WASHINGTON WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Hina) - Croatia's famous pianist Ivo Pogorelic held a solo concert at the Washington Kennedy Centre on Thursday evening. Accompanied by the National Symphonic Orchestra, which was conducted by Leonard
Slatkin, Pogorelic performed works by Shostakovich, Rahmaninoff, and Williams.
WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Hina) - Croatia's famous pianist Ivo Pogorelic
held a solo concert at the Washington Kennedy Centre on Thursday
evening.
Accompanied by the National Symphonic Orchestra, which was
conducted by Leonard Slatkin, Pogorelic performed works by
Shostakovich, Rahmaninoff, and Williams. #L#
About 2,500 visitors greeted the Croatian pianist at the Kennedy
Centre's grand hall.
Pogorelic's concerts scheduled for Friday and Saturday have an
interesting programme, including "Tahiti Trot" by Dimitri
Shostakovich, the "Piano Concert in C Minor" by Sergey Rahmaninoff,
"Fantasia on Greensleeves" and the "4th Symphony in F Minor" by
Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Especially impressive at the Thursday concert was Pogorelic's
rendition of the Piano Concert in C Minor Opus 18 by Sergey
Rahmaninoff. Composed in the late 19th and the early 20th century,
this great piano concert, the first Rahmaninoff composed after a
serious, three-year-long creative crisis and depression, thrilled
the Washington audience.
Conductor Slatkin could not resist his well-known preference for
English composers, so that the programme includes another two works
by Williams, who is believed to be the best British composer of the
20th century. The two works are a five-minute Fantasia and the most
frequently performed, difficult, and dissonant 4th Symphony, for
which one of Williams' contemporaries said it was the best symphony
after Beethoven's works.
After the concert, Croatian Ambassador Miomir Zuzul gave a
reception at the Embassy building, which was attended, along with
Pogorelic, by members of the diplomatic corps and figures from the
political and public life of Washington.
(hina) jn rml