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Details
The Venue - Leeds College of Music
Quarry Hill
Leeds
LS2 7PD
England
Programme
Dmitry Shostakovich – Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok, Op.127
Sergei Rachmaninov – Trio élégiaque no.2 in D minor, Op.9
Dmitry Shostakovich – Piano Trio no.2 in E minor, Op.67
Performers
Ilona Domnich – soprano
Gould Piano Trio
Other concerts in this Series (+)
Programme Note
Unlike Rachmaninov, who fled his native land for eternal exile, Shostakovich famously took the strain, just surviving under a system that deeply criticised any music it deemed anti-Soviet. Ironically, the Second World War brought a common enemy, somewhat relieving the pressure on him; he produced many of his most iconic works at this time. His second trio, with references to the countless Jewish victims in its finale, is such a piece, depicting all the sufferings and wildness of those turbulent years, but ending as it begins, in a kind of ethereal yearning.
To begin however, the Russian soprano, Ilona Domnich, will sing the Seven Romances with piano trio from 1967 that were dedicated to the great Galina Vishnevskaya, who gave the premiere with her husband Mstislav Rostropovich playing the cello part. The pessimistic symbolist verses of Alexander Blok are communicated in a strikingly economical manner; not here is Shostakovich's meaning at all ambiguous - it hits home decisively.
Perhaps it is quite fitting that we close our series with Rachmaninov's Trio élégiaque Op 9, the composer remarked, "after the trio there must be nothing else, because it is so long and grave"(!). Such was his idolisation of Tchaikovsky, that on hearing of his death in 1893; Rachmaninov plunged into the composition of this piece, modelling it on his hero's recent trio in memory of Nikolai Rubinstein. The responsibility he felt must have been enormous; he "trembled for every phrase, sometimes crossed out absolutely everything..."
This concert is the last in the series of six concerts curated by the Gould Piano Trio:
06 October - Gould Piano Trio
28 November - Navarra String Quartet
12 December - Lucy Gould, Robert Plane, Benjamin Frith and Peter Hill
23 January - Gould Piano Trio
13 February - Navarra String Quartet
06 March - Lucy Gould, Alicy Neary, Benjamin Frith with Ilona Domnich
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View the seating plan for The Venue, Leeds College of Music
Russia in Revolution
Gould Piano Trio - Artistic Directors
One hardly needs an excuse to programme such sumptuous and compelling works as these large scale Russian Masterpieces, but in the centenary year of the Russian Revolution we have the opportunity to hear the more familiar alongside some less frequently performed pieces.
In this series we look both ways, back towards Glinka and Tchaikovsky and forwards to Shostakovich and Stravinsky. We hear some compositions born from the Friday night meetings 'Les Vendredis' in St Petersburg and we have a concert of Debussy and Stravinsky - two decades apart in age but connected by their admiration for each other. Later in the season a rarely heard arrangement of the Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade for clarinet and piano trio, no less exciting for its fewer performers, will certainly shed new light on the piece. The elegiac trio, a thread running through the series, was taken up by many of the great Russian composers spanning some 50 years. Where would the trio repertoire be without these giants?!
We look forward to welcoming our guests, the Navarra String Quartet, Peter Donohoe, Peter Hill, Ilona Domnich, Robert Plane and David Adams and to giving you, our audience, a taste of some colourful and epic adventures.
www.leedsconcertseason.co.uk
