The Festival Julian Rachlin & Pals, Now In Its Eleventh Year, Has Presented Chamber Music Concerts From Late August And Will Continue Thru Early September.
The town of Dubrovnik, located at the southernmost tip of Croatia on the Adriatic coast, is aglow with the music of summer festivals. From July 10 to Aug. 25, the town hosted five weeks of music, theater and dance at its 62nd annual Dubrovnik Summer Holiday.
The Festival Julian Rachlin & Friends, now in its eleventh year, has presented chamber music concerts from late Aug and will continue through early September. It was founded by violinist Julian Rachlin, who chose the city as an ideal spot to supply creative and colourful projects with musicians of world repute.
Damaged in a war in the early 1990s, the Old Town section of Dubrovnik has been totally and faithfully reconstructed to its fairytale persona of prior centuries. Many Renaissance-era buildings are utilized as locations for musical performances. For the Festival Rachlin & Mates, the fifteenth century Rector’s Palace is the key venue for this year’s thirteen concerts, beginning with Zubin Mehta conducting the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to performing standard classical collection, Rachlin commissions new works from composers. In the 1st 3 days of September, 3 new works by French-Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon were highlighted, every one painting an entirely different and unique view of the cosmos.
Eloquent chamber music
On Sept. 1 the programme included two examples of Russian romantic repertoire : Anton Arensky’s Quartet No. Two for violin, viola and two cellos ; Alexander Glazounov’s “Elegy” for viola and piano ; and Stravinsky’s 20th-century “Divertimento” for violin and piano. The centerpiece of the programme, though, was the world premiere of Dubugnon’s “Violiana,” written for Rachlin and pianist Itamar Golan. The piece saw Rachlin switching back and forth from violin to viola with split-second timing for 3 movements of virtuoso playing. Exhibiting many moods and colors, most particularly the lovely muted impressionism of the slower second movement, this piece is memorable for its electrified energy level through and was strengthened by the kinetic performance by Rachlin and Golan. Dubugnon also dug satisfyingly deep into the velvety, burnished color of the viola, exploring its capacity for drama more than most do.
Sept. 2′s program was devoted to the subjects of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. One of Japan’s respected violin teachers, Tsugio Tokunaga, was a featured musician, as was his 18-year-old prizewinning student, Fumiaki Miura. Anchored to the evening’s theme was another commission from Dubugnon : “Variations on a Japanese Folk Tune” for two violins and piano. In it, the composer took “Red Dragonflies” by Aka Tombo and created a shimmering, attractive seven-part theme with differences. It was performed by Tokunaga and Rachlin, with Sophie Rachlin ( Julian’s mother ) on the piano. While the prior night’s composition used a less tonal and more rhythmically centered language, this evening’s work was intensely tonal and unabashedly emotional, made so particularly because it was predated by an original poem by Golan that made use of the illusory symbol of a young girl’s doll to memorialise the Fukushima catastrophe.
Sept. 3 was titled “Concert in White,” to which everybody was requested to wear white clothing ; effectively, the crowd changed into a fun fashion show without the runway. The program consisted mainly of 3 highly emotional compositions whose characters seemed to reflect the steamy hot weather. Dubugnon’s “Three Pieces for Violin and Piano” ( wonderfully played by Boris Brovstyn and Golan ) is destined to become a hot item within violin collection. It’s an incredibly tender duet, as if the piano and violin were in a lovers ‘ embrace. The three sections wandered from hallucinatory dreams to a moonlit reverie, then a wonderful homage to the music of Maurice Ravel. A wispy glissando to the last, unearthly note was the final, evanescent breath of this wondrous masterwork.
The subsequent two pieces, Brahms ‘ Piano Quartet in C minor and Arnold Schoenberg’s string sextet “Transfigured Night” continued to increase the emotional temperature of the evening. The latter’s deep thought portrait of a spirit in the procedure of metamorphosis from deathly gloom to a radiant, heavenly resolution took everyone’s breath away. Transfigured Night” was Schoenberg’s first major work, drafted in 1899, and predates the employment of the 12-tone language that outlined his later bequest. Its thorny, complicated score was provoked by a poem of the same name and is one of the height compositions for string chamber musicians. The performance by violinists Brovstyn and Sean Avram Carpenter, violists Rachlin and David Aaron Carpenter and cellists Torleif Theden and Boris Andrianov was a rapturous experience of surging intensity.
Another amazing aspect to this concert was the last-minute substitution of one or two violinists ( who learned their difficult parts in 48 hours ) needed to replace the indisposed Janine Jansen. The heroes were Boris Brovstyn, Sean Avram Wood worker and the 18-year-old Miura. When I asked the teen how he felt playing with such luminaries as Rachlin, Maisky and Golan, he announced, “When I sat across from the amazing Maisky playing his massive solos, I felt just like a little mouse!” Thanks to Rachlin’s organizational generosity, emerging artists like Miura have the advantage and valuable experience of sharing the stage with their coachs. Someday, Miura will be the older lion across from a young mouse.
From baroque to balalaika
The shocking Baroque church of St. Ignatius was the setting for a Sun. morning concert of works by Vivaldi and Bach. Later that day, Russian balalaika expert Alexey Arkhipovsky entertained with his mixture of styles from people to funk, fugue to flamenco, making the silver coloured sound of only 3 strings look like a symphony. He is the modern-day Paganini of the balalaika, but with a Pat Metheny approach. The festival will continue with equal amounts of chamber music and lighter-weight fare through to Sept. Eight as reported tagza.com.
Early Church Fathers – The Religious-Reich Lie
|
|
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection (Cistercian Studies) $9.44 Translated, with an introduction by Sister Benedicta Ward SLG; Foreword by Metropolitan Anthony [Bloom] of Sourzah `Give me a word, Father’, visitors to early desert monks asked. The responses of these pioneer ascetics were remembered and in the fourth century written down in Coptic, Syriac, Greek, and later Latin. Their Sayings were collected, in this case in the alphabetical order of the monks a… |
|
|
The Fathers of the Church, Expanded Edition $8.33 Unlock the knowledge of our Church Fathers. They fought the first culture wars. They died for our faith. Honor their memory as we walk in their footsteps. Long established as an indispensable reference tool for clergy, seminarians, RCIA candidates, and lay Catholics, The Fathers of the Church has become the standard introduction to the great teachers of early Christianity. Newly revised to include… |
|
|
Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers (Penguin Classics) $4.57 The writings in this volume cast light upon the emerging traditions and organization of the infant church during an otherwiselittle-known period of its development. A selection of letters andsmall-scale theological treatises from a group known as the ApostolicFathers, several of whom were probably disciples of the Apostles,provide a first-hand account of the early Church and outline a form ofearly… |
