Echoes of Paradise Lost at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall

InterHarmony International Music Festival opens the 6th season of the InterHarmony Concert Series at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall with Echoes of Paradise Lost on November 2 at 8PM.

Times change. The clock’s hands are poised to make circles, but depth of feeling has its hands still with a concentration of intensity that cannot be affected by the heartbeat of the universe. Featuring works by Shostakovich, Schnittke, Chopin, Prjevalskaya, and a New York premiere of newly discovered songs by James Simon, “Echoes of Paradise Lost” evokes the rare condition when different epochs, genres and crucial dramatic moments of humanity symbiotically grow together from the same tree of sounds, passages, and chords.

The InterHarmony Concert Series, started by Music Director Misha Quint, showcases performers from the InterHarmony festivals that take place each summer in Italy and Germany. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased online www.carnegiehall.org or by calling CarnegieCharge at 212.247.7800.

Two contrasting works of Alfred Schnittke underscore the theme of the evening: Suite in the Old Style for Violin and Piano, where reflections of the Baroque are filled with a palette of old-school harmonies at times capricious, and Cello Sonata No.1, intoned with tragic, climactic passages, almost screams of the soul, as if glancing through a prism of the iconic 20th Century composer’s creativity. Sonata mirrors Schnittke’s own life, greatly affected by his experience of Soviet persecution. Cellist Misha Quint and pianist Marianna Prjevalskaya perform Cello Sonata, while Violinist Lydia Sviatlovskaya and pianist Ruoting Li perform Suite.

Chopin’s Scherzo No.2, performed by Marianna Prjevalskaya, naturally brings beauty and finesse to the program. In Prjevalskaya's La Valse a La Ravel, one feels a transformation that echoes Ravel’s impressionism.

After composer James Simon’s death in a Nazi concentration camp, his works survived and were recently found. Richard Novak (tenor) and Ruoting Li (piano) will give the New York premiere of Simon’s The Bell Tolls in the Ground and 5 Lieder.

Shostakovich released Piano Trio No. 2 in 1944. Trio commences with mysterious cello harmonics, then gradually ascends to a storm of devilish dances filled with Jewish melodic tonality in the third movement. Lydia Sviatlovskaya (violin), Misha Quint (cello), and Marianna Prjevalskaya (piano) perform this stellar work of chamber music.