Beethoven’s Third Symphony and the first Russian performance of Alexander Rabinovich-Barakovsky’s Incantations.

“Constantly pushing the boundaries of the permissible, testing the tradition for strength (sometimes for breaking)”: this is how musicologist Larisa Kirillina formulated the creative credo of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1803, the Third Symphony opened a new age in the history of music – breaking the usual rules for building a large symphonic form, standing out with a bold harmonic language, and most importantly – changing views on musical time and space. If the total duration of the symphonic cycle for the Viennese classics, as a rule, did not go beyond 25-30 minutes, then the timing of the Third exceeded this standard exactly twice. “Heroic” is the manifesto of the avant-garde artist of the 19th century, striving for a radical renewal of language, forms, genres, but at the same time assimilating the traditions of the past, which Beethoven “masterfully knew how to turn in completely unexpected directions.”

Almost three centuries later, Alexander Rabinovich-Barakovsky, one of the key heroes of the late Soviet music scene, acts in a similar way, after emigrating in 1974, he was actually forgotten in his homeland. The concert symphony for piano and orchestra “Incantations” (1996) looks like the quintessence of his style: the composer turns common idioms and clichés of the classical-romantic repertoire into repetitive patterns, developing the ideas of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. But if the practices of American minimalists were inspired by Eastern philosophy, then the music of Rabinovich-Barakovsky is a phenomenon of the flesh and blood of Western art: the direct heir of Liszt and Rachmaninov, he continues the tradition of virtuoso writing by pianist composers that has practically disappeared today.

Program:

Beethoven – Symphony no. 3

Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky – Incantations