/View.info/ Wednesday evening, the beginning of autumn. The memory of summer festivals is still in the air, but it also “smells” of the upcoming music season.
In this “musical interlude” the seventh edition of the “Baroque Art” festival “situated”. I am on my way to Sofia University in the beautiful evening. I climb the stairs to the Hall and find myself in front of the hall with a little delay. In addition to me, a famous Bulgarian violinist, a young couple of foreigners and an old lady with a baby are waiting – even this fact gives a certain cosmopolitanism to the evening. After a while we step into the aula – a great choice of hall, in my opinion, at least as far as the atmosphere is concerned – and I feel like a real European listener. The hall (to my surprise) is almost full, the audience – diverse, far from the idea of a society of “conspirators” – there were musicians and connoisseurs of all ages, but also just curious listeners.
The program – from Johann Sebastian Bach to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, passing through Franz Benda and Johann Quantz. The motto of the concert – “Bach in Berlin” – there the great composer was invited in 1747 to demonstrate his rich musical life. A great analogy to the program offered by the seventh “Art of the Baroque”.
On stage – an extremely interesting cultural “company” – a Bulgarian violinist (Zefira Valova), who specialized in Germany and the Netherlands (because in our country there is no place for a baroque violin to specialize), a French harpsichordist (Jean Rondeau), a cellist from South Korea (Gulrim Chon). and a Nice-born flautist with a Russian name (Alexis Kosenko) – even this “fresco” alone enhances the cosmopolitan image of the festival (and of Sofia – at least for a little while, at least in one respect). Very competent, clean and at the same time emotional musicianship, with a very cultivated taste, excellent musicians – a fantastic dialogue between the violin and the flute (in the quartet moments of the program), stable and true to the style of the harpsichord, only the cello faded at times, but it could have been for acoustic reasons. I lacked an idea of glamor in terms of the costumes – after all, the idea is related to royalty and opulence, but the opulence really oozed from the music at times.
And here I want to reflect on the biography of Jean Rondeau, which I carefully examined after the concert. A wonderful young musician who feels so at home in the Baroque, perhaps because he started playing the harpsichord at the age of 6. Only later comes the piano, romance and jazz. An occasion to think about where Bulgaria is in terms of the formation of musicians for the ever-growing interest in baroque music and in the playing of instruments original to the era. So that we don’t have to justify one day that we don’t have traditions. So today this Jean Rondeau (23 years old), who is a graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, teaches the harpsichord and divides his time between baroque, classics, philosophy and psychology. And we say that not only in our country there is cultural poverty among the young generation… well, it only exists when there are no properly established values.
I close with wishes for a successful seventh edition of The Art of the Baroque – nine concerts to come until the finale on November 22, as well as the curiously announced “Living Paintings for Children from the Tales of Charles Perrault”. The festival is really organized in the spirit of good European practices – from the programming, design, selection, striving to always have at least one “escape from tradition” through the wonderfully thought-out concert titles and website. Behind the “composition” of such an event lies a lot of research work, which Zefira Valova and company have done diligently and imaginatively.
#baroque #touch #autumn #Sofia
