大象传媒

Presented by Katie Derham
An afternoon in the company of Russian perforners performing Russian showpieces, symphonies and ballet music.

No other play by Shakespeare has inspired as many composers as Romeo and Juliet and today's programmes features responses by two great Russian composers. With the Fantasy Overture, Tchaikovsky found his voice and penned his first masterpiece. Shakespeare's story and Tchaikovsky's musical portrayal are perfectly matched - the famous love theme in particular is one of his boldest and most beautiful themes; and the programme ends with one of Prokofiev's most popular scores, the Suite from his ballet Romeo and Juliet.

Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence was originally written for string sextet and reflects the time he spent Italy in 1889 while working on the Queen of Spades.

Working under Shostakovich's supervision, Rudolf Barshai transformed Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet into a Chamber Symphony (for string orchestra). Shostakovich composed the Eighth Quartet in 1960 during a visit to war-torn Dresden, and this triggered a response to Shostakovich's memories of his own shattered Leningrad (St Petersburg).

In May 1892, Tchaikovsky began work on a projected Symphony in E flat, but complained to a friend that work wasn't going at all smoothly. However by October he informed a former pupil that the work was completed and only required orchestration. Tchaikovsky began soon afterwards, but stopped after 33 pages and decided to transform the symphony into the rarely performed single movement Piano Concerto no.3. The original sketches were discovered many years later by the Russian musicologist and composer Semyon Bogatyryev, who reconstructed the work in the 1950s.