Sinfonietta Rīga performs at the prestigious Storioni Festival in the Netherlands

On Saturday, January 21, Sinfonietta Rīga will perform at the Muziekgebouw Frits Philips Eindhoven (Netherlands), for the first time participating in the Storioni's Grand Parade – a marathon concert of the prestigious chamber music festival Storioni Festival. The event showcases a number of internationally renowned musicians on several stages of the  Muziekgebouw Eindhoven all in one evening. Sinfonietta Rīga will join the festival's founders – Dutch chamber music ensemble Storioni Trio – to première "Shade", the new piece by the American post-minimalist icon David Lang.

 

Storioni Festival is the largest and most prominent chamber music festival in the Netherlands, for its tenth year taking place in Eindhoven, the business and cultural centre of the North Brabant region. The festival has a direct relation to Storioni Trio, which rates among the most outstanding collectives of its genre; it was the members of the ensemble – pianist Bart van de Roer, violinist Wouter Vossen and cellist Marc Vossen – together with Frank Veenstra, the artistic manager of the Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, who made their dream of grand international chamber music festival a reality. Since the festival's first edition in 2008 it has featured many internationally celebrated artists, including pianists Alfred Brendel, Diana Ketler, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, violinists Vadim Repin, Gidon Kremer, Alexander Sitkovetsky, double-bass player Gunars Upatnieks, cellist Natalia Gutman, as well as some of the most prominent contemporary composers, among them Peteris Vasks, Gya Kancheli and Nico Muhly.

One of the central events of the festival's tenth anniversary year promises to be the first performance of the top contemporary post-minimalist David Lang's (1957) latest work "Shade". The opus was composed during a creative residency in the Netherlands and will be performed by Storioni Trio and Sinfonietta Rīga under the baton of Normunds Šne.

New Yorker David Lang is one of the founders and participants of famed contemporary musicians' collective Bang on a Can. In 2008, he was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for  "The Little Match Girl Passion" – musical piece based on the Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "Little Match Girl", and in 2010 for the performance of the same piece he received the Grammy Award in the category Best Small Ensemble Performance. Lang's works could be equally well characterized as belonging to modernism, minimalism or rock music, but the description that fits him the best is 'post-minimalist' – his music is on the path directly following the footsteps of the 20th century minimalism heavy-weights Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Philip Glass.

 

Along with the première of Lang's work, festival's audience will be offered a number of classical “golden oldies”. Sinfonietta Rīga will perform Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 with the brilliant young violinist Ray Chen and Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 3 in E-flat major with the grand-master of French horn Hervé Joulain.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Australia, the violinist Ray Chen has captured the audiences across the world like an unstoppable Pacific hurricane. He has won the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Prize (2009) and the equally notable Yehudi Menuhin Prize (2008). In 2012 the young violinist performed at the Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm. He has a special connection with Mozart, as it is evident from his third studio album, recorded together with conductor Cristoph Eschenbach and Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra. The legendary  violinist Maxim Vengerov has said of his talented colleague: “Ray has proven himself to be a very pure musician with great qualities such as a beautiful youthful tone, vitality and lightness. He has all the skills of a truly musical interpreter.”

 

For the performance of Frederic Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2, Sinfonietta Rīga will be joined by pianist Nelson Goerner. The Argentinian virtuoso's performance of Chopin's piano works, recorded at the Wigmore Hall, London, has been named the Album of the Month by the prestigious BBC Music Magazine. He has performed with world-famous orchestras and has a passion for chamber music as well. Among his collaborators are the incomparable pianist Marta Argerich, violinist Janine Jansen, cellists Steven Isserliss and Gary Hoffman.

The Storioni Festival, under the anniversary year's motto “Designing new traditions”, will take place from January 18 to January 29. The aim of the Storioni Festival is to promote chamber music as a contemporary art form. The organizers of the festival believe that chamber music is constantly evolving and, being open to influences from other artistic disciplines, is always looking beyond the boundaries of the classical music traditions.

 

On January 22, Sinfonietta Rīga and Storioni Trio will travel to Rotterdam, where they will perform at the De Doelen concert hall. The programme includes Dutch composer's Hans Koolmees work "The Chromatic City" (Rotterdam Concerto IV): for recorder, pan flute and chamber orchestra, David Lang's "Shade", premièred in Eindhoven, and the 2012 piece "Tempera" by Latvian composer Ruta Paidere, who currently resides in Hamburg.

 

The concerts have been organized in collaboration with the Dutch concert agency Fonds Podiumkunsten.

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