Filarmonica della Scala, Chailly & Gerstein

Rachmaninov & Rimsky-Korsakov

Leading a world-famous orchestra in the city where you were born? It sounds like a childhood dream, but for Riccardo Chailly, standing on the conductor’s podium in front of the Filarmonica della Scala is simply coming home. Nevertheless, he looks beyond Italy in this concert programme. Nikolaj Rimski-Korsakov wrote the soundtrack to the fin-de-siècle in his symphonic suite Sheherazade. He drew inspiration from the One Thousand and One Nights, perfectly expressing the fascination of the age with ‘otherness’. Sergej Rachmaninov had less time for the imagination. His Piano Concerto no. 3 is a disturbed reflection of repression under Lenin. Rachmaninov tries to raise the morale of the Russian people with moments of lyricism and a hymn-like apotheosis. The Berlin-based Kirill Gerstein returns four years after his previous visit, with a message of hope.