Sinfónica de Tenerife is giving its seventeenth concert this season on Friday, 7 June. Its honorary conductor will be leading the orchestra with pianist Jorge Luis Prats as guest soloist. Under the title  Tchaikovsky Pathétique, Auditorio de Tenerife is hosting a new programme of the Cabildo’s orchestra that consists of the premiere of In Memoriam by Agustín Ramos and the Piano Concerto nº1 in B Flat minor, op. 23 and Symphony nº 6 in B minor, op. 74 by Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky .

Agustín Ramos’s In Memoriam is a piece evocative of the joy of Carnival and at the same time pays homage to this Tenerife international festival. Author of the emblematic song “Santa Cruz en Carnaval” (1974), Ramos, who was also a trumpetist at Sinfónica de Tenerife and a member of the group Los Fregolinos, deals in this score with the challenge of leading viewers to their deepest memories by means of a warm, clear musical language.

The young St. Petersburg-born Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky signed in 1875 the score of Piano Concerto nº1 in B Flat minor, op. 23 which is part of popular memory as a fragment of the first movement closed the radio version of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, narrated by Orson Wells in 1938. The concert opens with one of the most rotund and well-known calls in the Western music cannon. It is quite curious as the roles of orchestra and soloist are inverted since this time the soloist accompanies the main melody in tutti orquestal.

Symphony nº 6 in B minor, op. 74 was premiered in 1893, nine days before the Russian genius died. It was posthumously called the “Pathétique”, which seems to express his suffering due to his repressed homosexuality. The first movement is marked by great solemnity. Despite the great orchestra the symphony requires, the sound emerges little by little as if out of nowhere. The second movement recalls a waltz and although it was not created to be danced, it reflects the decadent Russian aristocracy who tries to imitate the West. The third movement is a false finale with a frantic dialogue between the strings and the winds that finally leads to the end, a musical oddity that rather than closing frantically, sounds more like a great lament with an intimate ending.

Victor Pablo Pérez is widely known on the island scene as from 1986 to 2005 he was the artistic director and principal conductor of Sinfónica de Tenerife. Educated at the Real Conservatorio de Música de Madrid and at Hochschule für Musik in Munich, he was artistic director and principal conductor of Sinfónica de Asturias from 1980 to 1988. In 1993 he takes charge of Sinfónica de Galicia until 2013, when he joined Orquesta y Coro de la Comunidad de Madrid as artistic director and principal conductor. Apart from having led nearly all Spanish orchestras, he has been guest conductor at the main European orchestras. Since January 2017 he has been artistic director of the Joven Orquesta de Canarias [Canarian Young Orchestra].

For his part, the Cuban pianist Jorge Luis Prats is making his debut with Sinfónica de Tenerife after a long and extraordinarily successful career in Europe, Latin America or Asia; he has also collaborated with major groups including London Philharmonic, BBC Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Simón Bolívar Orchestra in Venezuela. In the last seasons he has played with Orchestre de Paris, Marinskij Theatre Orchestra and Radio Frankfurt Orchestra, under the baton of maestros like Paavo Järvi and Valery Gergiev. After graduating he received a grant to study at Ciaikovskij Conservatorie in Moscow. When he was just 21 years old he won the first prize at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud competition in Paris.

Tickets for the concert can be purchased at the box office from 10:00 am to 7:30 pm Monday to Saturday; by telephone on 902 317 327; or on the internet on websites www.sinfonicadetenerife.es and www.auditoriodetenerife.com.