The Rijeka Opera Orchestra conducted by Ville Matvejeff recorded the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Violin Concerto by Boris Papandopulo at the Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc in the June of 2016. It was their first international CD edition made for the German record label CPO Classic Produktion Osnabrück.
The first CDs have recently arrived at the address of the Rijeka Theatre! The promotion will take place in the foyer on the day of the first promotional symphony concert, that is, on the 24th February at 18:30 hours.
Namely, the promotional concerts on Friday 24th and Saturday 25th Feb will see both recorded works performed live in front of the Rijeka audience with Ville Matvejeff as conductor.
Next to the Third Piano Concerto on the programme of the first concert on Friday 24th February at 20:00 and the Violin Concerto that makes part of the programme of the second concert on Saturday 25th February at 18:00, it is the Fifth Symphony in D minor, the most famous one by Dmitri Shostakovich, that makes part of both concert evenings. After his Eleventh Symphony had been performed at the symphony concert Ville Matvejeff Conducting Beethoven and Shostakovich last year and the audience having asked for another performance of that symphony, having also evaluated it as the best concert of the 2015/2016 Season, it is for this once that it will be possible to hear the grandiose Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony twice. The works of two 20th century composers born in the same year (1906) will thus be joined in one evening.
The soloist at the first concert is Oliver Triendl, the German pianist who has recorded over 50 CDs with the rarely performed repertoire of the Classical and Romantic period as well as contemporary works, successfully playing at concerts in great world music centres together with world-famous orchestras.
Violinist Dan Zhu is to be the soloist at the second concert on 25th February. Having barely come of age, he made his Carnegie Hall debut, while in 2003 he received the prestigious Premier Prix de Violin by The Fontainebleau American Conservatory. He is a rapidly rising star, known as one of the finest Chinese musicians on the international stage today, described by critics as “truly brilliant and convincing”.
Boris Papandopulo (1906 – 1991) is a Croatian composer, conductor, pianist, piano accompanist, reviewer, music writer, publicists, author of around 440 works, anthology piece compositions of great musical values: orchestral, concert pieces, chamber and theatre music, music, secular cantatas, religious compositions, a number of traditional tunes, compositions for solo voice or choir, arrangements of Croatian folk tunes as well as stage and film music.
After World War II, he was the Opera director at the-then Rijeka National Theatre from 1946 until 1948 and from 1953 until 1959, at which time he regenerated the ensemble and owing to the extensive repertoire left an important trace. As Davor Merkaš in his text for the CD writes, Papandopolo’s Concerto No. 3 for Piano and Orchestra shows all the grandeur of his receptive music talent, openness to all, at that time modern musical expressions, even to “easier genres”, primarily jazz that then was considered to be trivial. Papandopulo’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was finished in the year 1943 and considered to be one of the most valuable works of the 20th century written for the violin and orchestra. It was first performed in Rijeka in 1960 under the direction of Maestro Papandopulo himself, in the interpretation of violinist Josip Klima and the Rijeka Opera Orchestra.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906 – 1975) is a Russian composer, pianist and conductor. This most distinguished Russian composer of his generation composed works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, piano, also opera and ballet music, vocal, stage and film music. His emotionally charged Fifth Symphony in D minor is a kind of victory against the fear of Stalin, one of the most powerful works of all of the symphonic literature.
It was first performed in the year 1937, four months after it had been finished, in the city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), when it provoked tears during the performance and ovations that lasted over half an hour after it. Through its four movements, the Fifth Symphony is still captivating today owing to its beauty, greatness, depth and power,
We are inviting you to this important event of the Rijeka Theatre, the promotion of the first international CD of the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc Opera Orchestra in the Theatre foyer at 18:30 on 24th February, the symphony concert Papandopulo, Shostakovich (1) on the same day at 20:00, also the symphony concert Papandopulo, Shostakovich (2) at 18:00 on 25th February, with the Rijeka Opera orchestra, the favourite conductor and the word-famous soloists.