Petrenko conducts imaginative and sensual Russian music

One of today’s most exciting and acclaimed conductors debuts at the Teatro de la Maestranza. Russian Vasily Petrenko will lead the outstanding Orquesta Fundación Barenboim Said, always applauded by the theatre audience for its captivating performances. This orchestra unites musical excellence with a firm resolution to develop young talent in Andalusia. Petrenko has been musical director of both the Royal Liverpool and Oslo Philharmonic orchestras, after having won the Cadaqués Conductors Competition (Concurso de Dirección de Cadaqués) in 2002 at the age of 26. He has evolved an opulent, transparent, and sumptuous sound, attentive to every detail and thrills international critics who praise his multiple recordings. At present he is the music director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Petrenko comes to Sevilla with a lush, sensual, and fanciful programme of Russian music. The symphonic suite Scheherezade, Op. 35, by Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov, premiered in 1888, and based, as we know, on One Thousand and One Nights -with its world of sultans, princesses, and adventures-, takes the frequent Russian composers’ temptation to an extreme with spellbinding orchestration. In this case, however, the narrative is superseded by a pursuit of pure and varied musical scenes that is sustained by beautiful motifs which and come and go.

For its part, a selection from Suites 1 and 2 of Romeo and Juliet by Sergei Prokofiev represents a brilliant intent by the composer to renew the spirit of the grand ballets which had diminished under communist rule during the Russia of the 30s and 40s.

The process of composition between 1935 and the premiere in 1938 was subject to government pressure which accused composers like Shostakovich of formal “deviationism”, so Prokofiev was forced to abandon his initial idea of a happy ending to Shakespeare’s story. Today it is one of the most beloved works on the programme of the great ballet companies.