his concert programme featuring the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra includes works by less recognizable composers, but nonetheless worth the attention of the audience. The premiere of Rudi de Bouw’s Piano Concerto “Equinox” directed by the composer will be a great attraction.
The concert will begin with Myroslav Skoryk’s Melody. This short, melancholic piece is the leitmotif of the 1982 war drama Vysokyy pereval. Then we will listen to the Piano Concerto “Equinox” by Rudi de Bouw. He was born in 1970 and was educated in Luxembourg and Liège. His oeuvre includes piano, chamber works and works intended for larger ensembles, including for strings. The artist often appears in Wrocław to direct the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra, and the premiere of his latest work will be a great attraction of this concert.
Silent Music for strings is a composition by Valentin Silvestrov, a Ukrainian composer born in the 1930s, belonging to the same generation as Skoryk. It is delicate, very subtle music in which the Silvestrov engages in a dialogue with the past. Remote echoes of Romantic serenades and other works for strings are heard here. An attentive listener will notice allusions to the works of Mahler, Strauss or Tchaikovsky. Silvestrov’s music is like looking at a familiar, but hardly remembered past. This somewhat dreamlike aura is also reflected in the titles of the three movements – Waltz of the Moment, Evening Serenade and A Moment of the Serenade.
The last piece in the programme is the Austrian Suite op. 51 by Sergei Bortkiewicz. This composer of Polish origin, born in 1877 in Kharkiv, settled in Vienna in 1922. Austria became his second home, and his sympathy for this country is reflected in the eclectic suite from 1939, a tribute to Austrian culture. The piece opens with a meditative, mysterious movement entitled In the Cathedral of St. Stephen. It is followed by a light, witty Walk in the Vienna Woods, a graceful, sentimental Viennese Waltz, and the whole thing is crowned with At Wurstelprater, a musical homage to the most recognizable amusement park in the Austrian capital.