AVROTROS Valentine's Concert: Love in three stories

Love and music, it is an unbreakable duo. Not only as a soundtrack to many a crush, but also as fiery notes to a beautiful love story. Therefore, this Valentine's Day, three romantic works celebrating love in all its facets take center stage. A real gift tip for your chosen Valentine.

Of course, things are not always rosy in this loving music. For example, things went badly for Romeo and Juliet, the protagonists in Tchaikovsky's Fantasy Overture. And in Rachmaninov's Spring Cantata, only the arrival of spring can turn a man away from the thought of murdering his adulterous wife. Even in Cesar Franck's symphonic poem Psyché, there is a long wait for the happy ending.

Cesar Franck wrote his four-movement symphonic poem Psyché under the influence of Franz Liszt's work. The symphonic work is based on Psyché and Eros, a frame story from Apuleius' novel The Golden Ass. A beautiful story of jealousy and love that only has a happy ending when Zeus himself interferes. Which Franck ultimately paints in wonderfully romantic tones.

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.