Mother and son join the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for a stirring rendition of Felix Mendelssohn's vision of Shakespeare's woodland fantasy A Midsummer Night's Dream. Conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky (pronounced sitt-kuh-VETT-skee) leads the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and his mother, legendary pianist Bella Davidovich, who will perform Schumann's beautiful Piano Concerto while Sitkovetsky himself takes center stage as soloist on Bach's Violin Concerto No. 1.
The concerts take place in Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center on Friday, January 4 at 8 p.m.; Saturday, January 5 at 8:30 p.m.; and Sunday, January 6 at 3 p.m.
Famed Russian pianist Bella Davidovich performs Schumann's Piano Concerto. Celebrating her 80th birthday in 2008, she began studying the piano at the age of 6. At 18 she entered the Moscow Conservatory and, in 1949, became the youngest pianist to win the prestigious Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw. She has been touring for more than half a century since then, performing with the most well-known orchestras and conductors around the world. She has performed with her son Dmitry Sitkovetsky since 1966, and the pair has recorded sonatas together by Grieg, Brahms and Ravel.
These Detroit Symphony Orchestra concerts are led by Dmitry Sitkovetsky who is also soloist for the Bach Violin Concerto. This piece holds a special place in the conductor's repertoire; he performed it in his orchestral debut in 1969 with the Moscow State Orchestra. As a violinist, he has performed with many of the most renowned orchestras in the world. He also is a founding artist of the Tuscan Sun Festival. Recently, Sitkovetsky has established his conducting career and worked with many symphonies in the United States and Europe. He is currently Music Director of the Greensboro, N.C. Symphony Orchestra and the Principal Guest Conductor of the Russian State Orchestra. In 2006, he was named Artist-in-Residence of the Orchestre de Castilla y Leon in Spain.
Felix Mendelssohn was a child prodigy and prolific composer who wrote the Overture to Shakespeare's romantic comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1826 at age 17. In 1843, because of the fame of the overture, he was commissioned to write incidental music for a German stage production of the play. The Overture was also added to it, and both were used in most stage versions through the 19th century.
The popular "Wedding March" is the final movement of the incidental music and has been used in countless weddings since its debut. However, most wedding-goers do not hear the different verses Mendelssohn composed that appear between the march's stirring refrain.
While it might seem natural for Robert Schumann to write a piano concerto given the many compositions he composed for the instrument, he hesitated before tackling one due to Bach's proficiency. Schumann began several concerti before this one but never completed them for fear they could not hold up to Bach's works. The popular Piano Concerto in A minor started as a single movement completed by the composer in 1841. His wife, Clara, a renowned pianist, performed the piece and pronounced it "marvelous." In 1845 Schumann added the intermezzo and finale to finish the work. Its 1846 premiere was in Liepzig, Germany with Clara as soloist and remains the only actual piano concerto Schumann ever composed.
Also on the program is Johann Sebastian Bach's Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, one of only two violin concertos written by the legendary composer. The A minor concerto was likely composed in 1720 when Bach was Kappellmeister for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen (Germany). The A minor concerto closely follows the Italian model, a three-movement, fast-slow-fast plan, as Vivaldi's concertos were widely copied and imitated during Bach's time. The original conception of this concerto was considered chamber music as Bach had an orchestra of about a dozen players in mind when composing the piece. -- www.detroitsymphony.com
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