Matthias Pintscher, conductor
Alexi Kenney, violin
San Diego Symphony Orchestra
RAVEL: Suite (5 pièces enfantines) from Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose)
BARTÓK: Violin Concerto No. 2
RACHMANINOFF: Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
Three 20th century masterpieces!
After he emigrated from Revolutionary Russia in 1918, Rachmaninoff, as one of the world’s most sought-after pianists, had little time for composing and completed only six pieces in a quarter of a century of exile. But that music is among his most beautiful and concentrated, and none more so than his elegiac final work, his Symphonic Dances, written when World War II was already underway, and the composer and his wife were living in New York City. Rachmaninoff, already sick with the lung cancer that was to kill him, spent time in a country retreat on Long Island, where the quiet and peacefulness inspired music combining intense nostalgia for an old world gone with the tremendous rhythmic energy and optimism that he so loved about America.
Conductor Matthias Pintscher begins the concert with the beautiful glittering colors of Ravel’s Mother Goose, originally conceived as a charming piano duet for adults and children to play together, and then later transformed into an orchestral ballet. Alexi Kenney makes his Symphony debut with his “soulful and stirring” (The Pittsburgh Post Gazette) interpretation of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2, a work written in the composer’s very last years in Europe before, despairing of the triumph of fascism and violence on all sides, he and his second wife emigrated to the USA. Conceived on a symphonic scale, this music speaks of the darkness and tragedy of the time, but it is also saturated with Bartók’s lifelong love and deep knowledge of the folk music of Eastern Europe from which he drew not only musical ideas but a deep and optimistic belief in the power of ordinary people to survive suffering and oppression.