MPO presents Russian masterpieces

THE MALAYSIAN Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) is performing two Russian masterpieces that are seldom heard at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas (DFP) this Saturday at 8.30pm and Sunday at 3pm.
The works, Pyotr IlyichTchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff's The Bells, trace a course from happy carefree days of youth to despair and mourning.
The concerts, entitled Eugene Onegin and Russian Bells, begin with excerpts from Tchaikovsky's fifth completed opera and his best known.
Based on a famous novel, it tells a story of a young, sophisticated and bored world traveller who inadvertently causes a simple country girl to fall in love with him. Unfortunately, he does not reciprocate the love until it is too late.
Rachmaninoff's 35-minute The Bells comes on after the interval. Regarded as 'a poem for soprano, tenor and baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra', this piece is an impressive evocation in sound of poetry by Edgar Allen Poe.
The 'bells' here speak dissonantly and cacophonously of turmoil, unrest, strife and even rank as terror. The chorus and orchestra will seem to grip each other in one tense, galvanic musical force, before a deep sense of funeral gloom and fatalistic melancholy pervades the music.
All concerts will be led by Russian conductor Stanislav Kochanovsky, and will feature a glittering list of singers – soprano Tatiana Pavlovskaya, contralto Irina Shishkova, baritone Alexey Markov, and also the Kuala Lumpur City Opera Chorus.
For more, visit the MPO website.