The outstanding piano virtuosos Sergejs, Andrejs, and Georgijs Osokins invite you to meet the year 2022 with an especially glorious and conceptually rich musical program. On this night of pianism on January 22, the stage of Concert Hall Great Amber will simultaneously hold three concert grand pianos for the first time ever, so that the black-and-white keys played by two generations can produce pieces by Scriabin, Mussorgsky, Chopin, Shostakovich, and Ravel. Tickets here.
During his lifetime, Alexander Scriabin, whose 150 years will be celebrated in 2022, was not only a composer, aesthete and generator of great ideas, but also a pianist, and the synergy of these areas can definitely be observed in his piano music. The style of early Scriabin strongly resembles the music of Fryderyk Chopin and his protagonist of a romantic loner, however, Russian-born British pianist and interpreter of Scriabin’s music, Yevgeny Sudbin, once noted a difference between the two: “Compared to Chopin, there are darker undertones in Scriabin’s music, sometimes with the Devil in the background.” Three études by Scriabin will draw a broad line through the composer’s entire life and the growth of his music, and the panorama of his work will be crowned by Piano Sonata No. 9 – the quintessence of evil forces, which the author himself called the Black Mass.
The other center of gravity in this program will be another titan of Russian music – Modest Mussorgsky, whose suite Pictures at an Exhibition is a dedication to architect and painter Victor Hartmann’s posthumous exhibition of paintings. The exuberant arrangement of the suite was once created by Maurice Ravel, the master of French orchestration. This time, his Bolero will be performed in an arrangement for three pianos by another master – Sergejs Osokins. 70 years ago, another admirer of Mussorgsky’s, Dmitri Shostakovich, created Concertino for Two Pianos op. 94 for himself and his son Maxim, and the practice of father-son partnership will be used in this concert as well.
