Verbier Festival 2018: Valery Gergiev conducts Sheherazade

Recently appointed as the new music director of the Verbier Festival Orchestra, Valery Gergiev has selected two Russian compositions to demonstrate the versatility of his youth orchestra.
The program opens with the Symphonic Diptych by Schedrin, a composer championed by Gergiev for many years. This compact orchestral piece was composed especially for the conductor and features musical material from Schedrin’s concert opera The Enchanted Wanderer. Its colorful and contrasted orchestration is a perfect introduction to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
This landmark score in the Russian repertoire, in which the concertmaster plays a prominent role, takes us on a journey that unfolds through four distinct movements: The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship, The Story of Prince Kalender, The Young Prince and the Young Princess and Festival at Baghdad, The Sea, The Ship Breaks against a Cliff.