On April 22, 2023, the Chamber Hall of the Theatre is going to host a unique Gala-concert where more than twenty soloists of the Primorsky Stage Opera Company will participate. Accompanied by the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage, they will present a program dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Pavel Smelkov will take the conductor’s console.
The program of Spring waters Gala-concert includes 25 romances by the composer. Originally written for solo voice and piano, they will be performed in the orchestration by the Theatre’s Principal Conductor Pavel Smelkov.
“Rachmaninoff was a master of orchestral composition himself, but he has made the instrumentation for only one his romance, the famous “Vocalise”, Op. 34 No. 14, which, no doubt, will be included in our program. While orchestrating his other romances, I certainly relied on Sergei Rachmaninoff’s principles and techniques of arrangement for orchestra. Somewhere I literally reproduced his style and somewhere I had to creatively invent the textures. My longstanding work resulted in 25 romances. Many of them have already been performed in concerts by the Mariinsky Orchestra of the Primorsky Stage. Some had been earlier performed in St. Petersburg, and some have been instrumented specifically for our Gala-concert”, the conductor explained.
The grandiose program will embrace almost the entire opera company, from basses to coloratura sopranos. Rachmaninoff’s vocal masterpieces, such as “In the Silence of the Secret Night”, “Sing not, Oh Lovely One”, “Lilacs”, “Daisies”, “How Peaceful”, “Spring Waters”, and many others will be performed.
