Lieutenant Kijé

Antonello Manacorda

Born in Italy in 1970, Antonello Manacorda began his career as a violinist, and as leader of such illustrious ensembles as the Mahler Youth Orchestra, at the invitation of Claudio Abbado. Three years later, he founded the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, still one of the top ensembles of its kind, with a few colleagues and thereafter decided he would never again touch the violin. Instead, he turned to conducting, and for two years studied in the class of Finland’s legendary Jorma Panula. He has since conducted top orchestras the world over, Finland included, and opera at many of the Italian houses and especially the Aldeburgh Festival. He has served as Artistic Director of the Kammerakademie Potsdam, and until 2019 was Chief Conductor of Het Gelders Orkest based on Arnhem in The Netherlands. Highlights of the present season include his debut both at the Berlin State Opera and with the Berlin Philharmonic. His recording with the Kammerakademie Potsdam was awarded the 2015 ECHO Klassik in the category “Best Orchestra of the Year”.

Liza Ferschtman

Liza Ferschtman is one of the leading representatives of the renowned Dutch violin tradition. Above all, she nevertheless looks upon the violin as a means of expressing her love of music. She began playing the violin at the age of five, but also dreamt of one day becoming a singer. She has been the soloist with top orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic, was the recipient of the Dutch Music Award – the most distinguished prize for Dutch musicians – in 2006 and has been Artistic Director of the Delft Chamber Music Festival since 2007. The daughter of Russian Jewish parents, she feels an affinity for some Russian repertoire. “Take, for example, Prokofiev,” she says. “I treasure his works dearly for his storytelling, his incredible way of using ‘colours’ and his expressive way of describing things. Of course you can still argue that I am fond of Prokofiev’s works because of his Russian ways, or is it just simply great music?” Liza Ferschtman plays the “Benno Rabinof” violin from 1742 made by Guarneri Del Gesu.

Sergei Prokofiev: Lieutenant Kijé, Op. 60

Sergei Prokofiev was born in 1891 in a small village in what is now Ukraine. Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) was asked to write a score for small chamber orchestra for one of the earliest Soviet sound films, Lieutenant Kijé, directed by Alexander Faintsimmer in 1934. The plot, based on a short story by Yury Tynyanov, is set in the 18th century and the days of the Emperor Paul I, and it tells the story of a certain Lieutenant who, because of a bureaucratic slip, keeps erroneously cropping up in official documents. A war hero, Kijé even marries and fathers a child. When the Emperor expresses a desire to meet him, his officers realise Kijé has never actually existed and they announce that he is dead. The Emperor orders a hero’s burial, and his command is naturally obeyed, but the coffin is, of course, empty.

Though the film is remembered only as a curiosity, Prokofiev’s music lives on, in an arrangement he later made for large orchestra. The story is easy to follow in the five movements of this satirical suite: The Birth of Kijé, Romance, Kijé’s Wedding, Troika, and The Burial of Kijé.

Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, Op. 19

The premiere of the first violin concerto by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) had been scheduled for November 1915, but had to be postponed until 1923 because of the October Revolution. The soloist was Marcel Darrieux and the Paris Opera Orchestra was conducted by Sergei Koussevitzky. The concerto got only a tepid reception, but sitting in the audience had been Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti, who was greatly impressed, performed it many times the world over and undoubtedly raised its popularity. Usually thought of as an anti-romantic composer with a liking for dissonance and quirky rhythms, Prokofiev was also a master of more traditional expression, as illustrated in his ballet Romeo and Juliet. In his violin concerto he nevertheless sought to thumb his nose at his listeners. For although the music is unusually nostalgic and melodic, it is not lacking in ironic, spikey features. And despite being cast in the traditional three movements, the concerto begins with a slow one, has an ultra-fast second, and ends with a gavotte culminating in an epilogue harking back to the first.

Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98

Having spent the summers of 1884 and 1885 on his fourth symphony, Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) decided to play it with a friend in a version for piano four hands to a small select audience. They shook their heads. It was, they said, too difficult and intellectual, and urged Brahms not to publish it. But they were wrong; the premiere in 1885 was a great success. As Jan Swafford the composer points out, it does not, as in a Beethoven symphony, travel from darkness to light, but from dusk to night. It could, said Swafford, also be interpreted as a lament; it is Brahms’s farewell to a musical culture to which he felt he belonged but which was dying. He even considered giving up composing altogether a couple of years later.

The first movement is indeed intellectual: inventive counterpoint and motif work. The second is a melancholy Pastorale, the third has the symphony’s only jubilant passages, and the fourth is a Passacaglia (a set of variations) on a theme from Nach dir, Herr, verlangt mich, by a composer whom Brahms greatly admired, Johann Sebastian Bach.