The Russian Soul lives near Leipzig

I’ve just been to a concert near Leipzig with the Leipziger Symphonie Orchester and Elin Kolev playing the violin.

The concert was titled “The Russian Soul” as it started with a piece of Mili Balakirev – not well known nowadays, but he was in line with Mussorgski, Rimski-Korsakow, and Borodin – and continued with Tschaikowski’s Concert for Violin and Orchestra. It was fantastically played by Elin – he got a very long applause until he finally played an encore. Elin just turned 19 and he is on the way to become one of the finest German violinists, if he is not already there!

After the interval the orchestra played Tschaikowski’s Swanlake Suite. Everyone who has at least once seen Billy Elliot the Musical will immediately have a scene in mind and it was impossible for me not to imagine that scene while I listened to the wonderful music. After the Swanlake Suite they played another waltz of Tschaikowski in memorium to Kurt Masur who just died yesterday.

The orchestra was also very good. Unfortunately the venue was relatively small so that it was a bit too loud in some places.

All in all a wonderful evening today!