PARIS, FRANCE – ORCHESTRE DE PARIS – TCHAIKOVSKY, R. STRAUSS

Kirill Gerstein, piano
Orchestre de Paris
Semyon Bychkov, conductor

PROGRAMME
Tchaikovsky:  Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23
R. Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony) Op. 64

VENUE NOTE:
With Tchaikovsky’s galvanizing First Concerto, one of the most pampered in the repertoire, and Strauss’s very pictorial Alpine Symphony, this program takes us to the air of the summits!

Popular among all, with its instantly recognizable opening theme, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 imposes, in the tradition of Chopin and Grieg, its extreme dynamism, the power of the melodic imagination, carried by a solo writing that knows how to alternate virtuoso ardour and infinite delicacy. A blind beggar, met in a Kiev street, is said to have whispered one of the themes of the Allegro to the composer, when it was his brother Modest, humming the old French tune Il faut s’amuser, danser, et rire, who inspired him to write the delightful little symphonic Scherzo set in the very heart of the Andante. Initially shunned by the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, the work was so admired by the public that the composer then played it on all stages around the world: the “rosse” had become a thoroughbred, and his hobbyhorse.

Much more directly narrative, but no less spectacular, is Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, composed in 1915. It is the powerful contrasts of a day in the Bavarian Alps that are recounted in this spectacular work: the mystery of the departure in the night, the twinkling of the sun on the snow, the mystical intoxication of the summit and the terrifying rage of the storm are recreated, astonishing the listener, by a gleaming orchestra.