OurConcerts.live Presents Pianist Orion Weiss In Virtual Recital

On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 4:00pm ET, OurConcerts.live presents acclaimed pianist Orion Weiss in a virtual recital called A Beacon Through Troubled Times. Recorded in May 2021, the all-Russian program features Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 10 and Rachmaninoff's 9 Etudes-Tableaux, plus a surprise Prokofiev encore.

The live-streamed performance will be available to watch on OurConcert.live's website and apps immediately following the livestream for 48 hours, expiring on March 1st at 11:59pm ET. Tickets will be available for purchase through the end of the VOD period. Watch the concert trailer for A Beacon Through Troubled Times.

"I have been practicing Rachmaninoff's ferociously difficult Nine Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 39, in preparation for a recital of Russian piano music all written a little over a hundred years ago," says Orion Weiss. "The Nine Etudes are the centerpiece of my concert, the last pieces Rachmaninoff wrote before escaping Russia in 1917. They are among his darkest works: ominous, wild, tumultuous and terrifying. In them, one can hear the violence of WWI and the October Revolution; the Bolshevik soldiers that occupied his home and their fires that engulfed his family's estate; marching footsteps, trains, frantic sleigh rides, winter landscapes. Above all, one hears his emotional state: Rachmaninoff was always more interested in the narrative of emotions than in landscapes or dramatic action. In these tremendous pieces, written right before he fled his country and plunged forevermore into exile, his uncertainty and anxiety run like a constant thread. But even more prominently, one hears his sadness, heartbreak, courage, and resistance. The music is ultimately redeemed and exalted by the drive to persevere that enabled Rachmaninoff to escape such desperate circumstances. For me, they have been an inspiration over this last year, a beacon as I navigated through these troubling times. I believe the set of evocative etudes is essential music for all of us now, music of determination and perseverance, and with its final etude's joyful ending, a triumphant message of hope."

Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 9, Op. 68, "Black Mass" (1913) is featured on Weiss's new album Arc I: Granados, Janáček, Scriabin, which will be released on First Hand Records on March 18, 2022. Arc I is the inaugural album of an ambitious three-part series and features important works for solo piano from the frantic years of 1911-1913 - the precipice before World War I: Granados' Goyescas, Janáček's In the Mists, and Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 9. Each struggle with the same impossible awareness of what was coming for the world, and in doing so, plunge further into modernity and despair. Album press copies and downloads available upon request.

Link: https://ourconcerts.live/orionweiss

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