Russian Masters

This listing is in the past

The Glasshouse International Centre for Music: Sage TwoSt Mary's Square, Gateshead Quays, Gateshead, North-East, NE8 2JR, United Kingdom

Dates/times in London time zone

Programme

Stravinsky, Igor (1882-1971)	L'Histoire du soldat
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich (1844-1908)	Piano Quintet in B flat major
Glinka, Mikhail Ivanovich (1804-1857)	Trio Pathétique in D minor, for clarinet, bassoon and piano
Shostakovich, Dmitri (1906-1975)	Piano Quintet in G minor, Op.57

Performers

Royal Northern Sinfonia

As war and Stalin’s purge raged
through Soviet Russia, its people
faced a bleak future. “It felt like hope
would never return”, said violinist
Rostislav Dubinsky. But
Shostakovich’s new ‘Piano
Quintet’ was akin to a lifeline.
“People discussed it in trams, they
tried to sing the defiant second
theme of the finale in the street,”
Dubinsky recalled. That second
theme is the emotional core of an
undeniably shattering piece, heard
alongside chamber greats from
Russia tinged with melancholy.

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Russians in miniature at The Sage Gateshead

Jane Shuttleworth, 14th January

Like much of Shostakovich’s work, his popular Piano Quintet, Op. 57 (1940) is full of ambiguity and contradiction. It was written at the request of his friends in the Beethoven Quartet, who had so enjoyed his first string quartet that they asked him to write something new that they could play with him – but this private piece of chamber music was a huge public success.

***11

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