RENOWNED pianist Evgenia Rubinova is returning to Huddersfield Town Hall on Saturday, April 5 with the Orchestra of Opera North.
Evgenia, who has delighted audiences across the world with her thrilling and powerful playing, has a strong association with Yorkshire.
Since winning the silver medal at Leeds International Piano Competition in 2003 she has gone on to become a Kirklees concert season favourite, opening the 2004/5 season with Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto and returning again last year.
In an evening full of festivity and celebration, she will be playing works by Shostakovich, Chopin and Prokofiev.
Shostakovich’s Festival Overture premiered in 1954 and was written for the 37th anniversary of the revolution. After a ceremonial opening, which returns briefly at the end, it is relentlessly fast and exciting, bearing none of the strained jollity that gives so many of his later works their poignancy.
Chopin’s First Piano Concerto is the second piece on the evening’s programme. It was first performed in Warsaw in 1830 with Chopin himself as the soloist, during one of his farewell concerts before leaving Poland.
A beautifully poetic and lyrical piece, the opening movement reaches heroic proportions before giving way to an ethereal, romantic and calm second movement. The final movement is filled with delicacy as well as exuberance and perfectly balances the rest of the piece.
The evening finishes with Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. It premiered in 1945 and was conducted by Prokofiev himself. The premiere was well received and the symphony remains one of his most popular works.
Taking up the baton for the evening will be Frédéric Chaslin. Born in France, he began his conducting career as Daniel Barenboim’s assistant at both the Orchestre de Paris from 1987-89 and at the Bayreuth Festival for the Ring Cycle in 1998. Since then he has worked all over the world, notably with the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.
There will be the regular pre-concert discussion in the main hall at 6.40pm for concert-goers to gain an extra insight into the evening’s performance.
Tickets are priced at £7-£20.50 (plus concessions) and are available from Kirklees Booking Offices, ticket hotline: 01484 223200. Under 26s can buy tickets for only £4.
