The Legend Returns - Russian Maestro Gennadi Rozhdestvensky Pairs with His Wife,
Pianist Viktoria Postnikova in Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.2 on 16&17 March

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[31 January 2012 – Hong Kong] Audience who attended Maestro Gennadi Rozhdestvensky’s last concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HKPO) in 2009 will not forget the this legendary conductor’s elegant and majestic performance. In response to overwhelming public demand, Maestro Rozhdestvensky will return to Hong Kong with an all-Tchaikovsky programme featuring his wife, pianist Viktoria Postnikova in the Second Piano Concerto and the Manfred Symphony.

Splendour of Russia: “Poetic Solitude” will be held on 16&17 March (Fri & Sat), 8pm in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Concert Hall. Free Pre-concert Talks will be given on both nights at 7:15pm, also at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.

Viktoria Postnikova, piano
Viktoria Postnikova can look back on a thirty year career in which she performed in every international centre of music from Moscow to New York and from Tokyo to Buenos Aires.

After winning an impressive series of international prizes – the Warsaw International Chopin Competition, the Leeds Piano Competition, Lisbon International Vianna da Motta Competition and the Tchaikovsky Competition – she embarked on a brilliant career. She devotes part of her time to chamber music, and among the great moments of her career were the recitals she gave with Yehudi Menuhin.

Among her numerous recordings are the complete piano works by Tchaikovsky for Erato, the complete Mussorgsky piano works, all Prokofiev’s piano concertos and Mendelssohn’s complete Songs Without Words.

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, conductor
Gennadi Rozhdestvensky was born in Moscow in 1931. At the unusually early age of 20 he was engaged at the Bolshoi Theatre where he made his début conducting Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. His was to be a long term relationship with the Bolshoi, serving as Principal Conductor between 1964 and 1970 and in 2000 being appointed General Music Director.

For many years he also headed the Moscow Radio Orchestra and became the first Soviet conductor to be appointed Principal Conductor of foreign orchestras: the BBC Symphony, the Vienna Symphony and the Stockholm Royal Philharmonic. His proliferating discography reveals his insatiable curiosity and makes him one of the most recorded conductors of all time. His present catalogue features well over 400 records comprising the astounding number of 786 different works.

Rozhdestvensky is the recipient of the French Legion of honour, of the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun, and an Honorary Member of the Stockholm and British Academies. For more than thirty years he has held the professorial Chair of Conducting at the Moscow Conservatoire. The distinguished French film maker Bruno Monsaingeon has recently devoted two of his films to him.

Programme
Standing firm as the country’s leading conductor through all the momentous changes which shook Russia during the latter half of the last century, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky is the world’s foremost interpreter of the great orchestral showpieces which emerged from Pre, Present and Post Soviet days. Rozhdestvensky and his wife, pianist Viktoria Postnikova, are regarded today as the Royal Couple of Russian music, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic is privileged to welcome them in a first-time collaboration here in an all-Tchaikovsky’s programme. In place of the drama and histrionics of the popular First, in his Second Piano Concerto Tchaikovsky turned to more subtle, personal and delicate means of expression, including a sublime passage for piano trio which stands as one of the most extraordinarily beautiful moments in the entire repertoire. Alongside this, Rozhdestvensky directs Tchaikovsky’s own highly charged re-take on the Byron epic which so inspired so many composers of the late 19th century.

Splendour of Russia: “Poetic Solitude”
16&17 | 3| 2012
FRI & SAT 8PM
HK Cultural Centre Concert Hall
HK$420 $320 $220 $160
Available at URBTIX now

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Ticketing Information

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For programme enquiry, please call HKPO at
(852) 2721 2030

HONG KONG PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Edo de Waart
Artistic Director and Chief Conductor

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HKPO) is one of Asia's leading orchestras. Enriching Hong Kong's cultural life for over a century, the Orchestra has grown into a formidable ensemble of Chinese and international talents, attracting world-class artists to collaborate on its stage. HKPO annually touches the lives of over 200,000 music lovers through more than 150 performances including its extensive education programme HSBC Insurance Creative Notes and free concerts such as the popular Swire Symphony under the Stars, and regular broadcasts and telecasts. Outside of Hong Kong, the HKPO has made a number of critically acclaimed tours in Asia and Europe.

The 2011/12 season will mark Maestro Edo de Waart's eighth and final season with the HKPO. Apart from his own series of five special programmes which are summaries of his achievements with the Orchestra over the last seven years, ending with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the new season will also attract a stellar cast of great artists and guest conductors.

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is financially supported by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
SWIRE is the Principal Patron of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is the Venue Partner of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre

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