Be@thoven International Music Festival

2020 is marked by a jubilee - the 250th anniversary of birth of the outstanding composer Ludwig van Beethoven, whose work had a particular impact on the subsequent development of all European music. Engaging the whole world, the anniversary celebrations have been taking place far beyond Germany and Austria, with which the composer's life was immediately connected. Yekaterinburg, as one of the major music centers of Russia, could not stay on the sidelines. The Sverdlovsk Philharmonic initiated a large-scale event: the Be@thoven International Music Festival.

Germany-based, RCCR Projects GmbH production agency, which has an impressive experience in the implementation of conceptual cultural projects in Europe and artistic exchanges between Russia and Germany, became the partner of the Festival.

The Festival will feature the authentic sound of the Beethoven's works as laid out in the original author's versions, which are rarely performed not only in Russia, but in the world in general. They will be presented by the bearers of the Beethoven style: the famous musicians of the German performing school, including Thomas Zehetmair (violin), Ruth Killius (viola), Severin von Eckardstein (piano), Thomas Bauer (baritone), Christian-Friedrich Dallmann (horn), Elena Zhidkova (soprano), Nikolaus Rexroth (piano). The Ural Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dmitry Liss and Thomas Zehetmair will present programmes of classical and contemporary music, while the Tchaikovsky International Youth Orchestra will prepare a concert programme under the direction of conductor Lothar Zagrosek, a recognized performer of the German classical repertoire.

Dialogue of Classical and Contemporary

The works by contemporary authors, created in a historic dialogue with the great German composer, will be performed in Yekaterinburg for the first time. On the First Night of the Festival on November 23, the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra led by Dmitry Liss will perform Be@thoven-Invocation by Vladimir Tarnopolsky, which premiered at the famous Beethovenfest in Bonn in 2017. This work was inspired by the Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, which will be performed in the same programme. The Last Night of the Festival taking place on November 30, along with the famous Ninth Symphony, will see Jörg Widmann's Con Brio Overture, the musical material of which is an allusion to the themes of the Seventh and Ninth Symphonies of the great German composer.

The dialogue between the classics and the contemporary which has already become traditional through comparing the works of Beethoven and Shostakovich, will receive a new approach in the programmes of the Festival where an attempt is made to juxtapose the works of Beethoven and Prokofiev. This narrative will begin from the First Night of the Festival (November 23) with Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No.5 performed after the Fourth Piano Concerto by the German classic.

Soloists

One of the most charismatic German pianists, the First Prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels (2003), Severin von Eckardstein will perform the solo part in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. On the second night of the Festival (November 24), he will offer the audience an exquisite recital featuring the works by Beethoven, Prokofiev and Alkan. The music of Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813–1888), a French pianist and composer who in his young years rivaled Franz Liszt and Sigismond Thalberg in virtuosity, will be performed in Yekaterinburg for the first time.

A magnificent musician - violinist, conductor, and founder of the famous Zehetmair Quartet (known for performing all quartets by heart) - Thomas Zehetmair will play Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 on November 26. Paradoxical as it sounds, the premiere of this work, which took place at the Vienna Theatre in December 1806, was not a success with the public. Subsequently, the author reworked the concerto into a version for piano and orchestra (op. 61a), and composed a lengthy cadenza of the first movement with a timpani part, to enhance the showiness of the piece. In the 1950s, a well-known Austrian violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan transposed this cadenza for solo violin. This very version of the Beethoven's Violin Concerto Thomas Zehetmair will perform at the Festival.

On the same evening, a little-known Double Concerto for violin, viola and orchestra (1932) by Benjamin Britten will be performed on the stage of the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic. A renowned German violist Ruth Killius, the winner of numerous awards for recording of German classical and romantic viola repertoire, will take part in the performance along with Thomas Zehetmair. The concert programme of the third evening will end with, perhaps, Beethoven's most popular work, the Fifth Symphony. It sets before the performers - the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra under Thomas Zehetmair - the task of overcoming the inertia of the "habitual hearing" of this work, which has been performed thousands times all over the world. Maestro will provide the orchestra with the sheet music containing the authentic Beethoven markings – the result of his longstanding work with the great composer’s legacy.

