ORT | Yashima_Pagano

Thursday, May 16, at 9 p.m., at the Teatro Verdi in Florence, the concert featuring Erina Yashima (conductor) and Ettore Pagano (cello).

Program:
Antonín Dvořák / Cello Concerto, Op. 104
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky / Symphony No. 5, Op.64

A symphony that is a testament. The Pathétique is Tchaikovsky's last score; a few days after its premiere on October 16, 1893 in Petersburg, the composer died from drinking unboiled water while cholera raged in the city, perhaps imprudently or perhaps on purpose, to escape the scandal caused by the discovery of his homosexual relationship with a scion of the Russian aristocracy. It is a narrative score: Tchaikovsky tells you explicitly about the struggle of an individual, himself, against hostile fate. And at the end comes the man's defeat, depicted by a sorrowful slow movement that closes the Pathétique as never a symphony had been concluded before, in a sea of tears.

The Pathétique constitutes a testing ground for every conductor. In her second program with the Ort, Erina Yashima, a conductor born in Germany of Japanese parents, currently at the head of the Komische Oper of Berlin and contended by the top orchestras of the globe, is measured there.

With her is a young cello talent: Ettore Pagano, class of 2003 and already an international cello star. He graduated in 2021 from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, a student also of Enrico Dindo, David Geringas and Antonio Meneses. He gets to tackle one of the most fearsome Concertos written for the cello, that of Dvořák.