Alan Gilbert & Kirill Gerstein

Programme

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43

Richard Strauss
"Burleske" for Piano and Orchestra

Interval

Johannes Brahms
Piano Quartet in G minor - orchestration by Arnold Schönberg

Alan Gilbert, Conductor

Kirill Gerstein, Piano

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

about the programme

The Russian-American pianist Kirill Gerstein will launch his BRSO residency, not with a piano concerto, but with two works for piano and orchestra that beggar comparison in their virtuosity, witty playfulness and range of expression. Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934) and the 21-year-old Strauss’s Burlesque take listeners through a gigantic panoply of moods and sounds, from diabolical fury to saucy parody, from mighty upsurges to the most delicate of reveries. Just the right milieu for Kirill Gerstein, a straddler of musical eras, of classical music and jazz, and an artist of enormous flexibility and exploratory verve. To enrich the brew, Alan Gilbert, the principal conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, will present Schoenberg’s brilliant orchestration of Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G minor. Schoenberg’s quip, that his arrangement is Brahms’s fifth symphony, is as cogent today as ever before.

Artist in residence: Kirill gerstein

The American-Russian pianist Kirill Gerstein guarantees sensational concerts – and not with the usual piano concerto literature! This season he performs three highly diverse concerts as Artist in Residence.

More information and concerts

The concert live on the radio

BR-KLASSIK will broadcast the concert live on the radio on Friday.