Saturday September 5, 2009, ore 8.30 p.m.
Stresa, Congress hall

Coro del Teatro Regio di Torino
Roberto Gabbiani, choir master
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda, conductor

S. Rachmaninoff, The Isle of the Dead
Aleko

Opera in one act
Libretto by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
based on Alexander Pushkin's poem The Gypsies by

 

I have always been suspicious in front of phenomena of mass popularity that tend to idolatry. For this reason, the Rachmaninoff case has always made me a sceptical, prudent and fundamentally superficial – if not even negative - spectator; this attitude has brought me to consider him a second choice composer. I was so wrong!
I misjudged his profound inner struggle considering it sentimental treacle; I confused his desperate need to communicate nostalgic anxieties with an attempt of easy and superficial seduction. Incommensurable spirit and complex emotional richness lived in this great man: always in exile - exile meaning an inevitable approach to life. He was always looking for answers with an unending struggle for the things we would like to have but that never occur or that arrive undesired and unexpected. All this, distilled in a musical eloquence, narrative and fascinating as a great epic story.  I admit that all of this is so much more than what usually is said about Rachmaninoff to explain his fame!

Gianandrea Noseda

Concert's notes

The Congress Hall is situated in the heart of Stresa, few meters from thr railway station and from all the most important hotels and restaurants.