Constantinos Carydis – cancelled!

Programme

Nikos Skalkottas
Four Images

Dmitri Shostakovich
Konzert für Violoncello und Orchester Nr.1 Es-Dur op.107

Interval

Ottorino Respighi
Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome)

Ottorino Respighi
Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome)

Constantinos Carydis, Conductor

Truls Mørk, Cello

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

About the Programme

Since completing his studies in Munich, Constantinos Carydis has often been heard at the Bavarian State Opera, where he was awarded the Carlos Kleiber Prize. With the BRSO he takes up two cycles by Ottorino Respighi: The Fountains of Rome and The Pines of Rome. In the 1930s these symphonic poems on famous historical sites in the Eternal City were regarded as national music and feted as such by the new fascist Italy, so that even today they provoke controversy. The deliberate contrast of Respighi’s works and Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, which deals with the reign of terror under Stalin, illuminates both sides of a politically motivated musical idiom. Truls Mørk, a Norwegian cellist of international stature, will take the solo part in Shostakovich’s concerto, squaring off (with support from the French horn) against the aggressive counterfoil of the timpani. But to open the concert Maestro Carydis has chosen impassioned Greek music: Four Images by the former Schoenberg pupil Nikos Skalkottas. It is a portrait of Greek country life complete with harvest, seed sowing, grape gathering and winepress, all depicted with popular dances in the neoclassical style.