Opening concert of the Verbier Music Festival. Conductor - Valery Gergiev

2018 was the 25th anniversary year for the famous Verbier Music Festival. All these years, Russian musicians and conductors have performed at the festival, which brings together the greatest musicians of our time in the Alpine village. And in the anniversary season, Valery Gergiev became the new musical director of the Verbier Orchestra. The maestro chose two Russian works for the concert that opened the festival: "Symphonic Diptych" by Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin and the symphonic suite "Scheherazade" by Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov. "Symphonic Diptych" was written by Shchedrin in 2008 based on his opera "The Enchanted Wanderer" and was dedicated to Valery Gergiev. Rimsky-Korsakov based his symphonic suite "Scheherazade", dedicated to Vladimir Vasilyevich Stasov, on some of the Arabian fairy tales from the collection "1001 Nights". The composer sent a program compiled by himself along with the score: "Sultan Shahryar, convinced of the treachery and infidelity of women, vowed to execute each of his wives after the first night; but the sultana Scheherazade saved her life by managing to occupy him with fairy tales, telling them to him throughout the 1001 nights so that, driven by curiosity, Shahryar constantly postponed her execution and finally abandoned his intention entirely. Scheherazade told him many miracles, citing verses of poets and words of songs, weaving a fairy tale into a fairy tale and a story into a story." However, the composer emphasized that "Scheherazade" was based on "separate, unrelated" episodes...

The work consists of four parts: "The Sea and the Ship of Sinbad", "The Story of Prince Kalender", "The Young Prince and the Young Princess" and "The Festival in Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship is smashed against a rock on which a bronze horseman stands".

PERFORMERS:

Verbier Festival Orchestra

Musical Director and Conductor - Valery Gergiev

WORKS:

R.K.Shchedrin "Symphonic Diptych", op. 137

N.A.Rimsky-Korsakov "Scheherazade", op. 35

Verbier Festival, Switzerland, 2018