By Elise Roberts
Abravanel Hall lights up Salt Lake City with Utah Symphony’s Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich this weekend. With special guest pianist Simon Trpčeski, the audience is treated to three 20th-century selections, some of which have never before been performed at Abravanel Hall.
The show opens with Zoltán Kodály’s Dances of Galánta, a Hungarian-Romani piece characteristic of Kodály’s ethnic style. Kodály was described by Bartók as “the composer whose works are the most perfect embodiment of the Hungarian spirit,” and these Galánta dances unfold with distinct Gypsy melodies throughout. Conductor Vassily Sinaisky leads the orchestra through the dances at a brisk tempo.
The special guest of the evening is then brought out: Macedonian pianist Trpčeski. Before he started his Firday night performance, he explained to the audience that his repertoire for the evening,Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 4 in g minor has never before been played on that stage. Typical of Rachmaninoff’s style, the concerto fills the concert hall with big sound and incredibly difficult runs up and down the keyboard. Trpčeski makes the performance look effortless as he leans his head back and closes his eyes, moving to the rhythm of the music and holding the audience rapt with his flair and charismatic stage presence. Now and then, he nods and motions to the audience and the orchestra in turn, really making the concerto his own. With the final chord he is stamping his foot to the beat as he leaps off the bench, and Friday night’s audience immediately echoed his movement with a standing ovation.
After the applause brought Trpčeski back on stage, he treated the audience to an encore. “It’s not Christmas,” he said, “but it’s cold enough outside to be!” He then played an arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
The final selection for the evening is Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No.12 in d minor, “The Year 1917,” a musical biography of Vladimir Lenin. Shostakovich wrote the symphony in 1961, not long after joining the Communist Party, and his twelfth symphony is seen as a salute to modern Russia. The years surrounding Shostakovich’s musical career were fraught with political turmoil, and everything the composer wrote had to be state-approved and seen as championing the cause of the proletariat. Failing to do so could mean denunciation, exile and even death. This tribute to the famous revolutionary is in keeping with those demands. The piece begins with a deep and haunting melody, played with determined bow strokes by the bass section. Quickly, the audience is pulled along into the military story as the four movements flow from one to the next without pause. The enormity of the work is evident not only in its complex melodies and varied instrumental highlights, but by the length of the piece, which is -over thirty minutes long.
Each of the deeply-expressive and historically-significant works is played with brilliant artistry for the audience at Abravanel Hall. The final performance is tonight at 5:30 and, while it can be enjoyed by audiences old and young, it also makes for the classiest date night in Utah!
The Utah Symphony presents Rachmaninoff & Shostakovich, with Vassily Sinaisky and Simon Trpčeski
Abravanel Hall, 123 W S Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
April 12 – 13, 2019, 7:30 PM
Tickets: $15 – $84, available to children 8 years old and up
Contact: 385-468-1010
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Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich Facebook Event
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