Shostakovich Conducts Shostakovich

We are delighted to be staging a unique concert by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on Wednesday 17 March featuring the music of the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, conducted by his son Maxim.

Maxim Shostakovich is well-placed to provide a particular insight into his father’s music. A respected conductor in his own right, he was Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the USSR Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, with whom he conducted the world première of his father’s Symphony No.15 in 1971. He has worked with renowned orchestras around the world including those of Philadelphia and Zürich and, in the UK, the Royal Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras, as well as conducting his father’s work at English National Opera.

One of the main works featured in the concert tour will be Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No.2. Maxim gave the world première performance of this concerto as a young pianist, after his father wrote it on the occasion of his nineteenth birthday. The concerts will also feature a wide range of pieces by Shostakovich, from the rollicking Festive Overture to the dramatic Symphony No.5, widely believed to be the composer’s reaction against Russian Communism.

In parallel to the first performance of the Shostakovich Piano Concerto, these concerts will once again star a talented young Russian pianist, this time in the form of twenty-two-year-old Natasha Paremski. The top prize-winner at the 2007 Prix de Montblanc, she has already performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berlin Symphony and Royal Scottish National orchestras. Her performance interests extend out of the traditional concert hall to contemporary classical music and appearances on television documentaries on the life and works of Tchaikovsky and Robert and Clara Schumann.

The concert will take place in the Butterworth Hall, which opened at the end of last year following a £6.9 million redevelopment.

Tickets for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra can be booked online or from the Box Office on 024 7652 4524.