Mozart and Shostakovich

BENJAMIN ROUS, conductor

MOZART Overture to Don Giovanni (1787)

UVA Concerto Competition Winner – TBA

SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 70 (1945)

Claiming that he wrote the overture to Don Giovanni – one of the greatest operas of all time – in just three hours on the night before the premiere, Mozart sets up the dramatic tension between comedy and tragedy swirling around a ghostly statue and an unrepentant ladies’ man.

The concerto soloist and work will be added to this program in November after the concerto competition winner is selected.  

In the words of Leonard Bernstein, “This Ninth Symphony by Shostakovich is rather like a witty comedy in the theatre, where you are treated to one joke after another—puns, wisecracks, punchlines, surprises, twisteroos—but somehow all adding up to a work of art.” Behind the humor, however, was a subversive, neo-Classical jab intended to hold up a critical mirror to Stalin’s Russia.