Leading musicians of the Bolshoi Theatre Symphony Orchestra — Nikolai Popov, flute; Sergei Lysenko, oboe; Sergei Petrov, clarinet; Andrei Rudometkin, bassoon; and Alexei Raev, horn — performed in Beethoven Hall on 23 October.
The programme ranged widely through music history, from German Baroque with Johann Sebastian Bach to contemporary Hungarian concert music with Béla Kovács.
The first half began with Bach’s chorale prelude Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, an arrangement of the organ work based on an old Protestant chorale. Classical elegance followed in Mozart’s brilliant Divertimento No. 14, K. 270, arranged for wind quintet, and Donna Anna’s graceful aria Non mi dir, bell’idol mio from Don Giovanni. The half ended with genuine instrumental theatre: Giulio Briccialdi’s Potpourri fantastico on Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, assigning an operatic role to each instrument.
The second half featured August Klughardt’s late-Romantic Wind Quintet, Op. 79, and a work from Béla Kovács’s Hommages cycle, Salute, Signore Strauss.
Photos: Batyr Annadurdyev.
