Viotti conducts Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov

The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra performs with its principal conductor Lorenzo Viotti in music by Britten, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. For Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, Bertrand Chamayou is behind the keys.

Bertrand Chamayou plays Ravel
Ravel wrote his Piano Conc erto for the Left Hand for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm as a soldier in the war. A brilliant and virtuosic piano concerto, it is also a challenge for concert pianists with two hands. French pianist Bertrand Chamayou, a three-time winner of the Victoires de Musique Classique, gladly accepts it. His award-winning recording of Ravel's piano music makes him a Ravel connoisseur par excellence. Providing the accompaniment is the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, which opens the concert with Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem. The work is entirely symphonic but refers, also in the titles of the three movements, to the Catholic Mass of the Dead.

Lorenzo Viotti, chief conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Conducting the concert is Swiss-French-Italian Lorenzo Viotti. Since 2020, this inspiring personality has been the successful chief conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. He conducts his orchestra in the second part of this program with Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. Tchaikovsky wrote his symphonic poem The Tempest after Shakespeare's play of the same name. Rachmaninov found his inspiration for Death Island in Arnold Böcklin's sinister painting Toteninsel. He, too, has the traditional death mass in mind. But where Britten in his Sinfonia refers to the requiem only in the titles, Rachmaninov does so literally with the familiar quotation from the Dies irae of the Gregorian requiem.