for speaker, soloists, choir, dancers and orchestra based on a libretto by André Gide (1933)
The musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir
Guest actors and soloists
Alexander Ponomaryov "Vesna" Children's Choir
Director – Anna Guseva
Conductor – Teodor Currentzis
18+
"The Symphony of Psalms" is one of the most influential works of the 20th century and the most famous of Stravinsky's opuses on a religious theme. Stravinsky's composition has little in common with classical symphonies of the 19th century – as a representative of modernity he was looking for a new expressiveness in it, restrained and devoid of romantic sentiments. The search took him deep into the past, to Bach and the masters of the early Baroque - Giovanni Gabrieli and Schutz with their "Sacred Symphonies". Stravinsky removes "emotional" violins, violas and clarinets from the orchestra, increases the number of wind instruments to get an archaic, organ sonority, and suggests using children's voices instead of women's in the choir. The instruments and voices participate on equal terms in his complex contrapuntal fabric, in the notes one finds typical Renaissance and Baroque madrigalisms – sound illustrations for words and visual images.
The relationship between the spiritual and the secular in the "Symphony of Psalms" is well reflected in the wording of its dedication: "Composed for the glory of God for the Boston Orchestra on the occasion of its 50th anniversary". Having received an order for a concert composition, Stravinsky used it to reflect on the topics that worried him, and interpreted the publisher's request to "compose something popular" in his own way. Having no intention to adapt the music to the mass taste, he used psalms – "poems of praise, but also of anger and judgment, and even curses" – as a well-known ("popular") primary source. The "Symphony of Psalms" freely refers to the musical styles of three Christian denominations at once, without trying to fit the church usage. At the same time, it remains a personal and rather direct religious statement, in which, by Stravinsky's standards, there is surprisingly little irony.
Stravinsky calls "Perséphone" a melodrama, but it's not about a sentimental love story – rather, he means a special form of "reading to music", a common practice at the beginning of the 20th century. From a theatrical point of view, this is a composition of a mixed genre, which combines singing and recitation, an antique choir and lullabies, pantomime and statuesque mise en scene. "Perséphone" was created by order of Ida Rubinstein as a ballet – but it does not resemble the usual dance performances. Its syncretic form refers rather to the "ballets" of Monteverdi's time, in which there was sometimes much more singing than dancing.
In "Perséphone" Stravinsky yet again composes the ritual of spring – albeit not exactly the same as in "The Rite of Spring". Here the music is softer and more lyrical, the orchestra rarely plays in full force, and the myth underlying the plot is not Proto-Slavic, but Antique. Greek mythology and culture in general are extremely important for Stravinsky: resurrecting the pre-Romantic artistic ideal in his work, he restores the attitude to the Antiquity as a model, a living practice, and not as history.
In Stravinsky's and Andre Gide's version, Persephone turns out to be a proto-Christian figure – a child of the gods who voluntarily descended into the underworld out of pity for the souls suffering there and resurrected to a new life under the final stanzas of the choir, in the text of which researchers see references to the parable of the wheat grain from the Gospel of John (12:24). Into the image of Persephone, doomed to wander between two worlds, Stravinsky could also put the personal experiences of an artist standing (like all artists) on the border between aesthetic pleasure in an ivory tower and the bitter reality of daily human suffering.
Shpagin Plant, House of Music
Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971)
Symphony of Psalms for Choir and Orchestra (1930, second edition 1948)
Persephone, a melodrama for speaker, soloists, choir, dancers and orchestra based on a libretto by André Gide (1933)
The musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir
Guest actors and soloists
Alexander Ponomaryov "Vesna" Children's Choir
Director – Anna Guseva
Conductor – Teodor Currentzis
18+
"The Symphony of Psalms" is one of the most influential works of the 20th century and the most famous of Stravinsky's opuses on a religious theme. Stravinsky's composition has little in common with classical symphonies of the 19th century – as a representative of modernity he was looking for a new expressiveness in it, restrained and devoid of romantic sentiments. The search took him deep into the past, to Bach and the masters of the early Baroque - Giovanni Gabrieli and Schutz with their "Sacred Symphonies". Stravinsky removes "emotional" violins, violas and clarinets from the orchestra, increases the number of wind instruments to get an archaic, organ sonority, and suggests using children's voices instead of women's in the choir. The instruments and voices participate on equal terms in his complex contrapuntal fabric, in the notes one finds typical Renaissance and Baroque madrigalisms – sound illustrations for words and visual images.
