Western Music Concert September 25, 2008

Our closing concert is a measure of just how far India’s first professional symphony orchestra has come since it was founded two short years ago. This is a substantial programme for the SOI, starting with the dark and irresistible forces unleashed by Sibelius’s great Violin Concerto No 2, featuring our very own Music Director, Marat Bisengaliev, as the evening’s compelling soloist. We conclude the season with one of the towering achievements in symphonic music of the 20th century. Shostakovitch Fifth Symphony received a standing ovation of 40 minutes when it was first performed in Leningrad in 1937. Gripped by Stalinist terror, Russian audiences perceived a double meaning in the symphony’s triumphant energy, at once pleasing the Soviet authorities while at the same time offering a subtext of hope and salvation to the oppressed masses. The great Russian pianist Heinrich Neuhaus, after hearing the Moscow premiere of the symphony, summed it up thus: “This is deep, meaningful, gripping music, classical in the integrity of its conception, perfect in form and the mastery of orchestral writing - music striking for its novelty and originality, but at the same time somehow hauntingly familiar, so truly and sincerely does it recount human feelings.” For Details Contact 66223737, 66588997.