Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, an ode to love

With Tchaikovsky's overture to Shakespeare's timeless love drama Romeo and Juliet - just after Valentine's Day - love takes center stage in The Sunday Morning Concert. You will also hear loving works by Franck and Rachmaninoff.

Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet
In a movie, do you see two lovers running toward each other in slow motion with their arms spread? Then chances are you hear the love theme from Tchaikovsky's Overture Romeo and Juliet there. The compelling melody in the strings, with a major role for the triumphant horns, is synonymous with yearning love. Tchaikovsky follows Shakespeare's drama closely, expressing both the stately Friar Lawrence, the fierce battle between the Montagues and the Capulets, the intense love between Romeo and Juliet and the dramatic denouement of the over-familiar story.

An ode to love
Just after Valentine's Day, love takes center stage in The Sunday Morning Concert, with Tchaikovsky's overture to Shakespeare's timeless love drama. Rachmaninoff's Spring Cantata sings of the arrival of spring, the season of love, in fresh colors. Baritone Boris Pinkhasovich performs the solo. Unlike the classical myth of Psyché falling in love with Eros, there is a happy ending for the couple in Franck's symphonic poem. Psyché has therefore been called Franck's "love symphony. So swoon in The Concertgebouw....

Baritone Boris Pinkhasovich
Boris Pinkhasovich opens his 2024/25 season with the role of Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Opernhaus Zurich, followed by his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Marcello in La Bohème. Other engagements this season include Robert in Iolanta - a new production at the Wiener Staatsoper, Yeletsky in Pique Dame at both the Wiener Staatsoper and the Bayerische Staatsoper, Valentin in Faust at The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, as well as appearances with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester as Guglielmi in Le Villi and with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra during Rachmaninoff's Spring at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

In the 2023/24 season, Boris Pinkhasovich returned to The Royal Opera House Covent Garden as Belcore in L'elisir d'amore, to the Bayerische Staatsoper as Yeletsky in Pique Dame, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly and Kovalyov in The Nose, and to the Wiener Staatsoper as Ford in Falstaff and the title role in Dmitri Tcherniakov's production of Eugene Onegin.