This is a good week for hearing 20th-century symphonic repertoire, even though the National Symphony Orchestra is on another break. As we approach the first major event of the NSO’s season, the two-week Shostakovich festival in November, we will have the chance Since the NSO Shostakovich festival in November has been cancelled (due to Mstislav Rostropovich’s health problems), this week is our only chance to celebrate the Dmitri Shostakovich centenary some more.
MODERN:
>> On Wednesday (October 25, 8 p.m.), Washington Performing Arts Society presents a concert by St. Petersburg’s Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater, with Valery Gergiev conducting, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. Rather than the Shostakovich symphony cycles the group has been playing around the world, we in Washington get only one symphony, no. 11, subtitled “The Year 1905.” It commemorates the tragic events of January 9, 1905, when a peaceful demonstration of workers in St. Petersburg ended in the “Bloody Sunday” massacre committed by the czar’s troops. Oh, yeah, and the first half of the concert will feature Alexander Toradze playing (yawn!) Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto. Tickets: $40 to $95.
>> On Friday (October 27, 8 p.m.), the University of Maryland Symphony will team up with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange for a fascinating event at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park. The orchestra will play two masterpieces of the modern orchestral repertoire, the Chairman Dances by John Adams (from the opera Nixon in China) and Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan. Pianist Daria Scarano, winner of the 2006-07 UMSO Concerto Competition, will also perform the (yawn!) Rachmaninov third piano concerto. The music is the basis for new choreography by the dance troupe. Tickets: $20 (only $7 for students).
