OCTOBER has seen Kirill Karabits, principal conductor with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, crossing the Channel to conduct performances in celebration of Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday. He describes the experience in his monthly column in the Daily Echo

AS THE unusually long summer has drawn to a close, October has heralded an exciting start to the new season of concerts for the BSO.

And if I have to choose a theme to describe the month, it would say that it is decidedly Wagnerian.

On this side of the channel the BSO opening concerts have featured some of the great composer’s operatic show stoppers in celebration of his 200th birthday: From the nobility of Meistersinger to the passion and pathos of Tristan, the grandeur of the Gods’ entry into Valhalla and the brass-capped brilliance of the Tannhaüser March.

In continental Europe, performances are being staged to mark Wagner’s bicentenary year.

Throughout October my work has criss-crossed from the UK to Geneva where I have been rehearsing for a production of Wagner’s opera, Der Fliegende Holländer, or the Flying Dutchman.

The opera is part of the Geneva Wagner Festival and it opens in November. Richard Wagner composed Flying Dutchman in the tradition of the Romantic opera. He revised the score several times but never heard the original version, which was written in Paris in 1840. It is a rare revival of this version that I will direct in Geneva, but with a modern setting.

It has been a busy time with a lot of travelling and a demanding schedule but it is stimulating and exhilarating.

Conducting an opera is a completely different experience to that of conducting a concert. It involves very different techniques and there are the many singers and production staff, all of whom I have to work very closely with. There will be several performances and it is challenging, but this is what I love to do. It is very pleasant to conduct wonderful music with many great and interesting orchestras at home and across the world.

Away from opera, the BSO opening concerts have also featured rising star Valentina Lisitsa performing Rachmaninov’s own piano concerto favourite.

Like me, Valentina is from the Ukraine and she trained with my mother at her music school in Kiev.

Thus I was able to give Valentina a message from my mother to remind her of all the classes she missed when practising or performing as a young student – this is something I have waited 20 years to do.

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