A “Russian Evening” with Tugan Sokhiev and Vadim Gluzman

“The days are over when dissonance was used just for the sake of dissonance,” Sergei Prokofiev explained in a 1930 interview in the Chicago journal Music Leader. “A new simplicity – that is the current modernism.” It is no wonder that in his Violin Concerto No. 2, composed in 1935, the composer left out those grotesque aspects that characterised his first work in the genre: the soloist starts the piece alone with a lyrical, ethereally floating theme of unmistakably Russian origin. For his Philharmoniker debut, Vadim Gluzman, who studied with violin legends Zakhar Bron and Dorothy DeLay, performs Prokofiev’s masterpiece on the “ex-Leopold Auer” Stradivarius.

Prior to this, Tugan Sokhiev programmed Anatoly Lyadov’s Impressionistic and dazzling tone poem The Enchanted Lake, which presents a mysterious, nocturnal tableau in the tradition of Rimsky-Korsakov’s fantastic opera scenes. The symphonic highlight of the evening is Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony; its brilliant premiere was a sensational success: “As the storm of applause shook the columns of the concert hall,” writer Aleksandr Nikolaevich Glumov recalled, “Mravinsky lifted the score above his head to make it clear that this ovation was not owed to him, but to the creator of the music – Shostakovich”.

Berliner Philharmoniker

Tugan Sokhiev

Vadim Gluzman