SMETANA The Bartered Bride: Overture, Furiant and Dance of the Comedians
STRAUSS Burleske for Piano and Orchestra
RACHMANINOFF Symphonic Dances
A shared spirit of energy, colour, and theatricality runs through the three works featured in this programme: an exploration, from the popular to the symphonic, of the expressive power of rhythm, orchestral colour, and virtuosity. In The Bartered Bride, Bedřich Smetana celebrated the spirit of his homeland through music of irresistible vitality and directness. The three orchestral excerpts heard here overflow with folk character, wit, and festive exuberance. Richard Strauss’s Burleske for Piano and Orchestra displays a dazzling and demanding style of writing in which the piano both confronts and merges with the orchestra in a brilliant interplay of wit, irony, and exuberant virtuosity. Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, meanwhile, distil the essence of his late style into a sequence of vivid and powerful musical visions, poised between nostalgia, rhythmic vitality, and an orchestral brilliance of remarkable expressive force.
