TEHRAN – Iranian musician Ali (Alexander) Rahbari will join the Mariinsky Orchestra as a guest conductor during two concerts at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

The first performance will be held on November 19 with Russian pianist Zarina Shimanskaya.

The concert will commence with Richard Wagner’s symphonic poem “Siegfried-Idyll”.

Wagner composed the piece as a birthday present to his second wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. It was first performed on Christmas morning, December 25, 1870, by a small ensemble of the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich on the stairs of their villa at Tribschen, today part of Lucerne, Switzerland.

In its second part, the performance will go on with Arno Babajanian’s “Heroic Ballad for Piano and Orchestra”.

The concert will end with French composer Hector Berlioz’s 1830 program symphony “Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14”, which is an important piece of the early Romantic period. 

It was first performed at the Paris Conservatoire on December 5, 1830. Franz Liszt made a piano transcription of the symphony in 1833.

The American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein described the symphony as the first musical expedition into psychedelia because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature, and because history suggests Berlioz composed at least a portion of it under the influence of opium.

The Mariinsky Orchestra will perform the second concert on November 25 with Russian trumpeter Timur Martynov.

The performance will open with Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian’s “Suite No. 2” from his ballet music Gayane, for which he won fame.

The repertoire also features Armenian composer Alexander Arutiunian’s “Trumpet Concerto” in A-flat major.

“The Symphony No. 2” in E minor, Op. 27, written by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff from October 1906 to April 1907, will be the last part of the performance.

With the composer conducting, the symphony premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre on January 26, 1908.

Photo: A combination photo show trumpeter Timur Martynov and conductor Ali Rahbari who will join the Mariinsky Orchestra in a concert at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on November 25, 2022. (Mariinsky Theatre)

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