Vladimir Ashkenazy’s Masterworks
The Planets is a must-hear event with the legendary Vladimir Ashkenazy as your guide to the heavens, and virtuoso Alexei Volodin seduces with the Medtner’s piano concerto.
In the Concert Hall, our largest venue for Three performances between Wednesday 25 September to Saturday 28 September 2019.
“Full of dramaticism and extreme contrasts, Ashkenazy’s shaping created all the light and shadow one might expect”
Russia comes to London with a concerto by Nikolai Medtner, the Russian virtuoso who settled there in the 1930s. Medtner’s music has long been overshadowed by that of his friend Rachmaninoff, but his first concerto revels in the sheer beauty of the piano, spinning fabulous melodies that seem to flow from the soul of the instrument. And Alexei Volodin makes a seductive case for this opulent work. He’s a pianist in the muscular Russian tradition with the soul of a poet, displaying ‘magisterial mental and physical control that serve musical imagination and insight’.
The Planets is a must-hear event under Vladimir Ashkenazy’s baton. The astrological portraits of the celestial bodies are triumphs of dazzling orchestral magic and unforgettable musical imagery – the foreboding march of Mars, the fizzing energy of Mercury, the ethereal voices of Neptune. And the big, uplifting tune for Jupiter was such a hit that it was adapted as the song ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’.
PROGRAM
Medtner Piano Concerto No.1
Holst The Planets
ARTIST INFORMATION
Vladimir Ashkenazy Conductor
Alexei Volodin Piano
Sydney Philharmonia Choirs
Presented by Sydney Symphony Orchestra
