The Rite of Spring

The sun shines in the first concert of the Ragged Music Festival, with music for one and two pianos, played by the two, four or six hands of three pianists. Festival programmers Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy perform together with Elisabeth Leonskaja, the grande dame of the great Russian piano tradition. For six hands, they play Sergei Rachmaninoff’s lyrical Romance and Alfred Schnittke’s cheerfully ironic homage to Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich.

Leonskaja presents a solo performance of a poetic sonata from Beethoven’s final years, a work of gentle beauty and lyrical depth. Samson Tsoy and Pavel Kolesnikov conclude the evening with Stravinsky’s Sacre. This primal celebration of spring so ignited the audience at its 1913 premiere that brawls erupted in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, between those who loved and those who loathed the work.