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VWM at the summer festivals
 VWM
is proud to be associated with many of today’s most significant
and exciting festivals. This summer highlights VWM’s commitment
to fresh ideas, and sees our artists performing at a diverse range
of events; from Savonlinna Opera Festival’s medieval castle
to the Beijing Olympics, and from the floating stage of Bregenz
festival to the first ever production of Hänsel und Gretel
at Glyndebourne. Please read on to find out more…
 Olli
Mustonen joins Jukka-Pekka
Saraste and the Finnish
Chamber Orchestra on 3 August to perform Mozart’s Piano
Concerto No 24 in C Minor at Tammisaari
Festival. Olli together with the Helsinki Philharmonic
Orchestra under John Storgårds then perform
Grieg’s Piano Concerto in Potsdam before taking the piece on tour
with them to the Beijing Olympics.
 This year’s International Music Festival: Chopin and his Europe
in Warsaw is host to no less than four VWM artists. On 16 August,
Nikolai
Demidenko performs concertos by Mozart and Scriabin
and as part of the same concert Katia
Skanavi performs Chopin’s Variations on Mozart's
Don Giovanni with the Sinfonia Varsovia under Jacek Kaspszyk. After Nikolai’s Chopin recital on 18 August, the
festival’s final concert features François-Frédéric
Guy performing Messiaen’s
Reveil des Oiseaux
and Olli
Mustonen performing Respighi’s
Concerto in modo misolidio
with the Warsaw Philharmonic
Orchestra and Antoni Wit.
 Laurent
Pelly makes his Glyndebourne debut this summer with the festival’s
first ever production of Humperdinck’s Hänsel
und Gretel. With Laurent both directing and designing costume
for this new production; the opera features Jennifer Holloway and
Adriana Kučherová in the title roles
and the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Kazushi Ono. The premiere
takes place on 20 July.
 On
22 July Juho
Pohjonen gives a recital at Savonlinna
Opera Festival’s medieval castle, perched on a rocky
island surrounded by Lake Saimaa in South East Finland. Congratulations are in order
for Juho who has recently been selected for the CMS Two
programme as part of the prestigious Chamber
Music Society at Lincoln Center.
 Nikolai
Demidenko is in San Francisco for the Midsummer Mozart Festival. After performances
of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 24 in C minor with the festival orchestra
under George Cleve, Nikolai gives a recital of Mozart and Chopin
in Vancouver,
and then returns for a final recital in San Francisco on 31 July.
Looking further ahead, Nikolai travels to Poland to give the opening
recital at the Duziniki Chopin Festival before heading to the International Music Festival: Chopin and his Europe
in Warsaw.
Viviane
Hagner spends July at the Malboro
Festival in Vermont, before returning to Germany
to perform Bruch’s Violin Concerto No
1 with the Dresdner Philharmonie and Rafael
Frühbeck de Burgos at Wiesbaden’s
Burghofspiele
Festival on 2 August. Later on in August she joins
Daniel Müller-Schott and Friends for chamber concerts at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival.
 The
Moscow Soloists with Yuri
Bashmet and Katia
Skanavi perform at the Roberco Zomerconcerten
festival in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw on 20 August. The programme
includes Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 1 and Stravinsky’s Apollo.
 In
celebration of the centenary of Messiaen’s birth, the Edinburgh Festival features Ilan
Volkov and the BBC
Scottish Symphony Orchestra performing his final work: Eclairs
sur l’au-delà alongside Thomas
Adès’s new work Tevot
on 10 August.
 40 years after his Proms debut, Sir Roger
Norrington returns with his SWR Stuttgart Radio
Symphony Orchestra on 22 July, to conduct a programme including
Rossini’s William Tell Overture, Haydn’s Cello Concerto No
1 (with Jean-Guihen Queyras) and Elgar’s
Symphony No 1 in A flat. VWM also bring the Estonian
Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Paul Hillier to perform Rachmaninov’s
exquisite and moving choral work, Vespers, in a special late
night prom on 12 August.
Stefan
Solyom conducts the BBC Scottish
Symphony Orchestra together with soloists Richard Watkins
(Horn) and Tasmin Little (Violin) at the
BBC Proms on 4 August. The concert recognises the 150th anniversary
year of composer Dame Ethyl Smyth with a performance of her Concerto
for Violin, Horn and Orchestra.
Ilan Volkov and the BBCSSO continue to
celebrate contemporary music with two performances at the BBC Proms; the first on 18 August features
the UK premiere of Elliot Carter’s Soundings, whilst the
following night the orchestra deliver the
world premiere of Jonathon Harvey’s Speakings
- a co-commission between the BBC, IRCAM and Radio France.
 This
year’s Baltic
Sea Festival at Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen
hosts Olari
Elts and the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra
together with Mischa Maisky
to perform Dvořák’s Cello Concerto
on 28 August. Other works in the programme comprise Tchaikovsky’s
Symphony No 4 and Vasks’s Cantabile per archi.
 Kent
Nagano continues the Münchner
Opernfestspiele with a new production of
Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos
by Robert Carsen. Adrianne Pieczonka sings the title role with Diana Damrau as Zerbinetta and Burkhard Fritz as Bacchus; the opera opens on 24 July.
At Festival Bel Canto
in August, Kent and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal are joined
by Micaela Carosi,
Kate Aldrich, John Relya, Layla
Claire and Antonio Figueroa to perform a work widely regarded as
the very incarnation of bel
canto: Bellini’s Norma. Other festival highlights include
soprano June
Anderson together with 4 young stars from Rome’s Accademia
di Santa Cecilia performing a
selection of Rossini and Donizetti’s most beautiful arias. In September
Nagano will conduct repeat performances of Bellini’s Norma
as part of Festival
Bel Canto’s sister event in Rome.
 This
year’s Bregenz
Festival features Frank
Strobel conducting Prokofiev’s score for a live screening of
Eisenstein’s 1938 silent film Alexander Nevsky.
Based on events from the 13th century, the film depicts how after
the brutal German invasion, Russian national hero Alexander Nevsky
takes command of the Russian army and lures the Germans onto a frozen
lake where a famous Russian victory ensues. The event takes place
on the festival’s floating stage on 15 August.
 Marie-Elisabeth
Hecker performs 2 concerts at Lichfield
Festival on 11 and 12 July; firstly, a chamber concert featuring Schubert’s String
Quintet in C Major with the Badke String
Quartet, then a performance of Dvořák’s
Cello Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra and
Alexander Shelley.
 Stephen
Kovacevich is in the studio recording Beethoven’s
Diabelli Variations for
the label Onyx.
Looking further ahead, he is joined by Martha Argerich at Verbier
Festival to perform Beethoven’s Andante and 5 Variations
for four hands in G major, before heading to Montreal to perform
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 24 with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and Kent
Nagano.
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