Special to The Washington Examiner In 1934, the revered Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, in exile to the United States following the Russian Revolution, premiered his iconic Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in Baltimore.
| On stage |
| BSO Classical Concert: Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody |
| Where: The Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda |
| When: 8 p.m. Saturday |
| Info: $28 to $88; 301-581-5100; strathmore.org |
Seventy-seven years later, Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra present the glorious rhapsody Saturday night at the Music Center at Strathmore in tribute to Rachmaninoff. The piece, performed by the award winning pianist, Lukas Vondracek, is bookended by two symphonies that acknowledge the genius of another Russian composer, Sergei Prokofiev.
“This concert celebrates all things Russian, and I think it’s apropos because Baltimore had a huge influx of Russian immigrants in the 1800s,” Alsop noted. “The Russian culture is still quite vivid here and part of the fabric of our community.”
The concert opens with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, Classical, a lighthearted and exuberant first composition piece that is 15 minutes in duration. Young and self-assured pianist Vondracek follows the Prokofiev piece, commanding the stage from the very first notes.
“Everybody fell in love with [Vondracek], so we invited him back to be featured on this program playing the Rachmaninoff/Paganini variations,” Alsop said. “This is an incredible virtuosic piece for the pianist and the orchestra and I think it’s so fitting that Rachmaninoff decided to take the music of Paganini — who was the other great virtuoso of the time — and really reinvent [the piece] for the piano.”
Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 6 closes the program with a sound very different from the youthful composer’s first piece. The contrast here is palpable. While the Symphony No. 1, Classical was composed in the style of 18th century form combined with a harmonically modern twist, this later work, composed shortly after the Second World War, is much more foreboding and somber.
“The two symphonies represent such different facets of [Prokofiev] as a composer that it might be conceivable that the pieces were written by different people,” Alsop said.
