Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko STRAVINSKY Petrushka

 

PETRUSHKA

 

Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko NIKOLAY RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Capriccio Espagnol - Russian Easter Festival Overture - Scheherazade

 NIKOLAY RIMSKY-KORSAKOV

Vasily Petrenko / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition

Vasily Petrenko is the Principal Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Between 1994 and 1997, Petrenko was Resident Conductor at the St Petersburg State Opera and Ballet Theatre in the Mussorgsky Memorial Theatre. During this time he gained an enormous amount of operatic experience and he now has over 30 operas in his repertoire.

Petrenko is equally at home in symphonic and operatic repertoire. On the symphonic front, he has previously worked with the City of Birmingham Symphony, Swedish Radio, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and NDR Hanover, BBC Wales, Cadaques and Castille y Leon Orchestras in Spain.

A Russian orchestral showcase from Vasily Petrenko and the award willing Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra present a programme of Russian orchestral classics - with some surprises.

Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Khachaturian’s sumptuously romantic suite from his ballet ‘Spartacus’ with its famous ‘Adagio’ keep company with Kabalevsky’s fizzing overture to his opera ‘Colas Breugnon’ and Schehedrin’s ‘Naughty Limericks plus a wistful Rachmaninov song in beautiful orchestral arrangement.

George Li TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1 LISZT Solo Piano Works

George Li gained international attention in 2015 when he won the silver medal in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Now he has recorded one of Tchaikovsky’s greatest and best-loved works, the Piano Concerto No 1 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Vasily Petrenko. The New York Times has called him a “real revelation” in the work. It is complemented by three solo pieces by Liszt, a composer who featured on his debut Warner Classics recital, judged “a winner” by International Piano magazine.

Vasily Petrenko / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra STRAVINSKY The Firebird RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Le Coq d'Or

After the critically acclaimed Rite of Spring (ONYX4182) the award - winning team of Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO continue their survey of the Stravinsky ballets with The Firebird. As with the earlier album, the coupling is a fascinating one. Stravinsky was Rimsky’s star pupil, and his influence on Stravinsky can be detected clearly in the opulent and exciting score of The Firebird. Rimsky’s Golden Cockerel suite was arranged from music from his 1909 opera based on the story by Pushkin.

Vasily Petrenko / Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring RACHMANINOV Spring DEBUSSY Printemps

Three works inspired by Spring – Stravinsky’s iconic and revolutionary 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring depicts Russian pagan tribes celebrating the emergence of Spring with frenzied dances and ritual sacrifice. The music has a rhythmic complexity and violence that caused a riot to break out at its premier in Paris. Rachmaninov’s Spring Cantata tells the story of a husband who has struggled through the harsh Russian winter knowing his wife has been having an affair with a younger man. He swears he will kill them, but on seeing the wonder of spring all around him, relents and forgives them both. Debussy’s early ‘Printemps’ of 1885 was said to have been inspired by Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’. Debussy was staying at the Villa Medici in Rome when he wrote this colourful and joyous work.

Mari Samuelsen / Håkon Samuelsen JAMES HORNER Pas de Deux

Pas de Deux is not a James Horner score for an unknown film but a freestanding composition, being billed as his first foray into classical music since the 1980s. Leaving aside the question of whether film scores qualify as classical music, it seems pretty clear that those who like Horner in general will like this work. Here and elsewhere, he does one thing well -- lush romanticism -- and does it very, very well. His economy of gesture, which makes one wonder why neutral arpeggios are having such an emotional impact, is fully in evidence here, and the configuration of forces, with lots to do for the two soloists, produces film score-like textures. The Norwegian violin-and-cello duo of Mari and Håkon Samuelson commissioned Pas de Deux, and though it is being promoted as the first major double concerto for violin and cello since Brahms, Horner himself has described the piece as a composition for violin and cello with orchestral accompaniment rather than as a true concerto. For all that, Pas de Deux does not really resemble Horner's film scores musically. It has elements that suggests what might have happened had Vaughan Williams somehow lived long enough to become enamored of minimalism, and it shows that Horner has been keenly aware of contemporary crossover directions. The work is performed here by the Samuelsens and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Vasily Petrenko, the forces that premiered the work in 2014, and it's safe to say that their work reflects the composer's intentions. The album is filled out with works by Arvo Pärt (the protean Fratres), Giovanni Sollima, and Ludovico Einaudi, whose Divenire also features the violin-cello combination. Horner can hold his own with any of them, and listeners who imagine sun-drenched meadows while listening to Pas de Deux will have a very good time with it. (James Manheim)