/View.info/ Concert in Bulgaria Chamber Hall, May 9, 7:00 p.m. at:
Vasily Ilisavsky – piano
Alexander Ivanov – violin
Christiana Genova-Mihailova – cello
Sergei Prokofiev – Piano Sonata No. 8
Alfred Schnittke – Piano Trio (1992)
Dmitry Shostakovich – Keyboard trio No. 1
(no breaks)
Soloists:
Vasily Ilisavsky – piano
Alexander Ivanov – violin
Christiana Genova-Mihailova – cello
The program presents three key works from the Russian 20th century, spanning the period between the 1920s and the 1990s.
Sergei Prokofiev’s eighth sonata is the last of the three so-called “war” sonatas (1944) and is one of his most significant piano works. Svyatoslav Richter defines it as his favorite work of Prokofiev. Many listeners and musicians see in it the images of the wars and disasters that befell Europe and Russia in the middle of the last century. The listener’s imagination easily visualizes Prokofiev’s monumental soundscapes connected in multi-layered structures. Without an explicit musical program, the sonata appeals directly to the cultural code of its contemporary audience, and in this respect is probably one of the most influential works of piano literature of the last century.
Alfred Schnittke completed his piano trio in 1992, after his emigration to Germany. After several heart attacks and long stays in hospitals, he dedicated the trio to his attending physician: «To Alexander Potapov, who saved my life twice». The biographical motif determines the extreme individualism of the work. Music almost balances on the border of sleep and death, sometimes losing the thread of life and returning again with an attempt to fight for its existence. As always with Schnittke, classical elements are woven into the text and into the structure, which, passing through the periphery of the hero’s consciousness, bring with them momentary comfort and illusory well-being.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s first trio, composed by him at the age of seventeen, is one of his most popular works. The posterity characteristic of the Russian modern of the 1920s is fully inherent in the trio, as well as, on the other hand, classical Russian lyricism. The clarity and “straight text” of the pictorial content evokes associations with film music, with which Shostakovich was associated from the very beginning of his biography.
The event on Facebook
Tickets: “Bulgaria” Hall box office
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