Columbus Symphony to Examine the Russian Soul 11/11

Music Director Jean-Marie Zeitouni and the Columbus Symphony will perform great works from Russian composers in the Russian Soul program. Symphonic Dances, the lush, seductive, and magnetic final work of the great Russian Romantic, Rachmaninoff, is paired with the sonorous and emotional power of the orchestral masterpiece, Symphony No. 5, a true audience favorite and Shostakovich's most-often performed symphony.

The Columbus Symphony presents the Russian Soul program at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.) on Friday and Saturday, November 11 and 12, at 8pm daily. Tickets are $24.75-$68 and can be purchased at the Ohio Theatre Ticket Office (39 E. State St.), all Ticketmaster outlets, and www.ticketmaster.com. To purchase tickets by phone, please call (614) 228-8600 or (800) 745-3000. The Ohio Theatre Ticket Office will also be open two hours prior to each performance. Students between the ages of 13-19 may purchase $5 High Five tickets while available.

The 2011-12 Masterworks Series is made possible through the generous support of season sponsor Battelle.

About CSO Music Director Jean-Marie Zeitouni
A graduate of the Montreal Conservatory, Jean-Marie Zeitouni has emerged as one of Canada's brightest young conductors with an eloquent yet fiery style in repertoire ranging from Baroque to contemporary music. He was installed as Music Director of the Columbus Symphony in October 2010, and also serves as principal conductor and artistic director designate of I Musici de Montréal, a prestigious Canadian chamber orchestra. Jean-Marie also enjoys a long association with Les Violons du Roy, a celebrated chamber orchestra based in Quebec City, first as conductor-in-residence, then as associate conductor, and since 2008, as principal guest conductor. Over the years, he has led the ensemble in more than 200 performances in the province of Québec, across Canada, and in Mexico. In 2006, he recorded his first CD with Les Violons du Roy entitled Piazzolla which received a 2007 JUNO Award for Classical Album of the Year in the category of Solo or Chamber Ensemble. They also recorded two subsequent CDs-Bartok (2008) and Britten (2010).

About composer Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Sergei Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He was one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, perhaps the last great representative of Romanticism in classical music. The early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave him a thoroughly personal idiom that included a pronounced lyricism, expressive breadth, structural ingenuity, and a tonal palette of rich, distinctive orchestral colors. The Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, is an orchestral suite in three movements. Completed in 1940, it is Rachmaninoff's last composition and fully representative of the composer's late style with its curious, shifting harmonies, the almost Prokofiev-like grotesquerie of the outer movements, and the focus on individual instrumental tone colors throughout. The Dances allowed him to indulge in a nostalgia for the Russia he had known, as well as to effectively sum up his lifelong fascination with ecclesiastical chants.

About Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Dmitri Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. He achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the Stalinist bureaucracy. His music was officially denounced twice, in 1936 and 1948, and was periodically banned. Despite this, his works were popular and well received, earning accolades and state awards. The Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, is a work for orchestra composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky. The premiere was a huge success, and received an ovation that lasted well over half an hour.

www.columbussymphony.com

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