Since October 2016 Juraj Valčuha has been Music Director of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, as well as First Guest Conductor of the Konzerthausorchester in Berlin. He was also Principal Conductor of the Rai National Symphony Orchestra from 2009 to 2016. Born in Bratislava, he studied Composition and Direction, then continued his studies in St. Petersburg (with Ilya Musin) and in Paris, where in 2006 he made his debut with the Orchestra National de France. The same year he began his Italian career at the Comunale of Bologna with La bohème.

SERGEJ PROKOF’EV

Violin Concerto n. 2 in G minor op. 63

PËTR Il’IČ ČAIKOVSKIJ

Symphony No. 5 in E minor op. 64

Violin Concerto n. 2 in G minor op. 63

Composition: 1935

First performance : Madrid, December 1, 1935

Movements:

1. Allegro moderato
   2. Andante assai
   3. Allegro, ben marcato

More conventional than Prokof’ev’s first audacious compositions, the concerto opens with a violin melody that refers to traditional Russian folk music. A melody that runs throughout the second movement and ends by taking up the opening theme of the violin. The third movement is a rondo that has a taste of Spain, with the beat of castanets that underlines from time to time the return of the theme.

Symphony n. 5 in E minor op. 64

Year of composition: 1888

Movements:
1. Andante; Allegro con anima
2. Andante cantabile with no license; Moderate with soul; Time I; Andante moved; Not too cheerful; Time I
3. Valse: Allegro moderato
4. Final: Andante majestic; Cheerful lively; Very lively; Very moderate and very majestic

In 1888, the year of composition of the Fifth, Pëtr Il’ič Čajkovskij was a composer struggling with a sick interiority that had been missing from the symphonic scenes for over a decade and faced the commitment by greatly reducing the hyperbolic and fantastic movements that had guided his pen during the composition of the Fourth Symphony. The Fifth Symphony is in fact an excellent example of that romantic symphonic thought which attributes to this form, now fully mature, a sort of “biographical” task: narration of inner conflicts, human history, struggle with destiny, melancholic mood instability .