MOHD IZZAT BUKHORI BIN AWANG

2012999027 MUF651

CONCERT REVIEW

On 3rd October 2014, I went to watch a concert at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas for a
programme named Rhapsody & Symphony conducted by Eiji Oue and featured Yu Kosuge
as a pianist. Eiji Oue born on 3 October 1957 in Hiroshima, Japan. Oue began his
conducting studies with Hideo Saito of the Toho Gakuen School of Music. In 1978, Seiji
Ozawa invited him to spend the summer studying at the Tanglewood Music Center. While
there, he met Leonard Bernstein, who became a mentor to him. Oue won the Tanglewood
Koussevitzky Prize in 1980. He also studied under Bernstein as a conducting fellow at
the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute.
Kosuge was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1983. At the age of four, she entered Tokyo University of
the Arts, having been selected under a programme aimed at providing specialist education to
gifted children. At the age of nine, she made her orchestral debut, playing with the Tokyo
New City Orchestra. In 1993, she moved to Germany to study with Karl-Heinz Kmmerling,
and later with Andrs Schiff. In 2003, she was awarded the S&R Washington Award Grand
Prize from the S&R Foundation, which is awarded annually to the most talented young artist
which in the fields of fine arts, music, drama, dance, photography and film, especially for
contributions to US-Japanese relations.
The programme started with Suite from Candide by Bernstein which is an operetta with
music composed by Leonard Bernstein, based on the novella of the same name by Voltaire.
The operetta was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman, but since 1974 it
has been generally performed with a book byHugh Wheeler which is more faithful to
Voltaire's novel.
Next piece is, The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, is a concert work consist of 24
variations written by Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is written for solo piano and symphony
orchestra, closely resembling a piano concerto. The work was written at his Villa, the Villa
Senar, in Switzerland, according to the score, from July 3 to August 18, 1934. Rachmaninoff
himself, a noted interpreter of his own works, played the solo piano part at the piece's
premiere at the Lyric Opera House in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 7, 1934 with
the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

After the intermission, the last music which is admired by me was performed. It is
the Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, by Dmitri Shostakovich consist of four movements
which are Moderato, Allegrato, Largo and Allegro non troppo is a work for orchestra
composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937,
in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky. The
premiere was a huge success, and received an ovation that lasted well over half an hour.
The audience in the hall were happy and satisfied after listened to the pieces especially the
last movement of the symphony. The feeling of its nationalism in that particular movement
was obviously heard by the audience.