Teatro Manzoni, Bologna Oksana Lyniv/Dmytro Udovychenko — Shostakovich, Glière, Bartok
Bologna, Auditorium Manzoni — Main Hall
About the Event
An orchestra of great tradition, Sergiu Celibidache, ZoltánPeskó, Vladimir Delman, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti, and Michele Mariotti have taken turns at its helm as music directors. Among the conductors who have led the ensemble are Gary Bertini, Myung‐Whun Chung, James Conlon, Pinchas Steinberg, Valery Gergiev, Eliau Inbal, Vladimir Jurowskij, Daniel Oren, Peter Maag, Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti, Mstislav Rostropovič, Esa Pekka Salonen, Georg Solti, Christian Thielemann, Charles Dutoit, Georges Prêtre. The Teatro Comunale Orchestra is frequently invited abroad (Holland, Romania, Spain, France and Switzerland) and has participated in prestigious festivals (Amsterdam 1987, Parma 1990, Wiesbaden 1994, Santander 2004 and 2008, Aix en Provence 2005, Savonlinna 2006, Macau 2013, Muscat 2015, Guanajuato in Mexico 2017, Paris 2018). A privileged relationship with Japan has resulted in several tours, most recently in June 2019 in Osaka, Tokyo, Yokohama, Fukuoka, with Rigoletto and Il barbiere di Siviglia.
Dmitry Dmitrievič Shostakovich
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 in A minor, Opus 77
In 1934, Stalin had a new decree issued by which he tightened censorship even more around plays, ballets and instrumental music. Dmitry Sostakovic, whose Lady Macbeth of the Mcensk District, after its initial success, disappeared from circulation once it was framed in the crosshairs of “Pravda,” was one of the victims. Among the reasons for banning an opera was the “lack of proper ideological perspective.” That is why Sostakovic, who in those years saw his best friends and colleagues disappear (not metaphorically), kept numerous compositions to himself. Violin Concerto No. 1 is part of this list: written in the second half of the 1940s, the work did not see the light of day until 1955, two years after Stalin’s death, performed by David Oistrakh, who is also the work’s dedicatee. Here the writing lingers on the dark sides of emotionality, quite the opposite of what the regime demanded. And Sostakovic emphasizes this by “signing” himself repeatedly in code with his own initials, D.SCH, a literal transposition of the “re‐mi flat‐do‐si” figuration, a musical alter ego proudly claiming authorship of a work finally free of outside interference.
Reinhold Glière
The Sirens, op. 33
Of Polish and Saxon descent but born in Kiev, Reinhold Glière held numerous official positions in the Soviet Union. In the early years of the Revolution he directed the music section of the Moscow Department of Popular Education and was chairman of the organizing committee of the Union of Composers from 1938 to 1948. His work was officially recognized by various state awards, including the title of People’s Artist, bestowed on him in 1938. As a composer Glière was heir to the Romantic tradition, which earned him official praise in 1948, when the music of Prokofiev and Sostakovic was still being partly obstructed by censorship. The symphonic poem The Sirens, was completed in 1908 and provides evidence of Glière’s deft handling of the orchestra, capable of creating evocative suggestions of the enchantresses who lured sailors with their song.
Béla Bartók
“The Wonderful Mandarin,” concert suite, op. 19
The story of the “Marvellous Mandarin” is set in a sordid metropolis: three thugs force a girl to lure men, then attack and rob them once they enter the room. Death and amorous ecstasy are intertwined in this pantomime by Béla Bartók, a composition we know today mainly in its ballet version, which he arrived at, however, through a troubled affair: Bartók began working on it at the end of the Great War, attracted by the unusual mixture of the sordid and the fairy‐tale, the realistic and the dreamlike that he found in the play written in 1916 by the playwright Menyhért Lengyel. But Hungary’s post‐war events, with the revolutionary interlude and the subsequent establishment of the Hörthy regime, forced him to discontinue the work, which would not be performed until 1926, creating a scandal even after its first performance in Germany.
Practical Information
You must print out the order confirmation and show it at the box office to collect your regular ticket, starting one hour before the start of the concert, at the Teatro Manzoni, Via De' Monari 1/2.
Cast / Production
Orchestra del Teatro comunale di Bologna
Oksana Lyniv, conductor
Dmytro Udovychenko, violin
Address
Auditorium Manzoni, Via de'Monari 1/2, Bologna, Italy — Google Maps
