LES SALON RUSSES for ensemble (arrangement of theatrical and stage music by Dmitri Shostakovich)

In 2006 the cello player and musicologist Liza Wilson proposed me to arrange for ensemble some of the theatrical and stage pieces composed by Dmitri Shostakovich; the project was connected to the mise-en-scène of his opera ‘Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district’ under the baton of Mariss Jansons at the Amsterdam Opera during the Holland Festival 2006. The performance, which took place in the foyer of the Opera, had the purpose of introduce the public in the social, political and intellectual context of the Russia of those days and to offer an interpretative tool of the opera itself; to the music were added readings of different texts from russian authors and of Shostakovich himself; the stage direction of the event was by Pierre Audi, the artistic director of the Opera in that period, and the actor Hans Dagelet was in charge of the text acting. The project was repeated the same year during MITO Settembre Musica 2006 in Turin but without any connection with the opera and with the actor Eugenio Allegri; Irina Shostakovich, the last wife of the composer, attended both performances. The authors of the texts were Zaboločkij, Zoshenko, Kharms, Olejnikov, Bulgakov, Achmatova, Pushkin, Platonov, Evtushenko and Pasternak, all, with the exception of Pushkin, killed or prosecuted during the regime of Stalin; the compositions of Shostakovich were taken from the Jazz Suite n. 1, Hamlet op. 32, The Bolt op. 27, Klop op.19, Fragment n.5 op. 42, La comédie humaine op. 37, The adventures of Korzinkina op. 59 and the Finnish Suite.