Festival closing gala-concert

In course of his more than half a century long career, Yuri Bashmet has performed many pieces of music dedicated and devoted to him. There is hardly any other modern musician who has got as many friends among composers.

And maestro Bashmet is not planning to stop. The viola repertoire owes him its increase, and he is happy to watch it gain a new life in the interpretations by other musicians – his colleagues, students, and young performers. This is why new pieces have always been performed in Bashmet’s festivals.

But there are also other pieces dedicated to Bashmet. The final concert of the XIII International Arts Festival in Sochi will present works by modern composers from different countries, generations, and styles written for different instruments. There are three world premieres on the program.

The eminent Japanese composer and pedagogue combining the traditions of Asian art and European avant-garde, professor of Tokyo musical college Toshio Hosokawa. Composer, producer, and journalist of the popular Italian newspaper Corriere della sera, artistic director of MITO music festival Nicola Campogrande has recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday. The Italian-Swiss composer, winner of multiple awards, a graduate of the big Parisian musical center IRCAM Oscar Bianchi has been successfully working with maestro Bashmet for several years. The three of them are members of the Composition Department, as well as of the International Composers Competition of the Festival in Sochi. This night the All-Russian Youth Symphony Orchestra directed by Yuri Bashmet will perform their opuses for the first time.

The Serbian composer and virtuoso percussionist, professor of the Academy of Music of the University of Novi Sad (Serbia), the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, and the visiting professor of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, a jury member of the children television contest The Nutcracker in Moscow, Nebojša Živković has visited Sochi many times, revealing the secrets of his art at the Instrumental Department. He will perform a fragment of one of his concertos for marimba, his main instrument. (Živković plays a unique marimba produced by Yamaha at his commission.)

Distinguished musicians and pedagogues, professors of the Instrumental Department will also take part in the concert. Many of them have been to Yuri Bashmet festivals before. Among them are the professor of the Music Chapel and the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp Tatiana Samouil; the professor of the Cologne University of Music Mihaela Martin; the Swedish cellist, student of Mstislav Rostropovich, professor of Queen Sofia Higher School of Music in Madrid and Hanns Eisler Higher School of Music in Berlin Frans Helmerson. Alongside with them there will perform younger musicians – instructor of the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, the German guitar-player Nico Coucke and the South Korean pianist Sunwook Kim – the youngest winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition (U.K.).

The concert program includes both pieces by modern composers and popular classical pieces of the 19 – 20 centuries. Brilliant Gypsy Airs by Sarasate, the mysterious landscape of Silent Woods by Dvořák, the tragic energy of the concerto for the left hand by Ravel, and the melancholy reflections of the double concerto by Bruch… The concert begins with the splendorous overture to Rossini’s opera La gazza ladra, where the percussion instruments play a special part, and it ends with the vigorous and powerful overture to Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila.  This event will become a brilliant finale to stay in the hearts of the guests of Yuri Bashmet’s XIII International Festival.