Beethoven’s Chamber Works

The fourth and fifth evenings of the Festival are dedicated to Beethoven's chamber music. The centre piece of these programmes is the virtuoso Septet in E-flat major, Opus 20, for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass, to be performed by musicians of the International Youth Orchestra Academy (November 27), and the equally well-known song cycle An Die Ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved), Op. 98, which will be performed by the German duet - Thomas Bauer (baritone) and Nikolaus Rexroth (piano). The vocal music night will be complemented by the works of Richard Wagner and Pyotr Tchaikovsky: fragments from Wagner’s 5 Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme (5 Poems for a female voice or ‘Wesendonck Lieder’) song cycle on poems by Mathilde Wesendonck will be performed by Elena Zhidkova, whereas Maria Bayankina will perform Tchaikovsky’s romances and arias (November 29).

An important narrative unfolding in the Festival's programmes, is connected with the music of the 20th century classics - Sergei Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith and Benjamin Britten, the composers possessing a pronounced individual musical language, in some way continuing, but at the same time pushing away from the classical Beethoven’s origin of the symphony and concerto genres interpretation. That is exactly why the chamber music programme on November 27 includes the Overture on Hebrew Themes by Sergei Prokofiev and Paul Hindemith's Kleine Kammermusik (Little Chamber Music) wind quintet to be performed by the Pacific Quintet ensemble of young musicians.

Orchestra Academy

The Festival will become a training site for the Orchestra Academy and its signature Tchaikovsky International Youth Orchestra. Since 2014, this annual event brings together students and graduates of Russian and German higher musical educational institutions, as well as young professional musicians from different countries. The renowned German conductor Lothar Zagrosek will be the Artistic Director of the 2020 Orchestra Academy taking place as part of the Be@thoven Festival. Maxim Kosinov (violin) and Christian-Friedrich Dallmann (horn) will be the Tutors of the Academy.

The Festival will end on November 30 with the Beethoven's grandiose Ninth Symphony performed by the Tchaikovsky International Youth Orchestra, the Yekaterinburg Philharmonic Choir and a quartet of magnificent soloists: Maria Bayankina (soprano), Elena Zhidkova (mezzo-soprano), Thomas Bauer (baritone) and Ilya Selivanov (tenor) under the baton of Lothar Zagrosek. The musicians will use the historically precise musical material of the symphony published by Bärenreiter-Verlag, the world famous music publishing house. This edition involved many years of research by the leading musicologists, researchers of Beethoven's work and is recognized as reference.

Side Programme

A rich educational programme will take place during the Festival and include series of conversations and meet-the-artist events with musicologists, performers and composers. It is planned to hold a round table discussion on Limited Capabilities – Infinite Achievements (November 23), focusing on opportunities for listeners with hearing impairments. Composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky will share his vision of Beethoven’s perceptions during composing work at the period when he became almost completely deaf, the Piano Concerto No.4 will serve as an example. Teachers of the long-term partner of Sverdlovsk Philharmonic, the Echo Yekaterinburg Center for Psychological, Medical and Social Support, will share their experience in introducing classical and contemporary music to children with special needs. It’s worth mentioning that in 2019 the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic equipped its auditorium with the Sennheiser system which provides the opportunity for audience members with hearing impairments to enjoy the music of Beethoven and other composers at the philharmonic concerts.

The Festival concerts will be streamed from the Grand Concert Hall of Sverdlovsk Philharmonic to the branch units of the Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall – the Philharmonic Assemblies, and the String Quartet of the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic will perform Beethoven's music for the audience of the Irbit Regional Concert Hall.

The Festival will become a bright life performance event of the significance overreaching Yekaterinburg, Russia to the international music community. It will bring together the leading music critics, journalists, cultural commentators from the national and international media. The top German and Russian musicologists, researchers of the Beethoven's legacy will be among its guests of honor. The famous German Beethoven scholar, author of the popular book Beethoven. Symphony No. 9, Professor Dieter Rexroth will talk about the influence this composition had not only on the composer's creative work, but also on the development of all subsequent world musical culture. Malte Boecker, Director of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn and Artistic Director of BTHVN2020, will talk about the famous manuscripts preserved in the Museum’s archives, and about the Beethoven Year celebration in Germany. The Philharmonic lobby will host an exhibition featuring materials provided by the Beethoven archives in Bonn and telling about the life and work of the great composer, as well as Beethoven's Music on the Stage of the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic documentation, including posters, photographs and archival materials.