Dmitry Shostakovich: Orango Prologue orch. Gerard McBurney (UK premiere)
(semi-staged performance in Russian with English surtitles)
Interval
Dmitry Shostakovich: Symphony No.4 in C minor

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts an all-Shostakovich programme including a concert performance of his unfinished satirical opera Orango recently orchestrated by composer Gerard McBurney.

The satirical opera Orango was sketched out while Shostakovich was writing Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. He and his librettists conceived 'a political lampoon against the bourgeois press' involving a human-ape hybrid, but when the librettists failed to deliver their script in time for the planned 15th anniversary of the Revolution, the whole thing was dropped.

Of the projected Prologue and three acts, only the 40-minute Prologue was completed in piano vocal score, which was discovered in 2004 in a Moscow archive and subsequently orchestrated by the British composer Gerard McBurney.
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the world premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in December 2011.

6pm at Royal Festival Hall - An introduction to the evening's programme. Free

Performers

Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen conductor
Irina Brown director
Louis Price set designer, video designer
Kevin Treacy lighting designer
Ryan McKinny The Entertainer
Allan Clayton Zoologist
Richard Angas Orango
Elisabeth Meister Susanna
Peter Hoare Paul Mâche
Ashley Riches Voice from the crowd
Philharmonia Voices