Janáček May promises rare performance of Khachaturian piece
This year’s Janáček May festival, which runs from 20 May to 11 June, will open with a concert by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. Conducted by Armenian artist Vahan Mardirossian, it will perform Janáček’s Sinfonietta, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 3 with Vogt Lars of Germany and – as the headline suggests – the Symphony no. 3 in C major (Symphony-Poem) by Aram Khachaturian at the Gong multifunctional auditorium.
The piece will receive its Czech premiere in a unique space at Dolní Vítkovice. The reason it is performed so sporadically around the world is plain: Its composer wrote it for 15 trumpets! The organ also plays a significant role. The one-movement piece was created in 1947 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Despite Khachaturian’s efforts to express in it the joy of the people and his patriotic pride, the symphony did not find favour with the cultural authorities of the Stalinist regime, most likely due to its marked rawness, sharp, piercing noises, atypical construction and instrumentation. The infamous Zhdanov Doctrine of 1948 condemned it as formalistic. In addition, let’s recall the musicians at its premiere in Leningrad – they came from the famous local philharmonic orchestra with Yevgeny Mravinsky.
The conductor on the opening night of the 2013 Janáček May will be Vahan Mardirossian. Though born in Yerevan, since 1993 he has lived in France, where he studied at the Paris Conservatoire. Alongside his career as a conductor, he is a successful pianist. At the age of only 15, he was named principal conductor and musical director of the Youth Chamber Orchestra at Armenia’s Cultural Centre for Youth. He is the founder of the Maestria chamber orchestra and is regularly invited to conduct the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, the Freiburg Symphonic Orchestra and the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra. Since September 2010, he has been principal conductor of France’s Caen Symphony Orchestra.
Lars Vogt has very quickly become one of the leading pianists of his generation. He was born in Düren, Germany and first attracted attention in 1990, when he received second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition. Since then he has performed in concerts and recitals around Europe, Asia and Australia and in North and South America. He works with leading world orchestras and has a special relationship with the Berlin Philharmonic, where he was even named its first ever “pianist in residence” in the 2003–2004 season. His artistic versatility is attested to by a repertoire that takes in compositions by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms, the romanticism of Grieg, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and Lutoslawski’s brilliant concerto. A fiery chamber player, Vogt is increasingly working with orchestras, which he leads either as conductor or directly from the keyboard of his instrument. To date he has released 15 recordings on EMI.
