Mark Wigglesworth Conductor
Alexander Melnikov Piano

Debussy Prélude à L’Après Midi d’un Faune
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 2
Shostakovich Symphony No 10

The NZSO return to the Christchurch Arts Festival with top flight international artists and a programme that mixes French impressionism with resonant Russian passion.

Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après Midi d’un Faune opens the concert with a lush soundscape before the earthly passionate of Rachmaninov’s romantic Second Piano Concerto. Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony is full of melancholy, satire and exultation allowing the NZSO to truly show its command of diametrically different styles as it storms through this vehement response to the death of Stalin.

On the podium is Mark Wigglesworth, who has worked with many of the leading European orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Stockholm Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic.

The soloist is piano virtuoso Alexander Melnikov, one of the finest Russian pianists of his generation. Melnikov was born in Moscow in 1973, studied at Moscow’s Central Music School, then continued at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. He is a prize-winner of several major international piano competitions - Schumann, Zwickau in 1989 and the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 1991).

Information of NZSO at http://www.nzso.co.nz/home