The 29th Macao International Music Festival, organized by the Cultural Affairs Bureau, concludes its second week with two concerts by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra (United Kingdom), entitled Symphony No. 9 "The Great" and Enigma Variations on 16 and 17 October at 8:00pm, at the Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium, respectively, and Danças Ocultas and Pedro Moutinho (Portugal), on 16 October at 8:00pm at Mount Fortress. On 12 and 13 October, the Festival presents Masks and Faces and New Seasons, by Gidon Kremer with Kremerata Baltica, at 8:00pm, at the Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium, respectively.
The BBC Philharmonic is acknowledged as one of the UK’s finest orchestras. Part of the BBC’s family of six performing groups, the orchestra performs an annual season of concerts at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, and is actively involved in local educational and community programmes. Winner of the International Pablo Casals Competition in 2004, cellist László Fenyö is rightfully considered one of the world’s elite cellists. In the concert Symphony No. 9 "The Great", the violinist and the BBC Philharmonic unde rthe baton of its Chief Conductor Juanjo Meno, combine forces in a performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, one of the most contemplative and elegiac works in the repertoire, framed by Glinka’s “Overture” to Ruslan and Ljudmila and the glorious Symphony No. 9 in C major, known as “The Great” by Franz Schubert. This concert promises an unforgettable evening of great classical music!
Russian violinist Viktoria Mullova’s extraordinary talent captured international attention when she won first prize at the 1980 Sibelius Competition in Helsinki and the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1982. Since then, she has appeared with most of the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors and is known the world over as a violinist of exceptional versatility and musical integrity. To commemorate the 150th birthday of Jean Sibelius, Viktoria Mullova and the BBC Philharmonic perform the composer’s singularly spectacular Violin Concerto, framed by Britten’s Simple Symphony and the extraordinary Enigma Variations by Sir Edward Elgar.
Portuguese quartet Danças Ocultas propose a unique, highly original approach to the accordion: a purely instrumental quartet using the diatonic accordion: to create music that evokes tradition and folk influences while being of its own time. Danças Ocultas has been collaborating with different performers, becoming a creativity nucleus with its own musical grammar, and a more universal and trans-cultural view of the musical phenomenon as well as contemporary cultural ways. Remarkable fado singer Pedro Moutinho collaborates with this extraordinary quartet. With three studio albums into his career and one Amália Award under his belt, Moutinho conquered the profound admiration of the media and the public. But Pedro is also introducing his own tangents to the genre by recording either new material or cover versions usually not connected to Fado. And yet, the final result is unmistakably Fado, unmistakably Portuguese, unmistakably Pedro Moutinho.
Gidon Kremer is considered one of the most original and compelling violinists of his generation. A winner of the Queen Elizabeth, Paganini and Tchaikovsky International Competitions, he has released an astonishing 120 CD albums ranging from the early Baroque to contemporary masterpieces. Kremer founded the Kremerata Baltica in 1997, entirely comprised of young musicians from the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Over the past 18 years, the ensemble has toured over 50 countries, 600 cities and played over 1000 concerts in Europe alone. Together they bring music to audiences in a way that respects tradition yet remains contemporary. The group pays particular attention to contemporary works by Russian and eastern European composers.
The main attraction of the concert Masks and Faces is a joint video project “Russia: Masks and Faces” based on the music of three composers and which combines the groundbreaking artistic vision of the great Russian painter, writer and philosopher Maxim Kantor with the musical mastery of Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica. The concert also features works such as world-famous Frates by Arvo Pärt, the Concertino for violin and strings by Mieczyslaw Weinberg and excerpts from The Art of Instrumentation. Witness history in the making! The programme of the second concert of the Kremerata titled New Seasons, ranges from new interpretations of Vivaldi and Piazzolla to the Asian premiere of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 2.
The tickets for the BBC Philharmonic concerts are sold out but there are still a few tickets available for the remaining above-mentioned concerts. Buy your tickets now.Tickets are on sale at all retail outlets of the Macau Ticketing Network. Ticketing Hotline: (853) 2855 5555.