Between serious and light

It is a show of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s recorded grand concert. Incidentally, it is the fourth event as part of the Digital Concert Hall project carried out jointly with the Goethe-Institut. This time the audience will hear “American Soiree,” a brilliant dancing program, at Kyiv’s Plivka. It will be performed by such international stage stars as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Ingo Metzmacher and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

According to project curator, music expert Liubov MOROZOVA, “the soiree’s central idea is to erase the borderline between ‘serious’ and ‘light’ music and admit to the concert hall the styles and genres which aristocratic culture has traditionally dissociated itself from.” For example, the famous pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard will play his part in Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 4 for Piano, Orchestra, and Mixed Choir. This grandiose and super-difficult score was composed as far back as 1901. It is called “prophetic,” as far as development of symphonism throughout the 20th century is concerned. The opus’ author can be called innovator composer of his time. He liked dissonances, was one of the first to try out a lot of modernistic methods in his oeuvre, and often cited American folklore, hymns, and sacred music.

In the program, the popular American composer George Gershwin will be represented by Cuban Overture (1932). “Gershwin worked on jazz elements in such a way that they could be admitted to the concert hall,” Ingo Metzmacher said, announcing the concert held in the fall of 2012. “But he is a light-minded author – he was a friend of Arnold Schoenberg, knew about all the new music trends, and attended the US premiere of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck.”

The audience will also hear the music of George Antheil. This American avant-garde author is performed rarely perhaps because he composed for uncommon instrumental orchestras. His Jazz Symphony (1955) is an extremely energetic and ironic music consisting of dozens of short dancing fragments, each one being in its own tempo and style.

What will enchant listeners is “Symphonic Dances” from the well-known musical West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein – it is a true masterpiece of orchestrating. Incidentally, in spite of a successful career as conductor, Bernstein never performed and did not like to speak about his own oeuvres. But “Symphonic Dances” still became very popular even without intervention of their author – it is the oeuvre you can recognize from the first notes.

The Day’s FACT FILE

Ingo METZMACHER is General Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera, Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and of the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam. Since 2016 – a conductor and Artistic Director of the festival KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen in Hanover.

Pierre-Laurent AIMARD is a world-famous pianist, Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winner (2017). Kyiv’s music lovers remember this French musician for the amazing concert he gave in late March, 2016, at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, when he played, together with the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mykola Diadiura, the Fifth Concerto by Ludwig van Beethoven and Symphonie fantastique: Episode de la vie d’un artiste by Hector Berlioz.