Alexei Volodin Concerts

Volodin returns to Winnipeg to summit the Mount Everest of piano concertos with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.3 Friday March 17. The most technically challenging of all the composer’s four piano concertos, it was made famous in contemporary times by the 1996 Oscar award-winning film ‘Shine’. The film starred Geoffrey Rush and it told the true story of the Australian concert pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown and abandoned his career for many years.

Maestro Daniel Raiskin leads Volodin and the WSO for this must-see performance, which will be presented alongside Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C Major, also known as ‘Jupiter’.

The following night, Saturday March 18, Volodin takes on Rachmaninoff’s earlier, second piano concerto, which until ‘Shine’, largely eclipsed ‘Rach 3’, as it’s often referred to by pianists. Experience the music that many feel is the greatest work in the piano repertoire, and not JUST because of the second movement. Although that second movement… the ultimate in sentimentality and emotion. No, you’re not crazy if you think you’ve heard it before as something else. It is the basis of Eric Carman’s multi-generational hit, ‘All by Myself’. Or do you prefer Celine Dion’s cover?

Maestro Raiskin pairs this mega-hit with the supernatural Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz along with a work by JUNO award-winning Ukrainian-Canadian composer Larysa Kuzmenko inspired by Beethoven’s first symphony.