Latest news with #TchaikovskyCompetition
Korea Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
When light embraces classical music
New festival transforms the Theatre des Lumieres into a symphony for the senses A new classical festival running Aug. 8-24 at Theatre des Lumieres in Gwangjin-gu, eastern Seoul, invites audiences to immerse themselves in music and visuals alike. Led by soprano Hong Hye-ran as artistic director, Classic Weekends presents eight performances that marry live music with large-scale media art projections. The venue, located within the Walkerhill Hotel complex, is a 4,958-square-meter space with a 21-meter ceiling, equipped to project 360-degree visuals across its walls and ceilings floors. Originally designed for digital art exhibitions, the space has been adapted for concerts under the direction of Hong and Jeong Tae-yang, a pianist and the festival's music director. The opening weekend featured three performances by leading Korean classical musicians: a trio recital with violinist Lim Ji-young, pianist Son Jeong-beom and cellist Mun Tae-guk on Aug. 9; a vocal recital by bass-baritone Samuel Youn and countertenor Lee Dong-gyu; and Verdi's "La Traviata," which will be staged on Aug. 16, 22 and 24 as well. "La Traviata" will feature Hong as Violetta, tenor Son Ji-hoon — winner of the 2023 Tchaikovsky Competition — as Alfredo, and baritone Lee Dong-hwan as Germont alongside a seven-piece string ensemble, a pianist and a 15-member chorus. Projected visuals will replace traditional opera sets. The 'Going Home Project' with celebrated pianist Son Yeol-eum, violinist Svetlin Roussev and flutist Cho Sung-hyun will take place on Aug. 15. The festival will also present the 12-member Cellista Ensemble on Aug. 23. One of the festival's defining features is its 90-minute, no-intermission format, designed to sustain focus and immersion. 'Video projections will run on all sides of the theater for opera and instrumental performances alike, with visuals produced to match the program's content and mood," Jeong, who previously served as an opera coach with the Korea National Opera, said. 'The visuals will change depending on the atmosphere of the piece — in some performances, it may feel as though the audience were being transported to another place.' The organizers describe Classic Weekends as a way to broaden the audience experience by integrating visual and musical elements, while adding a new entry to Seoul's growing roster of summer classical festivals, which includes the Seoul Arts Center International Music Festival and Lotte Concert Hall's Classic Revolution. For Hong, the festival is as much a mission as a performance series. 'We talk about popularizing classical music, yet opportunities for performers keep shrinking,' she said. 'Here, the audience will feel as though they've stepped inside the work itself, expanding their senses in new ways.'
Times
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Alexandre Kantorow — from damp Olympic hero to Proms piano star
A solitary pianist sits at a Steinway piano on a bridge in Paris, ready to play to a global audience of millions watching the Olympics opening ceremony. It's pouring with rain but even a deluge can't stop Ravel's Jeux d'eau (Fountains, aptly) rippling from Alexandre Kantorow's fingers. 'No one else was allowed on the bridge, not even security. I had to wait 20 minutes in the rain without playing, just looking at all the boats passing,' he says, recalling last summer. 'I felt so alone in Paris, which was absolutely magical.' As we talk over a post-concert beer in Freiburg, Germany, I'm swept up by this rose-tinted version of events, but I can't help wondering, more prosaically, what happened to the piano. 'My contract is terrible — I still can't talk about the piano and how they made it,' he says. 'But let's say they prepared for the rain, so there was no destruction of a piano.' The 28-year-old French pianist reached a new level of fame after his rain-drenched Ravel, but he was already hot property in the piano world. Dubbed 'Liszt reincarnated' for his impassioned performances, in 2019 Kantorow became the first French musician to win the Tchaikovsky Competition — a musical equivalent of the Olympics. He remembers it both as 'one of the highlights of stress' in his life and as a place where he reached a musical paradise. 'It's a memory of what's it like to only have music in your mind,' he explains — a rarefied state he's dedicated his life to achieving. His supercharged touring career began the moment he won. 'You've got no time,' he says. 'I didn't even go home, and they had already booked concerts.' When I first heard Kantorow play live at a sold-out solo recital in London a few years ago, I was bowled over by his virtuosity and the resonant sound he conjures from the piano. (He attributes this to the Russian-French teacher Rena Shereshevskaya, who taught him the tricks of 'the long sound'.) His star has continued to rise and he recently won the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award (he's using the money to build a studio in Paris). After an impressive Proms debut in 2023 playing Beethoven, Kantorow returns to the Royal Albert Hall this summer with Saint-Saëns' Fifth Piano Concerto, an entertaining piece nicknamed 'The Egyptian' (the composer was in the country when he composed it). 'It's one of the important French concertos that's not by Ravel. It's full of intensity and joy, and it makes for one of the most pleasing pieces of music, honestly, that we get on the piano,' Kantorow says, laughing as he splutters over a wasabi snack. 'Even in France, there was for a long time a sort of contempt for Saint-Saëns because he can go over the edge into 'easy' or over-sugary music. But he was incredibly creative, and there's always a spirit of discovery [in his music].' In an age when even purist classical pianists such as Vikingur Olafsson dabble with soothing albums of 'reworks', tapping into the popularity of 'relaxing' and 'chillout' piano playlists, Kantorow has rooted himself firmly in the Romantic era. His playing delivers big emotions and dramatic contrasts. ('I get very hot-headed,' he says. 