The relationship between the spiritual and the secular in the "Symphony of Psalms" is well reflected in the wording of its dedication: "Composed for the glory of God for the Boston Orchestra on the occasion of its 50th anniversary". Having received an order for a concert composition, Stravinsky used it to reflect on the topics that worried him, and interpreted the publisher's request to "compose something popular" in his own way. Having no intention to adapt the music to the mass taste, he used psalms – "poems of praise, but also of anger and judgment, and even curses" – as a well-known ("popular") primary source. The "Symphony of Psalms" freely refers to the musical styles of three Christian denominations at once, without trying to fit the church usage. At the same time, it remains a personal and rather direct religious statement, in which, by Stravinsky's standards, there is surprisingly little irony.
Stravinsky calls "Perséphone" a melodrama, but it's not about a sentimental love story – rather, he means a special form of "reading to music", a common practice at the beginning of the 20th century. From a theatrical point of view, this is a composition of a mixed genre, which combines singing and recitation, an antique choir and lullabies, pantomime and statuesque mise en scene. "Perséphone" was created by order of Ida Rubinstein as a ballet – but it does not resemble the usual dance performances. Its syncretic form refers rather to the "ballets" of Monteverdi's time, in which there was sometimes much more singing than dancing.
In "Perséphone" Stravinsky yet again composes the ritual of spring – albeit not exactly the same as in "The Rite of Spring". Here the music is softer and more lyrical, the orchestra rarely plays in full force, and the myth underlying the plot is not Proto-Slavic, but Antique. Greek mythology and culture in general are extremely important for Stravinsky: resurrecting the pre-Romantic artistic ideal in his work, he restores the attitude to the Antiquity as a model, a living practice, and not as history.
In Stravinsky's and Andre Gide's version, Persephone turns out to be a proto-Christian figure – a child of the gods who voluntarily descended into the underworld out of pity for the souls suffering there and resurrected to a new life under the final stanzas of the choir, in the text of which researchers see references to the parable of the wheat grain from the Gospel of John (12:24). Into the image of Persephone, doomed to wander between two worlds, Stravinsky could also put the personal experiences of an artist standing (like all artists) on the border between aesthetic pleasure in an ivory tower and the bitter reality of daily human suffering.
Soldatov Culture Palace
Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall
Soldatov Culture Palace
The programme includes:
Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Francesca da Rimini,
Symphonic Fantasy after Dante, Op. 32 (1876)
Capriccio Italien
on folk tunes for orchestra, Op. 45 (1880)
Romeo and Juliet,
Overture-Fantasy after Shakespeare, TH 42 (1869–1880)
musicAeterna Orchestra
Conductor — Teodor Currentzis
12+
The symphonic evening with the musicAeterna Orchestra is dedicated to Italy depicted in Tchaikovsky's compositions. The most cosmopolitan of the Russian composers of the 19th century, Tchaikovsky travelled extensively throughout his life in Europe, by 1880 having managed to visit the Italian Peninsula three times. The very nature of his talent is more "Italian" than "German": Tchaikovsky appreciates open-hearted emotions and expressiveness of melody, saturates abstract symphonic genres with theatrical drama, and values success with the public higher than the approval of critics. The concert programme encompasses three of his opuses related to Italy musically or in terms of the plot.
The symphonic fantasy "Francesca da Rimini" coexists in Tchaikovsky's creative biography with "Swan Lake" and "Eugene Onegin" - all three compositions are united by the theme of the doomed love. The composer came about with the conception of "Francesca" on his way to Bayreuth for the premiere of "The Ring of the Nibelung"; Tchaikovsky later agreed with critics about Wagner's influence on his score. In the story of Paolo and Francesca, the composer is interested in its dramatic potential in the first place. Tchaikovsky is not prone to abstract searches for sound colour, he is emotionally involved in the chosen plot, emphasizing in it the acuteness of the conflict and the depth of feelings of the characters. Saint-Saens placed "Francesca" musically above Liszt's "Dante Symphony", and cellist Karl Davydov, to whom the author would later dedicate his "Capriccio Italien", called the fantasy "the greatest work of our time."
