Russian Festival Part II

Mei-Ann Chen

The Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera presented Part II of its Russian Festival last night.  See here for Part I.

Mikhail Glinka's Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila (1840) began the program.  Conductor, Mei-Ann Chen conducted from memory.

Sergei Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto (1909) followed with Andrew von Oeyen on the solo piano.  He was our pianist from last week and is very exciting.  Chen used a score on this one.  This is the concerto I heard in Berlin in 2016.

After the concert our pianist mentioned Sibyl Sanderson, an opera singer from Sacramento and Massenet's inspiration for Thais.  To honor her Andrew played a piano arrangement of The Meditation from Thais.  Beautifully.

Last came Modest Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (1874) in an orchestral arrangement by Ravel.

Russian music is lots of fun.  Our festival stuck strictly to Romantic and Neo-romantic works and covered the main highlights.  Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich did not make appearances.

Ruslan and Lyudmila

This video of Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila is a joy. In an interview with Valery Gergiev at the end I learned that Anna Netrebko was a mere 23 at the time, infancy in singer’s years. She was chosen for her voice, for her youth and for her beauty.

I learned also that the production was a reproduction of a production from 1892. I particularly like the way this looks—very much like a fairy tale.

I saw this live in San Francisco in 1995, also with Valery Gergiev and Anna Netrebko, and with the same production.  We were thrilled and loved Anna instantly.

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