Sinfonietta Rīga opens its 15th concert season at the Great Guild Hall

Chamber orchestra Sinfonietta Rīga, led by conductor Normunds Šnē, will open its new concert season on September 25 at 7 p.m. in the Great Guild Hall with the Belgian violinist Marc Bouchkov, laureate of the Queen Elizabeth Competition and the International Tchaikovsky Competition, as the guest of honor. The concert programme, dedicated to Ludwig van Beethoven in his anniversary year, includes the grand master's Fourth Symphony and the Overture to King Stephen; and, the audiences will be treated to the full power of Bouchkov's fiery talent and charisma in his performance of the philosophical dialogues of Leonard Bernstein's Serenade. This is also the anniversary year of Sinfonietta Rīga - the orchestra's 15th season of lively creative life. The season opening night will also showcase the photo collages of Francis Belte, who turned his artistic lens the orchestra through the previous season.

 

            "The Fates have weaved a truly unusual moment for the opening of Sinfonietta Rīga's 15th season. But perhaps this is really the time for the Arts to shine, because of their ability to create different impressions and transform the consciousness; that might be exactly what people need right now," says Normunds Šnē on the  upcoming concert season.

 

            Robert Schumann compared Beethoven's Fourth Symphony to a slender Greek maiden standing between two Norse giants - his Third and Fifth Symphony. Since its premiere in 1806, the audiences have been accustomed to think that the creative force and quality of Beethoven's genius follows a rising linear curve in the numerical order of his symphonies. However, this notion is just a romantic illusion; while the Fourth may be eclipsed by the larger symphonic pieces, the imagery created by its opening is equally striking, as dramatic, dark billows of fate forcefully entwines with brighter major notes in Beethoven's characteristic style, influenced by observation of nature.

            Thumbing through the pages of the great composer's musical heritage, Šnē reflects: "I've always wanted to believe that every performance of Beethoven's symphonies in Vienna at the time of their creation caused an uproar; and I also believe that is the spirit in which these pieces should be performed today - like it is the first time, a discovery, an idea that has never before entered the world and the minds of the people."

            Also included in the programme is the Overture to King Stephen, a commemorative work relating a grand historic narrative, composed by Beethoven on the occasion of the millennium of the Hungarian king Stephen in 1811.

 

            The guest musician of the concert, Belgian violinist Marc Bouchkov will perform an early work of the American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein - Serenade, after Plato's Symposium, a composition for solo violin, strings and percussion. Bernstein has approached the well-known philosophical treatise of the classical antiquity conceptually, in each of its five movements representing the ideas of a different speaker,  creating a musical form for the monologues of Phaedrus, Aristophanes, Eryximachus, Agathon and Socrates.

            The composition was dedicated to Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky, and premiered in 1952 at La Fenice theater in Venice, performed by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and violinist Isaac Stern.

 

            As a dedication to Sinfonietta Rīga in its 15th concert season, an exhibition of photo collages by the young artist Francis Belte, currently a student at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, will be displayed in the foyer of the Great Guild Hall. The works have been created by merging and transforming moments caught by his camera during the previous concert season of the chamber orchestra.

            "Referencing the French thinker Michel Foucault's idea about heterotopia or the 'other' space, I have created a work about different social spaces: the orchestra belongs to one space, the audience - to another. I felt compelled to look deeper into the orchestra's space," the artist comments on the inspiration for his work.

            In August this year, the works of Francis Belte were exhibited in the exhibition hall of Berga Bazārs as part of the closing exhibition of the ISSP Academy, and on the day of the concert the works will be on display at the Great Guild Hall.

 

            Marc Bouchkov’s artistry is driven by expression. His violin playing is grounded in a thorough knowledge of the score, the historical content and the authenticity of the interpretation. The closeness of the violin’s sound to the human voice is his inspiration for expressing feelings and emotions in music, turning these into a musical experience for the audience.

Bouchkov’s artistic development has been marked by numerous international awards. He is a prize winner of the highly-regarded International Violin Contest Henri Koch in Liège, the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Antwerp and the Montreal International Musical Competition. Last year, Bouchkov was awarded the second prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition and honored with the music prize of the Kulturstiftung Dortmund.

Bouchkov has collaborated with distinguished conductors such as Stanislav Kochanovsky, Howard Griffiths, Andrey Boreyko, and Christoph Eschenbach. As a soloist, he has performed with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Orchestre National de Belgique, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI in Turin, the NDR-Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie. In 2014, upon the invitation of Mariss Jansons, Bouchkov performed the inaugural concert of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's Essentials series.

As a keen chamber musician, Marc Bouchkov collaborates with artists such as pianists Georgy Dubko and Christopher Park, cellists Alexei Stadler and Kian Soltani, and violist Adrien Boisseau. He is a frequent guest at international festivals including the Verbier and Davos festival. Bouchkov has performed across many reputable concert halls such as the Theatre de la Ville in Paris, the Konzerthaus Berlin, Wigmore Hall London and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

 

  • News photo
  • News photo

Share