Programme

Igor Stravinsky“Chant funèbre” (Funeral Song) for orchestra, Op. 5
(im Gedenken an Nikolai Rimski-Korsakow)

Karol SzymanowskiViolin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35

Lili Boulanger“D’un soir triste” für Orchester

Alexander Skrjabin“Le Poème de l’extase”, Op. 54 –
Sinfonie Nr. 4 op. 54

Cast

Karina Canellakis - Conductor

Nicola Benedetti - Violin

Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin

Summer scintillations

It created a sensation when Stravinsky’s Opus 5 Chant funèbre, long believed to be lost, resurfaced in 2015 after more than a hundred years of slumber. The score, which had vanished since its premiere in 1909, demonstrates the 26-year-old Russian positioned stylistically right in between his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov and the imminent revolutions of his ballet music. The extent to which music history was seething at the time and pushing toward new shores can also be heard in the sheer effervescence of the Poem of Ecstasy by Stravinsky’s compatriot Scriabin, composed in 1908 during the same time, but following a completely different path. The violin arpeggios are no less intense, and all the more refined in the exquisite First Violin Concerto by Polish composer Szymanowski from 1916. Any kind of academic rigidness, which afflicted many of his contemporaries, is far removed from this magnificent work by Szymanowski which Nicola Benedetti presents to us – for the first time with the RSB. Bathed in such warm light, Nadia Boulanger’s Rome Prize submission floats through the Philharmonie as a beguilingly beautiful intermezzo. Together with the solid presence of its Principal Guest Conductor Karina Canellakis, the RSB wishes you a pleasant summer.