A Very Russian Heart

Before Tchaikovsky wrote his creative will, no one had dared to finish a symphony with such slow and bleak music as in the finale of his “Pathétique”. It is so disconcerting that the audience usually applauds after the dazzling third movement. Its premiere took place not long before the composer died and it is this sixth symphony of the Russian master that sits on the stands of the Orquesta Fundación Barenboim-Said for its annual visit to the Teatro de la Maestranza under conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, one of the leading conductors of his generation with most international acclaim.

Tchaikovsky is the last stage of this journey to the heart of the Russian repertory after an effervescent Glinka, a vibrant Rimski and the deep melancholy of a less well-known Rachmaninov. The students of the Academia de Estudios Orquestales, under the care of prestigious international musicians, will once again demonstrate the high level of the formation. Barely a month after standing on the podium of the Berlin Philharmonic, Maxim Emelyanychev, Chief Conductor of Il Pomo d’Oro (we recall his debut in our theatre with Don Giovanni in 2014), is the ideal person to communicate the energy and transparency to these scores of enormous technical and emotional demands.

Mikhail Glinka, Overture to Rulan and Ludmilla
Serguei Rachmaninoff, The Rock, symphonic poem for orchestra, op. 7
Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov, Capricho español, op. 34
Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, Symphony no. 6 in B minor, op. 74, “Patétique”