In December 1879, Tchaikovsky found himself in Rome during the carnival and, impressed by what he saw, decided to compose "something of the kind of Glinka's Spanish fantasies." A few months later, the score of the "Capriccio Italien" was ready. It indeed succeeds to Glinka's Spanish diptych in many ways – from the details of form and orchestration to the general treatment of the "national" in the vein of entertaining exoticism. Tchaikovsky in "Capriccio" looks at the Mediterranean with a tourist gaze: this is a paradise land where there are no sorrows, struggles and dramas, and sounds radiate joy, light, and serenity. "There is hardly any other composition in Russian classical music which contains not a single atom of gloom," as one of the reviewers summed up after the premiere.
The fantasy overture "Romeo and Juliet" is the only major symphonic composition by Tchaikovsky that does not have an opus number. Tchaikovsky could consider the overture not entirely his composition - since Balakirev's role in its creation, in fact, is teetering on the verge of co-authorship. It was Balakirev (to whom the overture is dedicated) who offered Tchaikovsky the plot, the tonal plan, the main images and even specific pictorial solutions ("fierce Allegro with saber strokes"), and his criticism forced Tchaikovsky to compose whole sections of the form anew, from the entrée to the outro. In "Romeo and Juliet" Tchaikovsky for the first time found his personal formula of symphonic drama: fatal images of doom, sharp contrasts, emotional waves, lyrics isolated and detached from the surrounding storms, tragic denouement of conflict, and ambiguous triumph. And also for the first time in his life he ascended to the top of melodic expressiveness - in the famous theme of love, which Rimsky-Korsakov later recognized as "one of the best themes of all Russian music."
Perm State Art Gallery
On the programme:
18+
Soldatov Palace of Culture
On the programme:
12+
Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall
On the programme:
18+
Private Philharmonic Triumph
On the programme:
18+
Jazzayris is a musical project featuring several North African musical styles based on the richness of Algerian traditional music and its various styles – from Algiers to Oran via Mostaganem and Adrar. Hassan and Khalil act as ambassadors of their country. Their project is designed to awaken memories of the ancient myths of Algeria, expressed in countless stories of happiness and grief, joy and passion.
Artur Gazarov is a Moscow percussionist, a long-term collaborator of Leonid Agutin, an adept of world music and Latin American jazz styles. Khalil Ruazmi plays saxophone, drums, guitar and a guembri — Maghreb bass lute, which is chiseled out of a log, covered with camel skin and supplemented with three strings of goat veins. Hassan Belkacem Benaliua plays mandolin, violin and qanun, an Arabic zither whose origin dates back to Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia. Ruazmi and Benaliua are both from Algeria (their cities are only 80 kilometers apart, an hour by car), but they first met in Moscow, where they arrived to master the "western" musical practice. Ruazmi is studying jazz in the Russian capital. Benaliua is honing his cello technique: two years ago he won the Prokofiev International Competition.Perm State Art Gallery
18+
Soldatov Palace of Culture
On the programme:
12+
Perm State Art Gallery
On the programme:
18+
Private Philharmonic Triumph
Perm State Art Gallery
On the programme:
18+
Shpagin Plant, Litera D
On the programme:
18+
Private Philharmonic Triumph
On the programme:
18+
The House of Diaghilev
On the programme:
18+
Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall
Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall
On the programme:
6+
Perm Philharmonic Organ Concert Hall
On the programme:
12+
The House of Diaghilev
On the programme:
18+
Brigadirskaya str., 12
On the programme:
18+
Private Philharmonia Triumph
On the program
18+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Brigadirskaya street, 12
16+
Shpagin Plant, Litera D
18+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Private Philharmonia Triumph
On the program
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+
Perm Shipyard Backwater
16+