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This will be her seventh appearance as a soloist with SOSL. The other works in the programme are also by great composers of Romantic music - Verdi's Prelude to his masterpiece La Traviata, and Tchaikovsky's First Symphony Winter Dreams.
Rachmaninov's famous Piano Concerto No. 2 is a dramatic work, of many changing moods. It abounds with lively, expansive melodies, many exploited by Hollywood due to lack of copyright.
The Concerto demands both power and delicacy, and a wide range of virtuoso playing - Rachmaninov himself was the soloist at the first performance in 1901.
This is Shanthi's first performance under the baton of Ananda Dabare. She has previously performed with Prof. Earle de Fonseka, Lalanath de Silva and Prof. Ajit Abeysekera, in concertos by Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Schumann and Grieg. Her teacher was Mrs. Seetha Hallock.
Ananda Dabare has a special affinity and feeling for the music of Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky from his studies over several years at Conservatories in Russia.
Tchaikovsky's First Symphony Winter Dreams is the earliest of his major compositions - it dates from 1866, three years before his Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet.
He was 26 years old at the time, and had recently been appointed Professor of Harmony at the new Conservatory in Moscow. Though the work bears the poetic, descriptive title "Winter Dreams" it is not really a piece of programme music so much as "mood" music.
It has echoes of Mendelssohn and Schumann whose works Tchaikovsky studied. But the lyrical outpouring and atmosphere of the endless Russian landscape of the slow movement, and the waltz in the scherzo, are typical of Tchaikovsky, as is his setting of an energetic folk song in the fourth.
The concert will open with the Prelude to La Traviata, one of Verdi's finest and best loved operas. It 'caused a sensation' according to Verdi, when it was performed at Venice in 1854.
The story, by Dumas, is about the Parisian courtesan, Violetta, and her lover Alfredo - their meeting, separation and final reunion shortly before she dies of consumption. The Prelude to this great music-drama introduces the main melodies, some of his most beautiful, and sets the mood perfectly for the emotions it explores.
The concert commences at 7 p.m. at Ladies' College Hall. Tickets are available at Titus Stores, Liberty Plaza and from the SOSL office Tel. 2682033.
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