Puccini's "Crisantemi" premiered in Baku

By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

Giacomo Puccini's "Crisantemi" has sounded for the first time in Baku.

The State Chamber Orchestra performed a music piece under the baton of People's Artist Fakhraddin Karimov.

Before the start of the concert, a musicologist, Ph.D. in art history Jala Gulamova spoke in detail about the concert program and shared some interesting facts from the life and work of composer.

History behind music piece

Crisantemi is a single-movement elegy in ternary form based on two plaintive melodies in C sharp minor.

By the way, the work of Crisantemi by Giacomo Puccini has a very interesting story. The son of the first king of unified Italy, Victor Emmanuel, Duke Amadeo de Aosta I, was not a Spanish king for long, from 1870 to 1873, but he abdicated the throne and returned to Italy due to the social crisis in this country. He died on January 18, 1890. Shocked by the death of Amadeo, the composer Giacomo Puccini, still young at the time, composed a piece dedicated to him for a string quartet in the elegy style, which he called Crisantemi.

The music piece was composed in just one night, as alleged by Puccini in a letter written to his brother.

Feast of Music

The evening also featured Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's "Serenade", Georg Handel's  "Concerto grosso", op.6 No.10, Yasushi Akutagawa "Triptyque", Vasif Allahverdiyev's "Music for string orchestra" and Jeyhun Allahverdiyev's  music piece "Misri ".

The orchestra performed all the pieces of music harmoniously. The audience was delighted and gave the musicians and the conductor a deafening ovation.