'I wish I could have more distance.') He's been immersed in Brahms, Liszt and Saint-Saëns, is filling in repertoire gaps by learning Rachmaninov's Second and Prokofiev's Third concertos, and has a new love: the music of Nikolai Medtner, whom he calls 'the Chopin of the 20th century'. What does Kantorow think the appeal of this music is today? 'Melodies — I think that's very important for people. Melody is a big part of the 19th century,' he says without hesitation. 'And the best Romantic music carries a feeling of a universal journey that everyone will understand.' • RPO/Petrenko review — Alexandre Kantorow delights at the Proms That's certainly true of the darkness-to-light trajectory of Brahms's First Piano Concerto, which I've just heard Kantorow play in a free concert packed with schoolchildren and students. He's given a standing ovation and a single red rose, and when I meet him at the stage door afterwards, the fans are waiting. 'Wunderbar,' exclaims one starstruck woman, while a group of teenage girls gather round for a photo. 'Brahms is not going to work on every kid,' he replies, when I suggest that this serious, hour-long concerto is, much as I love it, an unexpected choice to introduce classical music to a new generation. 'Still,' he adds, 'it's a joy that a guy from the 19th century who wasn't the kind of person you'd probably have a good dinner with, had such an interior world that even today we cling to him.' My impression is that the past is as alive to Kantorow as the present. When he went to Moscow for the Tchaikovsky Competition, he says his head was filled with the ghosts of Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky. His fantasy dinner guests would be Liszt, George Sand and Berlioz. He's less interested in staying in touch with the modern world. Not only does Kantorow avoid all social media but he is also 'extremely bad' at answering phone calls and texts. He has sacrificed time with people, he says, for this life of music, and shies away from a question about whether he is in a relationship. 'I'm afraid that you can very quickly become a sort of grown-up child,' he confesses. 'I'm very lucky to do these concerts, but you are not very autonomous. There are always people to bring you to places, who know where you're going. Musical life is advancing and the rest is not. I'm really struggling with that and trying to be sure that's not the case.' Kantorow grew up in a family of musicians. His mother, Kathryn Dean, is a British violinist. 'I love Marmite.' Kantorow smiles. 'Christmas cake is a big tradition in the family, scrambled eggs in the morning. There's a big part of me that feels connected to Britain.' His French father, the violinist and conductor Jean-Jacques Kantorow, opened doors for him into the professional musical world. While Alexandre was still a teenager, they recorded two albums together for BIS, the small Swedish label that's since become part of Apple's Platoon and for which Kantorow still records. 'It was a privilege. He gave me a big chance, but he waited to be sure it wouldn't backfire — you need enough weight on your own to exist outside of your name,' Kantorow says. • Alexandre Kantorow review — intense doesn't even begin to describe this piano phenomenon He also made the most of his big competition break. The Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, who was chair of the jury, whisked Kantorow and the other finalists off into a whirlwind of concerts. 'He wanted new repertoire and quickly, with no time to rehearse because he would arrive late, having already done an opera,' Kantorow says. 'This process of being immediately on the spot and having to react was the best school.' Since then, Gergiev has become persona non grata in the West, barred for his close ties to Putin and refusal to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He is making his controversial return to Europe, conducting in Italy in a concert mooted for the end of July. 'I heard also Spain, maybe he was trying to …' Kantorow adds, trailing off. Should he be allowed back? 'My truthful wish I have in my heart is I wish to play again with him because he's one of the great artists of today,' he says. 'But I get it, honestly, I get it. From the point of view of Ukraine, I get it.' While he believes artists can't hide and say they're apolitical ('everything you say or stand for has meaning'), he doesn't feel he yet has a full enough knowledge of politics to use his platform in the way that, say, the pianist Igor Levit has done. Nor does he feel under pressure to modernise the concert format. 'Honestly, the more I look at it, the more I feel that's also the joy of classical music. It's a place you go to if you're a bit overwhelmed or tired from the modern world,' he says. 'I think more and more it will be a sort of refuge for people.' Once again, the world disappears, and Kantorow is absorbed by Kantorow plays at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on Jul 25, live on Radio 3/BBC Sounds, His album of Brahms and Schubert is out on BIS
South China Morning Post
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev plays subdued Beethoven and colourful Grieg in Hong Kong
The secret to a good story is, as they say, in the telling. Legendary Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev wasted no time telling his tale to a packed audience in Hong Kong on June 17, launching into the Shigeru Kawai grand piano the very second he sat down. His recital was made up of two clearly opposed halves. The first saw his subdued yet thoughtful expressions of pathos and beauty in two of Beethoven's pillar sonatas, while a vivid depiction of Nordic nostalgia in a selection of Grieg's Lyric Pieces came after the intermission. The multifaceted musician-composer, whose distinguished international career began when he won first prize in the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition, showed he had some real doozies up his sleeves despite exercising considerable emotional restraint in the first piece, Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8, the 'Pathétique'. Indeed, those expecting more outward expressions of the dramatic, agitated aspects of the music may have felt like they showed up at the wrong wedding. Expressions of pathos in the Grave introduction were more introspective in his hands, and any showy displays in the ensuing Allegro di molto con brio were equally shunned.
