The technically dazzling yet musically compelling Caprice in A minor for solo violin, Op. 1 No. 24 by Niccolo Paganini, quickly gained popularity and became the subject of arrangements by some of the greatest composers. This programme offers an opportunity to compare two settings of the work for piano and orchestra, written within a relatively short span of time yet representing strikingly different artistic visions. Whereas Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody presents Paganini’s Caprice in a late-Romantic guise, embracing both impassioned pathos and profound lyricism, Witold Lutosławski, in his Variations, gives it a motoric, modernist character tinged with sarcasm. The juxtaposition of these two works also presents a challenge of the highest order for the performers, one that can be met only by mature artists such as the Russian pianist Anna Vinnitskaya, who is based in Germany and has collaborated for many years with Krzysztof Urbański, an outstanding interpreter of 20th-century music.
One might say that the ballet Romeo and Juliet, created by Sergei Prokofiev in the 1930s, is itself a kind of variation on what is perhaps the best-known love story in history. Through his modern score, bearing the hallmark of Prokofiev’s style with its touches of grotesque and even ferocity, yet equally capable of lyricism and delicacy, Shakespeare’s drama acquires a renewed relevance, or perhaps a certain sense of distance. The music of one of the most important works in the history of ballet quickly became so popular that the Russian master arranged three orchestral suites from it, which provided the basis for the selection of excerpts performed at this concert.
Robert Losiak
