The concert of the Qatar Philharmonic in Doha which Dmitrij Kitajenko is scheduled to conduct on February 16 opens with Adagio, Pas d’Action, panorama and Waltz from Tchaikovsky’s ballet ‘Sleeping Beauty’ op. 66.
The soloist in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto is the 48-year-old Italian-Russian violinist Sergei Krylov. Maestro Kitajenko has often cooperated with the Stradivarius and Kreisler prize-winner.
Shostakovich composed his First Violin Concerto in 1947and completed it in 1948. Due to his problems with the Soviet government it was not be premiered until after Stalin’s death in 1955, by David Oistrakh, dedicatee of the concerto. And it has been said that in this concerto Shostakovich “took the suffering of his absurd and treacherous world and transmuted it into something beautiful and profound.
Sergei Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony concludes the program. It was composed while Rachmaninov lived in Switzerland, on the Vierwaldstätter Lake, but it is completely Russia-soaked, and in no other work by the composer, the soul must accept such emotional jumps as in this third and last symphony, which was premiered in 1936 by Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. The symphony was generally well accepted, but got also critical reactions which prompted a firm reaction from the composer. “I personally believe that this is a good work.”