Gulf Today
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
''I'm in Love With Alexey Shor's Lyrical Themes,'' says Edgar Moreau ahead of InClassica 2025 performance at Dubai Opera
Gulf Network Poised to make a grand comeback on the global classical music stage, the historic InClassica International Music Festival is returning to Dubai for its fifth consecutive year, with its 14th edition featuring a fantastic lineup of artists, orchestras, and memorable performances. The world's biggest musical observatory will occur from the 6th to the 21st of April, with 2025's special iteration dedicated to the legacy of its acclaimed Composer-in-Residence Alexey Shor. The maestro's works will play a central role throughout the musical affair courtesy of a series of performances by world-renowned musicians, with no less than 14 acclaimed soloists, five esteemed conductors, and two international orchestras showcasing the best of classical music at the breathtaking Dubai Opera. Among the highly-anticipated musicians performing at the event is distinguished French cellist Edgar Moreau, making his Dubai debut at the iconic festival. Prizewinner at the 2009 Rostropovich Competition and 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition, the charismatic cello player has a multi-award-winning career under his belt, having performed with the likes of Valery Gergiev, Gidon Kremer, András Schiff, Yuri Bashmet, Krzysztof Penderecki, Gustavo Dudamel etc. Recipient of many musical awards, the Academie Maurice Ravel Prize 2011, the Banque Populaire Foundation, 'Classic Revelation' by France's Adami, French-Speaking Public Radios Young Musician Prize 2013, and named 'New Talent of the Year 2013' and 'Instrumental Soloist of the Year 2015' by the French Victoires de la Musique, Moreau regularly performs in prestigious venues, including New York Carnegie Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, among others. Aptly titled 'French Cello Delight', Edgar Moreau's premiere concert at InClassica will take place on April 8, where he will be seen collaborating with Spanish conductor Tomàs Grau and renowned Barcelona-based orchestra, the Franz Schubert Filharmonia. The diverse programme of the musical celebration will feature Ludwig van Beethoven's 'Egmont' overture, Op. 84, followed by Alexey Shor's Cello Concerto No. 3 and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's emotionally charged Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36. Alexey Shor, InClassica Composer-in-Residence Ahead of his debut performance at InClassica 2025, we sat down with Edgar Moreau to discuss his upcoming collaborations, thoughts on resident composer Alexey Shor's contemporary musical style and what he hopes the audience at the Dubai Opera takes away from his passionate concert. What does it mean to you to perform at the InClassica International Music Festival, and how does its atmosphere compare to other festivals you've attended? I'm thrilled to be a part of the InClassica International Music Festival, especially as it will be my first time performing in Dubai. When I looked at the musical programme of this terrific affair, I realised that all the major conductors and soloists are coming to this wonderful festival, which made me want to join. Having played in cities like Sharjah, Abu Dhabi several times, and Al Ain a few years ago, my experiences in the UAE have been amazing, so I look forward to coming to Dubai for the first time and meeting the public there. I'm sure this wonderful festival will become one of the major venues in the world and the most important event in the region. How do you approach working with new orchestras and conductors to create a cohesive musical experience? This festival marks many firsts for me, including working with Tomas Grau and the Franz Schubert Filharmonia for the first time. I'm grateful for the opportunity to meet new orchestras, conductors, and musicians and to have the possibility to create something very fresh from the start. I've already experienced that feeling several times, and I look forward to this new collaboration with all these wonderful artists. What part of your compelling programme at InClassica are you most excited about? I'm really looking forward to presenting Alexey Shor's wonderful Cello Concerto No. 3 at InClassica. This summer, I had the pleasure of meeting Alexey Shor in Verbier, Switzerland. I presented his piano trio alongside Daniel Lozakovich and fell deeply in love with his beautiful, lyrical, and rhythmic themes. I believe Shor is one of the most incredible living composers today. His music is profoundly romantic but, at the same time, very modern. You can sense a lot of different influences and backgrounds in his compositions, which provide the perfect blend of virtuosity, rhythm and, of course, melodies. Is there a particular sentiment you'd like to leave with the audience at the Dubai Opera after your performance? I feel fortunate to perform for InClassica audiences, especially after learning about the exceptional acoustics of the venue. I will be bringing my wonderful cello with me, which is more than 300 years old, dating back to 1711. Playing modern music in such a contemporary hall will create a perfect blend of the past and the present, bringing beautiful sounds and inspiring music come together. I look forward to meeting audiences old and new and can't wait to see you all very soon in Dubai. For more details about InClassica 2025, visit the festival's official website here .
