Elisabeth Leonskaja

Ragged Music Festival The Rite of Spring Program Sergej Rachmaninov, Romance for piano six hands Alfred Schnittke, Homage to Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich for piano six hands Dmitri Shostakovich, Spring Waltz Sergej Prokofiev, Spring from Cinderella for two pianos Claude Debussy, Rondes de Printemps for two pianos Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano sonata in E Major No. 30 Op.109 Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring for four hands Credits: Pavel Kolesnikov, piano Samson Tsoy, piano Elisabeth Leonskaja, piano The sun shines in the first concert of the Ragged Music Festival, with music for one and two pianos, played by the two, four or six hands of three pianists. Festival programmers Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy perform together with Elisabeth Leonskaja, the grande dame of the great Russian piano tradition. For six hands, they play Sergei Rachmaninoff’s lyrical Romance and Alfred Schnittke’s cheerfully ironic homage to Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Leonskaja presents a solo performance of a poetic sonata from Beethoven’s final years, a work of gentle beauty and lyrical depth. Samson Tsoy and Pavel Kolesnikov conclude the evening with Stravinsky’s Sacre. This primal celebration of spring so ignited the audience at its 1913 premiere that brawls erupted in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, between those who loved and those who loathed the work.