This week, the billboard at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig (where ICMA will, have its Gala 2017) announces a concert « For Dmitrij Kitajenko’s 75th birthday ». The Gewandhaus Orchestra and Dimitrij Kitajenko have a close connection since decades, and to celebrate the conductor’s so special birthday, they perform together an appealing Prokofiev-Tchaikovsky-program in the premium Gewandhaus series ‘Grosses Concert’.
Daniel Müller-Schott is the soloist in Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony Concerto for cello and orchestra. This work was composed between 1950 and 1952 and is a completely new version of the Cello Concerto op. 58. The revised concerto became a masterpiece of the composer’ late period and one of the favourite cello works of the 20th century. Sometimes it is also called Sinfonia Concertante.
In the second part of the Leipzig concert Dmitrij Kitajenko conducts Piotr Tchaikovsky’s 5th symphony op. 64. With its pessimistic thoughts over fate and unattainable luck this symphony is a symbol of hopelessness, or, like the composer said: the « complete surrender to the destiny or, likewise, to the unfathomable guidance of the providence ».
