Kansas City Symphony

After Rachmaninov had permanently left Russia in 1917, he spent much of his life on a seemingly never-ending concert tour. It was therefore not surprising that his creative work came almost to a complete halt, despite avowedly being as important in his life “as breathing or eating”. The Symphony No. 3 was one of the few works to be composed in exile and unambiguously reveals his intensive yearning for his lost homeland: with melancholy themes interspersed by sighing motifs and quotations from the medieval Dies irae hymn on the Last Judgement. The concert opens with Olga Neuwirth’s moving Tombeau I, composed in memory of Pierre Boulez which begins with a swelling cry. Neuwirth’s orchestral piece Dreydl is based on a Yiddish children’s song Ikh bin a kleyner dreydl in which the constantly rotating spinning top of the title becomes a symbol of the relentless passage of a lifetime. The composer comments: “Like throwing dice, the dreydl is a game of chance. […] no-one knows what the future will bring.”