PERFORMANCE

Carnegie Hall
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra

James Levine, Music Director Emeritus and Conductor
Evgeny Kissin, Piano

Glinka - Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila
Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 6, "Pathétique"



"It’s an evening abundant with passion, melodic splendor, and dazzling color—elements that make Russian music thrilling. Glinka’s energetic Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila sets the stage for his festive grand opera. Superstar pianist Evgeny Kissin is on hand for one of most beloved concertos in all music: Rachmaninoff’s famous Piano Concerto No. 2. The program concludes with Tchaikovsky’s impassioned Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique.”

You must watch this short video...

The hall this evening will be filled with Russians.  On a previous occasion when we heard Kissin we sat right across the aisle from Mikhail Baryshnikov.


MIKHAIL GLINKA Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila

Glinka’s reputation as the father of Russian art music was cemented through the posthumous gratitude and acknowledgment he received from many famous Russian composers of the generations that followed. Ruslan and Lyudmila, composed between 1837 and 1842,is the second of Glinka’s two operas and is based on Pushkin’s poem of the same name. Though the full opera has achieved a comfortable place in the repertoire only in its native land, its infectiously energetic overture is a popular concert piece the world over.



SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18

For several years following the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, Rachmaninoff found efforts at composition futile and distracted himself with other activities. His cousins eventually sent him to a specialist in hypnosis; after a few months of treatment, Rachmaninoff was considerably improved, and he traveled to the Crimea and then to Italy, returning to Russia bearing detailed sketches for a piano concerto. By December 1900, the concerto’s last two movements were finished, and Rachmaninoff played them in concert. Encouraged by the reception, he finished the first movement on May 4, 1901, and introduced the complete work the following November to thunderous acclaim.


PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74, “Pathétique”

Tchaikovsky called this his most “sincere” symphony, and indeed it brought a new emotional honesty to music. The gloom of the outer movements—made all the more convincing by the groping toward light in the inner ones—is gripping and emotionally real. The darkness of this symphony (dubbed the “Pathétique” by Tchaikovsky’s brother) looks forward to desolate moments in Mahler, Shostakovich, and others, yet the work carries a feeling of profound isolation. In Lawrence Gilman’s words, it remains “a lonely and towering masterpiece. Where, indeed, is there anything at all like it?