Moorish Exoticism
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
Although Saint-Saens spent many a winter in Algeria, he wrote his "Suite algerienne" while on holiday in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Nevertheless, the work—as displayed in this evening's performance by the London Symphony under Yondani Butt—is replete with Arab melodies and Moorish exoticism.
Rachmaninoff's first version (1926) of the Fourth Piano Concerto was so long that Sergei himself said it would need to be played over consecutive nights! He revised it, critics hated it, he revised it again, critics still hated it; he withdrew it until 1941, when he presented tonight's version. We like it, and hope you do too! Pianist Zoltan Kocsis is featured, along with the San Francisco Symphony under Edo de Waart. And another revision! Brahms was only twenty when he first wrote his Piano Trio No. 1; thirty-five years later, he decided much of it needed reworking, but the result is the masterpiece played for you this evening by pianist Artur Rubinstein, violinist Henryk Szering, and cellist Pierre Fournier.
» Evening Music playlist
Rachmaninoff's first version (1926) of the Fourth Piano Concerto was so long that Sergei himself said it would need to be played over consecutive nights! He revised it, critics hated it, he revised it again, critics still hated it; he withdrew it until 1941, when he presented tonight's version. We like it, and hope you do too! Pianist Zoltan Kocsis is featured, along with the San Francisco Symphony under Edo de Waart. And another revision! Brahms was only twenty when he first wrote his Piano Trio No. 1; thirty-five years later, he decided much of it needed reworking, but the result is the masterpiece played for you this evening by pianist Artur Rubinstein, violinist Henryk Szering, and cellist Pierre Fournier.
» Evening Music playlist
