FINAL JAN FEB 26 OVERTURE | Página 26

RACHMANINOFF & SHOSTAKOVICH
Knife of Dawn. He has also conducted Kurt Weill’ s Lost in the Stars with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the world premiere of Giorgio Battistelli’ s opera, Wake for the Birmingham Opera Company.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Jonathon studied conducting at the Boston Conservatory of Music and London’ s Royal Academy of Music. In 2023, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music; an honour reserved for Academy alumni.
Denis Kozhukhin
A pianist of exceptional technique, emotional depth and sophistication, Denis Kozhukhin has gained significant recognition through his powerful performances, establishing himself as one of the most accomplished musicians of his generation.
In the 2025 – 26 season, Kozhukhin will return to the Royal Festival Hall with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the
Denis Kozhukhin
Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Philharmonic on a nationwide tour led by their Chief Conductor Lorenzo Viotti, and the Megaron in Athens to perform all Rachmaninoff concerti in consecutive nights. Other highlights of the season include debuts with the Toronto Symphony and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras under Music Directors Gustavo Gimeno and Jonathan Heyward respectively, the Hallé Orchestra, Iceland Symphony, and an Asian tour that includes performances with the NSO Taiwan, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and recitals in
Alex lordache
Pohang, Daegu, and Tokyo.
Since winning the Queen Elizabeth Competition in 2010, Denis has performed with the London Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Staatskapelle Berlin. A soughtafter recitalist and chamber musician, Kozhukhin regularly appears at a number of prominent music festivals including Verbier, Gstaad, Dresden, Intonations Festival, the BBC Proms, and more.
As a Pentatone recording artist, his discography spans works by Haydn, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Ravel, and Gershwin.
A graduate of the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid under the guidance of Dmitri Bashkirov and Claudio Martinez-Mehner, Kozhukhin further honed his skills at the Piano Academy at Lake Como, where he received advice from notable pianists such as Fou Ts’ ong, Stanislav Ioudenitch, Peter Frankl, Boris Berman, Charles Rosen, and Andreas Staier, and Kirill Gerstein in Stuttgart.
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
By James M. Keller
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Born March 20( old style)/ April 1( new style), 1873, in either Oneg or Semyonovo, Russia Died March 28, 1943, in Beverly Hills, California
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 4 IN G MINOR, OP. 40 [ 1926; revised 1927 / 41 ]
Sergei Rachmaninoff composed four piano concertos spread through his career— in 1890 – 91, 1900 – 01, 1909, and 1926( revised through 1941)— and was the soloist at the premiere of each. A pendant to these is a fifth, ever-popular work for piano and orchestra, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini( 1934). The plush Second Concerto and the knuckle-busting Third, along with the Rhapsody, have staked indelible places in the repertoire. The First and Fourth stand more toward the edge, and the Fourth has had a particularly hard time finding champions. It displays much of the spacious style and the demanding virtuosity of Rachmaninoff’ s earlier concertos and the tightly coiled drama of the Rhapsody. And yet, the Fourth Concerto inhabits a world all its own and its distinct character has sometimes left listeners complaining about what it is not, and only latterly growing to appreciate it for what it is: a work very much of its time, incorporating not only the remnants of late Romanticism but also some up-to-date sounds of Ravel and Gershwin, reflecting Rachmaninoff’ s musical curiosity and evolving style. Its transparent textures may resemble the original version of the First Concerto more than
the somewhat gauzier beauty of the Second and Third; but one rarely hears that version of the First Concerto, which is almost always given with the alterations Rachmaninoff made to it in 1917, changes that bring it more in line with the sound of the Second and Third Concertos. In fact, the composer reported that working on the revision of his Concerto No. 1 provided stimulation during the long gestation of the Concerto No. 4.
Rachmaninoff began this piece in 1914, but work was derailed by World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, which led to the composer’ s emigration in 1918. Demands of the concert circuit left him little time to compose, but in 1926 he finished this concerto in time to honor the date he had already scheduled for its premiere. Taking a break from concertizing, he settled in to work at his New York apartment and then took the project along to Europe,
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