Gerstein plays Rachmaninoff

Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto is one of the pinnacles of the repertoire, a deeply inspired piece written with a profound understanding of the possibilities of the instrument. It is likewise one of the most demanding piano concertos ever written. Rachmaninoff had famously enormous hands and was a technical wizard at the piano. It is fortunate, then, that the evening's soloist, Kirill Gerstein, "plays the most difficult runs as if they were duck soup", as a critic from Fréttablaðið wrote after Gerstein's performance with the ISO in 2016. 

The same performance was hailed as "electrifying and full of audacity". The passion is by no means tempered in Sergei Prokofiev's ballet rendition of Shakespeare's timeless classic about the two star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. This concert features a suite drawn from Prokofiev's masterpiece and crafted by the conductor of the evening, Stéphane Denève. The programme opens with a short piece by Jennifer Higdon called blue cathedral, where painful emotions surrounding fraternal loss find expression in a delicate orchestral texture.