The Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre is running its
III International Piano Festival, a platform for outstanding unique
musicians from various generations and different schools, each with
a “voice” of his or her own, unlike that of any other pianist.
According to Maestro Valery Gergiev, the tasks of
the festival are to invite musicians to St Petersburg who have
established international careers but are as yet less known in Russia, to
discover and develop new and young talent and to popularise piano music.
In line with now-established tradition, the III
International Piano Festival will showcase pianists from different
generations – dazzling musicians who have already won international acclaim
such as Evgeni Koroliov as well as young musicians whose careers have recently
begun to soar and pianists who have just set out on their lives in music.
The festival continues to introduce the public to renowned
teachers and their pupils. The first festival brought together
the famed Tatiana Zelikman’s pupils. The second saw Sergei Babayan
perform with Daniil Trifonov, his pupil at the Cleveland Institute of
Music. At the third festival this year audiences will see performances by
students from the class of Professor Alexander Sandler of
the St Petersburg Conservatoire.
On 8 April the festival opens with
a performance by the German pianist of Russian descent Evgeni
Koroliov, one of the most interesting interpreters of the music of
Bach and Mozart in recent times. The musician will perform two of Mozart’s
piano concerti – No 20 and No 24. Valery Gergiev will be
conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra that night. The programme
for the evening also includes Sergei Prokofiev’s first two symphonies.
On 9 April Evgeni Koroliov will be performing
a recital of music by Bach (Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, Prelude and Fugue
in A Minor (Franz Liszt’s version) and Concerto italiano). That
evening, in addition to Bach, the programme will feature music by
Stravinsky for the ballet Le Sacre du printemps (his own
piano version for four hands) in which Evgeni Koroliov will be joined by his
wife, the pianist Ljupka Hadzi-Georgieva.
On 10 April there will be a recital by
the diverse and dazzling pianist Peter Laul whose programme will include
waltzes by Weber, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Johann Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Liszt,
Scriabin, Ravel and Debussy.
On 11 April there will be a programme of
works from the golden age of classical music. The Moscow
Virtuosi chamber orchestra will be performing works by Haydn and Mozart
under Christian Zacharias, a connoisseur of the early Viennese
classics; he will also be performing as a soloist in two piano concerti by
Mozart – No 15 and No 16.
On 12 April at 19:00 there will be
a performance by the piano duo Remnant featuring young South
Korean sisters Hee Jin and Hyun Joo June who are students in Professor Sandler’s
class; the duo has already been a prize-winner at the Schubert
Competition in the Czech Republic and the prestigious ARD
International Competition in Munich. The programme for their performance
includes a Mozart sonata for four hands, a suite by Rachmaninoff and
a suite from Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella arranged for piano duo
by Mikhail Pletnev.
On 12 April at 22.00 Daniil Trifonov will
perform a recital.
On 13 April there will be performances by
students from the class of Professor Alexander Sandler at
the St Petersburg Conservatoire. The professor’s class has
already produced a number of significant concert pianists and prize-winners
at international competitions, among them Peter Laul, Alexandre Pirojenko, Pavel
Raikerus and Miroslav Kultyshev who took 2nd prize at the XIII
International Tchaikovsky Competition.
On 14 April the festival will come to
a close with the now traditional “piano marathon”: all five of
Prokofiev’s piano concerti will be performed by Daniil Trifonov, Alexander
Toradze, Igor Tchetuev, Alexei Volodin and Sergei Babayan together with
the Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Valery
Gergiev. |