A star-studded line-up meets orchestral highlights: Riccardo Chailly presents the great storyteller Scheherazade with Milan’s Filarmonica della Scala. Kirill Gerstein masterfully performs Sergei Rachmaninoff’s »Elephant Concerto« on the piano – a musically opulent concert evening!
For Sergei Rachmaninoff’s monumental Third Piano Concerto – which, according to calculations, has the highest number of notes per second in the piano part of any major piano concerto – the leading Italian orchestra has enlisted the exceptional pianist Kirill Gerstein. As a young man, he wavered between a career in classical music or jazz. As a classical pianist, he has retained a sparkling, seemingly improvisational lightness.
In movements as evocative as they are varied, and with oriental-inspired sounds, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov transports us into the sensual fairy-tale world of »1001 Nights«. Four movements set the famous tales of Sinbad the Sailor and others to music in an associative manner. The motif of Princess Scheherazade, who night after night prevents the brutal sultan from killing her with her stories, is ever-present.
PERFORMERS
Filarmonica della Scala orchestra
Kirill Gerstein piano
Riccardo Chailly conductor
PROGRAM
Sergej Rachmaninow
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
- Interval -
Nikolai Rimski-Korsakow
Scheherazade
