Closing the 2020 Season with Romantic colour and bravura, acclaimed Australian pianist Clemens Leske leads the Ensemble in a program that puts two Russian masterworks for piano and winds head-to-head.
A rare example of Rimsky-Korsakov’s departure from orchestral writing, the attention-grabbing Quintet for Piano and Winds embodies the powerful rhythms and boastful textures of the composer’s larger works jam-packed into an ensemble of just five. Anton Rubinstein’s work of the same name presents itself as a strong challenger, in which the virtuosic piano writing amply reflects the composer’s recognition in his own lifetime as one of the world’s greatest pianists.
These works are accompanied by selections from Rachmaninoff’s dazzling Preludes.