Over to the Royal Albert Hall in London this week (by way of Swiss Radio) for a concert by the BBC Symphony, led by Sakari Oramo and featuring Kirill Gerstein in music of Fung Lam, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev. It was recorded and broadcast live on July 18, 2012.
The concert starts with a premier – Fung Lam: Endless Forms – a work commissioned by the BBC Symphony and receiving its world premier. It’s followed by Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto Number 2 with Kirill Gerstein as soloist. There’s an encore: Earl Wilde’s Seven Virtuoso Etudes on a Theme by George Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm.
The Concert concludes with Prokofiev’s Symphony Number 6.
Kirill Gerstein is a Russian-American concert pianist. He is the sixth recipient of the Gilmore Artist Award. Born in the former Soviet Union, Gerstein is an American citizen based in Berlin. Between 2007-2017, he led piano classes at the Stuttgart Musik Hochschule. In 2018, he took up the post of Professor of Piano at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin in addition to the Kronberg Academy’s Sir András Schiff Performance Programme for Young Artists.
Kirill Gerstein made his major orchestral debut in September 2000 performing Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with David Zinman and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and has since built a career as a major international concert artist.
As a soloist, Gerstein has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, and the Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Montreal, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Toronto Symphonies, among other North American orchestras. Abroad, he has performed with such orchestras as the Berlin, Czech, Munich, Rotterdam, London Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonics, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna, WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, and the Zürich Tonhalle, as well as with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo[2] and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra.
On March 15, 2022, he was the soloist of Ravel’s concerto for the left hand in the concert given at the Berliner Philharmonie in support of the Ukrainian people, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Alan Gilbert.
Sakari Oramo is the son of two music academics who taught at the Sibelius Academy, Ilkka Oramo, a professor of music theory, and Liisa Pohjola, a piano professor. His sister is Anna-Maaria Oramo. Oramo started his career as a violinist and concertmaster of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 1989, he enrolled in Jorma Panula’s conducting class at the Sibelius Academy. In 1993, just one year after completing the course, he stood in for a sick conductor with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Oramo has also worked with Finland’s Avanti! ensemble. Oramo became principal guest conductor of the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra in 1995, and one of its principal conductors in 2009. In 2013, he became the orchestra’s artistic director.
In October 2011, Oramo made his first guest conducting appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBC SO), his first guest-conducting engagement with any London orchestra. On the basis of this concert, in February 2012, Oramo was named the 13th chief conductor of the BBC SO, effective with the First Night of the 2013 Proms season. His initial contract was for 3 years, with a pending subsequent option for an additional 2 years.[4] Oramo held the title of chief conductor designate for the 2012–2013 season. In September 2015, the BBC SO announced the extension of his contract to the 2019–2020 season. In May 2018, the BBC SO indicated a further extension of Oramo’s contract through 2022.
In April 2022, the BBC SO announced an additional extension of Oramo’s contract as its chief conductor through the end of the 2025–2026 season.
On to the music.
chunk missing second movment
I noticed there are a lot of defective 2012 streams – I thought I caught all of them, but some sneak through.