Experience the excitement of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story & Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto at our Season Finale concerts, May 12 & 13!
See photos from our May 14 Season Finale concert, including this one of our packed house at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines.
Pianist Ilya Yakushev discusses the Des Moines Symphony’s Russian Spectacular Season Finale and performs from the second movement of the famous RACH 2 (as it’s widely known).
Russian Spectacular Season Finale Trivia
From Conductor and Music Director Joseph Giunta:
Q: What is the connection between the Russian Easter Festival Overture and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony? (both are on this weekend’s concert lineup.)
A: The obvious answer is that they were both written by Russian composers, but what about the fact that they both quote liturgical themes from the Russian Orthodox Church liturgy.
As you will come to find with my programs, they often have a link from piece to piece or half to half. Some are very obvious (ie: Romeo and Juliet, All Russian Program, etc), some a little obvious (Haydn London Symphony followed by Brahms Haydn Variations), and some not obvious at all (Beethoven Symphony followed by Stravinsky major work…..both composers changed the way we think about, listen, critic and analyze music as well as changed the course of music history that followed them).
