Acclaimed pianist Barry Douglas will join the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, June 12, 13 and 15 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, and June 14 at the Music Center at Strathmore. Led by guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard, the program also includes Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7 and his sweeping tone poem, En Saga. See below for complete program information.
Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is among the most infamously challenging and virtuosic works in the piano repertory. Rachmaninoff penned the concerto in the summer of 1909, but was only able to practice on a silent keyboard as he made the sea voyage to America for its premiere and his first American tour. Though well received in its early years, it was not until the mid?twentieth century when, championed first by famed pianist Vladimir Horowitz and then by Van Cliburn, the work took its place among the giants of the repertoire. On the Baltimore Symphony’s program, “Rach 3” is performed by Irish pianist Barry Douglas, the 1986 winner of the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition. On June 2, Sony BMG Masterworks released a heritage recording, circa 1993, of Douglas performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Nos. 1 and 3 with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra.
Also featured on the program is Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ seventh symphony, considered by some to be his greatest achievement. The composer had long rejected the traditional, four?movement symphonic form, believing that a symphony should flow like a river; thus, Symphony No. 7 is just one movement, completely original in form and in treatment of dramatically varied tempi. With its organic, free?flowing melodies, the work has just one true theme, proclaimed three times by the brass. In the words of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program annotator Jan Bedell, “Like many of Sibelius’ greatest works, there is an underlying feeling of the human being standing in wonder before a big, powerful and unknowable natural world: Nature at its most awesome.” Though the composer lived another 31 years—to the age of 91—serious depression and alcoholism stymied his compositional output, leaving Symphony No. 7 as his final symphonic work.
Unlike many tone poems, which follow a clear narrative, Sibelius’ En Saga (“A Legend”) remains shrouded in mystery and without a program. The composer would never reveal the troubles that inspired the work, only saying that En Saga was “an expression of a state of mind…I could almost say that the whole of my youth is contained within it…When I was writing En Saga I went through many things that were upsetting to me. In no other work have I revealed myself as completely as in En Saga.” -- www.baltimoresymphony.org
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