/ world today news/ More unusually, in a long baroque fiesta, the “Baroque Art” festival unfolded this year. In six weeks (from 18. 10. to 27. 11.) – eight concerts (not including the educational projects for children and the master classes). It turned out to be a good strategy, because in this way the audience does not oversaturate itself, preserves the freshness and thrill of anticipation.
The real opportunity to indulge in more temptations was also reported – in parallel, at the same time in Sofia, other music festivals, concerts of the Sofia Philharmonic and SO of BNR, concerts of various chamber formations, and connoisseurs of tonal art are a small community. How to be attracted? “The Art of Baroque” has an unequivocal answer – with interesting programs.
I unfolded the old festival booklets and found that since 2007, not a single work has been repeated. Can you imagine how many authors – known and unknown, with how many unperformed in Bulgaria works the festival met us? And a little retrospection: in his first editions, entirely chamber, he gradually (the eternal financial limitations!) expanded his scope to larger genres – cantatas, operas, to the participation of larger orchestras.
In its ninth edition, the brilliant start of the festival led The Baroque Orchestra of the European Uniondriven by greatness Lars Ulrik Mortensen. The famous Danish harpsichordist and conductor is the artistic director of this mobile academy, which for 30 years has provided young musicians from all European countries with the opportunity to professionally study so-called historically informed performance practices. Every year the composition of the orchestra is selected and renewed; from 2016 to 2018, the project is specifically aimed at facilitating access to education in the field of early music to the underdeveloped areas of the Old Continent. It is clear that Bulgaria is one of them, it is a priceless chance for all those interested to take advantage of it! Zefira Valova, to whom we owe the “Art of the Baroque” festival, played in this orchestra; he already has the status of concertmaster – that is, he also conveys his personal experience as a soloist-violinist and performer in various European and Bulgarian baroque ensembles. She was concertmaster in the project “Inspired by Italy”, which was presented by young musicians from 10 European countries and the conductor Mortensen. The construction of the program led to the quintessence of the Italian style – Arcangelo Corelli (Concerto grosso op.6 no. 4). But before this final climax, it was intriguing to hear how the young Handel (Overture from Op. “Alessandro”, Sonata in G Major and Concerto Grosso Op. 3 No. 4) during his stay in Italy stole ideas from the great Corelli, and Vivaldi ( two String Symphonies) and Albinoni (Concerto for two oboes and strings in F major) follow in his footsteps. The EU Baroque Orchestra plays magnificently, colorfully. Mortensen possesses the uncanny gift of modeling sound substance like a sculptor. It unfolds forms in lines, images, contrasts, echo-effects, tutti-eruptions and meditative drifts so vividly, captivatingly. Body, spirit, heart – everything in him plays in the music, it is in the frequency of its vibrations. And quite naturally that enthusiasm is transmitted to everyone in the orchestra. Spontaneously, emotionally, and the listeners enter the music – they please, have fun.
“Baroque art” was built on European models. It is common in their formats for a circle of artists – kindred spirits, to play together, it is common for them to attract younger colleagues as well. This is also the position of the main actor in the festival, Zefira Valova: I follow the development of many ensembles, I try to get to know new performers as well. I dream of the big names of the baroque scene, but that requires a lot of money and in the end, it is more important to have artists for whom the Bulgarian public means something. In fact, this is my most serious criterion – I appeal to people who have a warm attitude, who would not come to play another concert for another audience and leave for another concert – this is, of course, part of everyday life, but it is more important to feel the interest, the desire to exchange information and emotions. I try to find Bulgarian talents with a taste for old music and at any convenient moment to meet them with the already gained experience, with the real stars of the scene in the West. Although with slow steps, we are persistently moving towards progress, and this is evidenced by the concerts, which include our musicians who are prominent abroad, as well as participants in the master classes of the festival and in the freely chosen course on interpretation of early music, which I have been leading since last year in The Music Academy in Sofia.
Zefira Valova in partnership with the cellist Linda Mancheva (she lives and teaches in Berlin, plays with the Zurich Baroque Orchestra, with L’arte del mondo – Cologne, Musica sequenza – Berlin, etc.) presented the program “Contemporary Bach Interpreters”. chamber evening with exquisitely virtuosic solo pieces for violin (JS Bach – Partita in D minor, Johann Paul Westhof – parts of the Suite in A major) and for cello (Rechercari by Domenico Gabrieli and Suite in D minor by Bach), preludes from two canons from Bach’s “Art of the Fugue”. And more – premiere for Bulgaria performance of Duo in A major by Giuseppe Torelli and Divertimento for violin and cello by Giovanni Battista Ciri. The brilliant taste and instrumental technique of the two performers is the foundation on which they easily built their interpretation of the musical texts, which, as you know, are not among the easiest.
The next concert in the festival introduced us to the music of Johann Heimlich Roman, known as Scandinavian Handel. Another discovery for the Bulgarian public! According to historians, Roman was the first Swedish composer, conductor of the royal orchestra, violinist, oboist, theorist and pedagogue. He played in England in Handel’s opera orchestra, and his meetings with Geminiani and Bononcini shaped his style. Precisely these multicultural baroque connections – works by the four composers were performed – were shown to us in various combinations of duo, trio, quartet and solo violinists Zefira Valova and Elena Ganova (this was her debut at the festival), Linda Mancheva – cello, Aapo Hakkinen – harpsichord with the participation of the 11-year-old violinist Leo Hakinen. The idea for the program started with the Finnish harpsichordist Aapo Hakkinen – a name in the new generation of early music performers. Laureate of prestigious competitions, he has performed in many European countries as a soloist and chamber musician in various ensembles, since 2003 he has been the conductor of the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra. Playing music together with him is on the field of the high academic level. But in this aesthetic of tradition, the ladies also brought their temperament, their plasticity in sound formation, in articulation, in the dynamic scale of touches and shades.
