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Around the World in 80 Minutes

Andrew Litton Conductor
Stephen Hough Piano

RITCHIE Diary of a Madman: Dedication to Shostakovich
SAINT-SAËNS Piano Concerto No. 5 Egyptian
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5

Journey around the world with the NZSO. Setting forth with a work from Dunedin-based composer Anthony Ritchie, his Diary of a Madman: Dedication to Shostakovich draws inspiration from the Russian composer’s early works. Touching upon the brooding and heartfelt themes in Shostakovich’s music, Ritchie’s composition has a manic disposition, or as the composer describes it, ‘a sort of jumbled diary that lurches from farce to despair in rapid succession’… {cont below}

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{cont} Our next port of call takes us to Paris, by way of Egypt, with Camille Saints-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 5 Egyptian. The concerto is filled with allusions to rocking boats, croaking frogs and Nubian love songs. With filigree figures pouring forth from the soloist, Saints-Saëns’ music could be in no finer hands than those of Anglo-Australian pianist Stephen Hough. A consummate performer, his talents have been described as the ‘most perfect piano playing conceivable’. His interpretation of the French master will undoubtedly exceed all expectations.

Our journey ends in Russia, with Shostakovich’s powerful Fifth Symphony. Caught in Stalin’s brutal regime and labelled an ‘enemy of the people’, his epic Fifth Symphony, ‘A Soviet Artist’s Practical, Creative Response to Just Criticism’, restored his reputation. Juxtaposing the naïve and the sardonic, triumph and despair, barbarism and elegiac beauty, Shostakovich’s music declares an apparent patriotism while revealing sinister undercurrents.

'The most perfect piano playing conceivable’ The Guardian, on Stephen Hough
"A virtuoso who begins where others leave off" Washington Post, on Stephen Hough
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