Dashing young Russian conductor Stanislav Kochanovsky is widely regarded as a rising superstar. Born in Leningrad in 1981, he graduated with honours from the St Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire, and was Principal Conductor of the Academic State Safonov Philharmonic Orchestra of the Northern Caucasus from 2010 to 2015. His packed schedule includes regular collaborations with international orchestras and ensembles. This concert marked his debut with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for a lushly Romantic programme, the centrepiece of which was Sergei Rachmaninov’s sumptuous Symphony No 2.

In 1848, Robert Schumann used Lord Byron’s poem Manfred as the basis for a three-part orchestral and choral setting, but the rest of the work has never remotely approached the popularity of its Overture (Op. 115), with which this programme opened. Manfred is the quintessential tortured Romantic hero, wracked with guilt and remorse, driven to the edge of madness, yearning for escape, and Schumann’s musical depiction of this state is turbulent and bristling with tension. It was a most appropriate scene-setter for the next work which also unites music with poetry, sharing its name with a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that Schumann set to music in 1849 for one of his myriad songs.

Composed...