For the first time in the “Baroque Art”, a new festival ensemble appeared in the composition: Yavor Genov – lute, Zefira Valova – violin, Eugenia Bauer – viola (Russia), Elitsa Bogdanova – viola, Ludovyko Minazy – cello (Italy) and Marianna Henrikson – harpsichord (Finland). And what a magnificent concert they created with the music of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Bieber! Bieber is unique in his time – a violinist and composer who reveals the hidden polyphonic nature of the violin as an instrument. His patent is the so-called scordatura – to put it simply, tuning the strings out of the established order, which gives room for the interweaving of wild overtones and different expression. With one of the famous “Rosenkranz” sonatas, dedicated to the Annunciation, the program began, the sonata “Crucifixion” was played in the center, followed by a piece for lute by Kapsberger (the inspiration of the so-called Stylus Phantasticus) – performed by Yavor Genov, and to in the final, Zefira Valova played the famous solo virtuoso Passacaglia from the same “Rosenkranz” sonata cycle, portraying the life and path of Jesus Christ. Among them: sonatas and partitas from other collections of Bieber – “Armonia Artificiosa-Ariosa” and “Fidicinium Sacro-profanum”. Not because of the effectiveness, the performers had titled the concert “Sacred-Profane Music”. This title allegorically expresses with Bieber’s music the spirit of the Theatrum mundi. The dichotomies of high and low, earthly and heavenly were conveyed by the performers full-blooded and impressive! The ensemble playing of this new multinational formation seems to be a natural given. Unanimous in the rise and reflections of the rhetorical phrases-replies, theatrically sensitive to the inner scale of the works, they play with a very beautiful and plastically modeled sound. All this went like an electric current to the audience, who clapped, clapped and did not want the concert to end.
„Telemania”! The pun in the title genuinely amused Dutch top recorder player Erik Bosgraaf: I didn’t know about that title. Let’s see if telemaniacs will feel enlightened if they come to our concert. I think the music of Georg Philipp Telemann can make you happy, unlike TV – I exclude a good movie… It’s funny, not a week goes by without Telemann playing. It’s a real obsession. I recorded his solo fantasias, I play his concertos, they are very virtuosic and made for the more refined palace audience. And the sonatas that we performed with Francesco Corti at the festival and released on CD in June are quite different – they require inventiveness and a deep understanding of rhetoric. Every year, Bosgraaf comes to the festival with different projects, also holds master classes at the Music Academy. His name like a magnet attracts the audience because they know that something unforgettable will happen. And this time it happened. If played ordinarily, baroque music quickly gets boring, but here is the mastery – to bring the stories to life in the notes. This is what Eric can do – his sound palette is incredibly rich, he is a wonderful storyteller, his “speech” is full of meaning and flows naturally and easily at the same time. Francesco Corti was the perfect companion in this musical performance. I wonder if he had a two-manual harpsichord with more options, how many degrees would the enjoyment go up?
For several years now, the festival has been going beyond the Baroque period in the study of old performance practices. In his last edition, Robert Schumann veered towards romance. Vasily Ilisavsky (piano) performed “Chrysleriana” for four hands with Galina Draganova – “Pictures from the East”, and the Piano Quartet in partnership with Zefira Valova, Evgenia Bauer and Teodora Atanasova. The other deviation was to Mozart – a recital with chamber music (Ilisavsky, Valova, Bauer, Minazi) and a concert performance of the opera “The Marriage of Figaro” in the hall “Sveta Sofia”. This is not the first time that this opera has been presented in concert in Bulgaria, the novelty was the conductor’s interpretation Alexy Kosenko with an orchestra The ambassadors – “The Ambassadors”, who plays authentic instruments from the era – such as Mozart knew and used in his score. An orchestra of 20 musicians – this is already a prerequisite for greater flexibility, lightness, transparency of the invoice – components embedded in Amadeus’ music. And the doubts that the performance of “The Marriage of Figaro” would be complete without a stage visualization were swept away immediately after the overture – the comic vicissitudes and spicy situations in which the characters fall were sculpted with superb artistry by the costumed singers – references to today’s time. With an extremely funny mise-en-scène – the work of the famous Bulgarian director Galin Stoev. The stage production of The Marriage of Figaro in 2014 was his operatic debut. It is a co-production of the national theaters of Camper, Dunkirk, Besançon and the Imperial Theater of Compiègne. In Sofia, the soloists sang and played in front of the orchestra on stage. This naturally appeared, along with the personification of the characters, and the personification of the instrumentalists. Alexi Kosenko impeccably and passionately led the orchestra and soloists in his interpretation of Mozart. Equal and wonderful singers with beautiful, technically precise voices, the selection of their timbres covers and characterizes the type of each of the characters. Figaro was the Russian bass Yuri Kissinthe Moldovan Diana Aksentiy – Countess Almaviva, the other soloists were French: Camille Poole – Susan, Thomas Dolier – Count Almaviva, Ambroazine Bre (she is still a student at the Paris Conservatoire) – Cherubino, Frederick Cato – Bartolo and Antonio, Elen Walter – Barbarina, debuted in Sofia with the part of Marcellina, Eric Vigneault – Basilio and Don Curzio. We cannot forget their delightful performance of the arias, of the duets and ensemble scenes, of the connecting recitatives. Brightly unfolded, dynamic and stylish musical theater!
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