Valentin Silvestrov (1937)
Prayer for the Ukraine (2014; version for orchestra by Andreas Gies, 2022) 

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) 

Cello Concerto No. 2, op. 126 (1966) 

• Largo 

• Allegretto 

• Allegretto 

Break 

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) 

Symphony no. 6 in b, op. 74 'Pathétique' (1893) 

• Adagio - Allegro non troppo - Andante - Moderato rosso Allegro vivo - Andante come prima - Andante mosso 

• Allegro con grazia 

• Allegro molto vivace 

• Finale: Adagio lamentoso - Andante 

End of concert approximately 9:45 p.m. 

Jader Bignamini conductor 

Studying Conservatory of Music in Piacenza 

Current position Chief Conductor Detroit Symphony
Highlights Conducted recent operas at the Wiener Staatsoper, Metropolitan Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre and Oper Frankfurt. Conducted orchestras such as the Houston Symphony, Bern Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Staatsphilhamonie Rheinland-Pfalz. In the summer of 2021, he conducted Puccini's Turandot at Verona Arena. Debuted at the Residentie Orkest with Puccini's Madama Butterfly at The National Opera (2019). 

Leonard Elschenbroich cello 

Education Yehudi Menuhin School in London; Kölner Musikhochschule. 

Highlights Concerted with orchestras such as Staatskapelle Dresden, London Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Chicago Symphony Orchestra with conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Yan-Pascal Tortelier and Andrew Litton. Esteemed guest at (chamber music) festivals and venues worldwide. Debuted in 2017 at the Residentie Orkest. 

Awards include Leonard Bernstein Award, Förderpreis Deutschlandfunk, Borletti Buitoni Trust Award. 

Plays the cello "Leonard Rose" by Matteo Goffriller (Venice, 1693). 

In the press "A musician of great technical prowess, intellectual curiosity and expressive depth" - New York Times  

Residentie Orkest The Hague 

Founded The Hague, 1904 

Current chief conductor Anja Bihlmaier 

Permanent guest conductors Richard Egarr and Jun Märkl 

Chief conductors Henri Viotta, Peter van Anrooy, Frits Schuurman, Willem van Otterloo, Jean Martinon, Ferdinand Leitner, Hans Vonk, Evgenii Svetlanov, Jaap van Zweden, Neeme Järvi, Nicholas Collon. 

To be seen at Amare, Paard, The National Opera, Royal Concertgebouw, De Doelen, TivoliVredenburg among others . 

Education Annual outreach to over 40,000 schoolchildren, adults and amateur musicians in educational projects. Part of this is The Residents, through which the orchestra brings hundreds of children from districts in The Hague into contact with classical music. 

Silvestrov, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky 

Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937) was born and raised in Kiev. He studied at the conservatory there and struggled through the Soviet years, a period when the official composers' union systematically ignored his work. In 2004 he experienced the Orange Revolution in his city, and in 2014 he supported the Maidan uprising there. Almost daily, Silvestrov could be found in Kiev's central square. He heard the protesters shouting and chanting, and he heard the gunfire with which government forces tried to put down the protests. According to Last estimates, over eighty civilians died in the process. Silvestrov incorporated his impressions into a series of songs and hymns: the cycle Majdan (2014) for a cappella choir. The thirteenth movement, titled Prayer for the Ukraine, is a supplication asking God in meditative harmonies for strength, faith and hope for the Ukrainian people. The recent crisis in Ukraine inspired the young Italian-German composer Andreas Gies to create an arrangement for orchestra that, like the original, is played around the world as a show of support. 

World of difference 

It must have been a convivial affair, the 1966 New Year's Eve party where Dmitri Shostakovich toasted with legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Reportedly, a music quiz was played and Shostakovich crawled behind the keyboard at a good time to drum out a popular folk song from Odessa from the keys: Bubliki, kupiti bubliki ("Pretzls, buy my pretzls"). The tune stuck. When Shostakovich began his Second cello concerto in the spring, the pretzl song got caught up in the maniacal-grotesque Scherzo of the second movement. 

Shostakovich wrote his two cello concertos both for Rostropovich. Barely seven years lie between the works, but in sounding reality there is a world of difference. Where the First is still grand and dramatic in scope, the morose, somber Second points forward to the stripped-down sound world of Shostakovich's late work. Take the opening movement, Largo, which begins with a dark cello line. The chromatic motif turns out to be the main material for an introspective weeping music, with a biting-ironic passage of flute melodies in the middle on prickly xylophone accents. 

After the aforementioned Scherzo, a horn fanfare marks the beginning of the finale, in which Shostakovich recycles various themes from the previous movements. 

Between vitality and tragedy 

Musical farewell letter from a suicidal composer. Riveting autobiography in four parts. Confessional music to an impossible, because supposedly homosexual, love. The Sixth Symphony of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is the subject of the most diverse interpretations. 

To some extent, the composer himself was to blame. 'Keep them guessing,' he wrote in 1893 to his nephew Vladimir Davidov when the latter insisted on the specifications of the symphony's 'secret program.' And then there is that somewhat unfortunate nickname "Pathétique," taken from the Russian "patetitsjeskaya," meaning "passionate" rather than "pathetic. 

According to tradition, it was Tchaikovsky's brother Modest who linked the adjective to the symphony. The composer himself had an unwavering preference for the more matter-of-fact "Sixth Symphony in b minor," he wrote to his publisher. In the same letter, Tchaikovsky expressed great satisfaction with his latest score. Literally, "The best I have ever composed, and will ever compose. 

Tchaikovsky's Sixth contains some of his most deeply felt themes, wrapped in a compelling musical dramaturgy: a titanic struggle between effervescent vitality and inevitable tragedy. From the first bars of the Adagio introduction, a darkly ominous bassoon solo points forward to the symphony's fatal denouement. What follows is a first theme of nervous strings, a hyperlyrical second theme with glowing horns and a turbulent continuation section. 'Allegro con grazia' wrote Tchaikovsky above the second movement, in which he lightly stumbles a waltz over a five-tone beat. After a vital cross between scherzo and peasant dance, the Adagio lamentoso opens with a tormented string theme. Sound fatalism, without silver linings. 

Joep Christenhusz 

The One Minute Symphony programmed for tonight will be rescheduled for a later concert.