The Concertgebouw Orchestra plays Rachmaninoff

Rachmaninoff

A tribute to Serge Rachmaninoff should fit these two Russian émigrés like a glove. Rachmaninoff’s forced emigration to America cut him off from his Russian roots, yet modern American life exerted hardly any influence on his music, which always remained that of a Russian Romantic. Indeed, it was in the United States that he would compose some of his most irresistible works. We also get to know music by Elena Langer, who emigrated from Russia to London, where she built a career for herself as a composer of opera. This programme features the suite from her successful 2016 opera Figaro Gets a Divorce.

Alexander Melnikov

Rachmaninoff’s brilliant and elegant Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is in actual fact a piano concerto. The catchy opening melody regularly returns, but always in a new guise. Rachmaninoff himself performed the work with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1908 – and to great acclaim. Following in his footsteps is a task that can be entrusted to pianist Alexander Melnikov. In the Symphonic Dances, an ageing Rachmaninoff looks back on his career one last time. The work hints at Russian church music from his youth, but also at the big-band music he heard in America.