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Yuri Bashmet, the greatest violist of our days,

celebrates the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution

with the music of four composers

which were in open contrast to the Soviet regime,

often risking personally,

and with a piece dedicated to him by Silvia Colasanti.

On March 14 at 17.30 Yuri Bashmet, the most illustrious virtuous of viola of our day, and the Soloists of Moscow, the extraordinary chamber orchestra he founded and direct, recall in the Aula Magna of the Sapienza University for the IUC concert season, the cent Anniversary of the October Revolution, not with a rhetorical celebration but with a panorama of four of the most important composers of the Soviet period, who often found themselves in open contrast to the regime and therefore faced discrimination, running several risks. In the program, Prokof’ev and Šostakovič, Sviridov and Schnittke, and a song written for Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists by Silvia Colasanti.

The music chosen by Bashmet does not accept the dictates of socialist realism. Le Visions fugitives op. 22 by Sergej Prokof’ev (performed in the Rudolf Barshai archery version) were written between 1915 and 1917, so before the October Revolution. It is certainly not a celebratory work of the Revolution also the Symphony of Chamber op. 110 of Dmitry Šostakovič, which is the small orchestra transcription of Quartet no. 8, devoted to “the victims of fascism and war,” not to the victims of one party, but to all the victims, as they clarify these composer’s words: “I try eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler but are no less Distressed to those who died at Stalin’s command. ”

It is up to the tragic years in which the Symphony of Op. 14, written in 1940 by Georgij Sviridov, then just twenty-five. It is certainly not a work of “regime” not even the “For Three” Concert by Alfred Schnittke, written in 1994 for Bashmet and two other great instrumentalists, Gidon Kremer and Mstislav Rostropovich, who lived in exile as the composer himself. On this occasion the soloists will be Andrei Poskrobko on the violin, Yury Bashmet on the viola and Alexei Naidenov on the cello. Complete the program with the first performance in Rome of Preludio, Presto e Lamento by Silvia Colasanti, the most well-known international composer, who has dedicated it to Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists. “The great” songwriting “, in addition to virtuosity, and musical ductility are the traits of Bashmet’s personality, which make him a world-class interpreter, especially for contemporary repertoire. This new work for viola – recounts the Roman composer – which fascinates me for its dark and warm color, rests on a tripartite structure: a Prelude, full of contrasts, which presents the materials that will be developed during the song, a Presto Characterized by a stubborn and fast rhythm of the soloist on dry and hard-pursuits of the orchestra and a final lament, where the viola draws a long arabesque on a rug of Bachian harmonies and concludes the work after an articulate cadence.

“Source: L’ape musicale – Music, art and culture magazine