The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association (CSOA) announces a program change for its subscription concerts on April 6-11, 2017. Igor Stravinsky’s recently rediscovered Funeral Song (Pogrebal’naya Pesnya), replaces Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila in these concerts. Conductor Charles Dutoit leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) in the U.S. premiere of the Stravinsky work on Thursday, April 6 at 8 p.m. Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with Truls Mørk as soloist and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 remain on the program, as previously announced.
Funeral Song (Pogrebal’naya Pesnya), Op. 5, was assumed lost for more than a century and represents an early composition from the then 26-year-old Stravinsky. It was written in memory of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov shortly after his death. The composition serves as a missing link in Stravinsky’s composition catalog falling between his Fireworks and Scherzo Fantastique and the ballet The Firebird, which was written for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and won the composer major international acclaim. The rediscovered work was pieced together from orchestral parts found in 2015 at the St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory. Stravinsky’s Funeral Song receives its first modern day performance after 107 years—the first and only performance having taken place on January 17, 1909—with the Mariinsky Orchestra led by Valery Gergiev in St. Petersburg on December 2, 2016.
