Daniel Barenboim & Lang Lang in Salzburg
Daniel Barenboim put his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra together with Lang Lang on stage for the first time at the Salzburg Festival.
“I was so far from home that perhaps I painted the nights even more beautiful than they really are. It’s up to Paris,” wrote Manuel de Falla about his “Nuits dans les jardins d’Espagne” in the 1910s. Pianist played at the Salzburg Festival Long long the work, originally conceived for solo piano, for the first time with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under the direction of its founder Daniel Barenboim.
In Falla’s three symphonic impressions, Andalusian folk and dance songs mix with oriental-style folklore, appropriate to the imagined walk through the jasmine-lined gardens of the Generalife in the famous Alhambra in Granada. The composer is said to have known the latter only from poems and paintings. The “Dance from afar” is followed by a nocturnal scene in the gardens of the Cordoba hills, culminating in a fiery polo.
Twelve years after Fallas became “Night in Spanish Gardens”. Maurice Ravels Boléro premiered. A bravura piece, not least for the percussionist, as he repeats the rhythm figure introduced at the beginning 169 times in the course of the piece.
concerti tip:
The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra plays Falla and Ravel
With Lang Lang (piano), West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
Sunday, November 20th, 5:35 p.m
art