Purcell, Schnittke, and the Viennese greats...

The Mikhailovsky Theatre Chamber Orchestra is to continue its series of concerts in the plush interior of the dress circle foyer. The programme includes a cycle of four concerts and will see performances of German chamber music from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the baroque compositions of Purcell and Schnittke, works by Italian composers, and performances of the Viennese greats.

The first of these concerts will take place on 31 January. The orchestra will perform two compositions by Felix Mendelssohn, his String Symphonies No. 6 and No. 10. There will also be a performance of Concerto for Trumpet and Strings by Johann Neruda, whose work is rarely heard in Russia.

A concert on 21 February will allow listeners to delight in the intricacies of baroque music. Featured in the programme are the suite for strings Abdelazer (The Moor’s Revenge) by Henry Purcell — the genius of English baroque — and Alfred Schnittke’s fanciful Suite in the Old Style, orchestrated by Grigory Korchmar.

The evening of 7 March will be dedicated to another side of baroque music — works by Antonio Vivaldi and Ottorino Respighi which, irrespective of the periods in which they were created, can be considered as representative of the two major strands of Italian music. Vivaldi embodies the Baroque era in its canonical form, and though Respighi was writing in the twentieth century he harked back to bygone eras with his Ancient Airs and Dances suite, writing in the style of the Italian masters of the late Renaissance.

The concert of 4 April will showcase works by two greats of the First Viennese School, Mozart and Beethoven, as well as Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3. All four concerts will be conducted by Igor Tomashevsky.