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He has reinvented his instrument, the viola. Expressing its inner voice, he's also allowed its outer voice to shine, premiering countless concerti for the viola and inspiring composers all around the world. He has also created what is probably the best string orchestra in the world, the Moscow Soloists. To have them play their own Russian repertoire for the last concert in Pietrasanta is a crowning moment!

July 30th 2012 - Pietrasanta, Chiostro 21.30

YURI BASHMET
Yuri Bashmet spent his childhood in Lviv in Ukraine before studying at the Moscow Conservatoire with Vadim Borisovsky (of the Beethoven Quartet) and Feodor Druzhinin. In 1976, he won the International Viola Competition in Munich. Since then he has appeared with the world’s great orchestras, including Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Boston, Chicago and Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra. He has inspired many composers to write for him, and has enjoyed strong relationships with Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina. Concertos composed for him include works by Poul Ruders, Alexander Tchaikovsky and Alexander Raskatov. He has also given the world premieres of Styx by Giya Kancheli, The Myrrh Bearer by John Tavener and On Opened Ground by Mark-Anthony Turnage – all of which were written for him. In December 2002 Bashmet became Principal Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of New Russia. Other orchestras with which he appears as conductor / soloist include the Dresdner Philharmoniker, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, Tokyo Philharmonic, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Camerata Salzburg, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Brussels Philharmonic. He is the founder of Moscow Soloists, an ensemble he has performed with and directed since 1992. In chamber music his closest collaborators have included Sviatoslav Richter, Gidon Kremer, Mstislav Rostropovich, Maxim Vengerov, Natalia Gutman, Viktoria Mullova and the Borodin Quartet. He formed a highly successful trio with mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Other recent chamber music projects include Beethoven trios with Anne Sophie Mutter and Lyn Harrell. He is a frequent visitor to summer festivals such as Elbe, Verbier and Martha Argerich’s festival in Japan.

Among his many CDs is a recording for Deutsche Grammophon of the Gubaidulina Concerto and Kancheli Styx, winner of a Diapason d’Or award and a Grammy nomination. Other notable DG discs are Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Anne-Sophie Mutter, Brahms’s Piano Quartet N° 1 with Argerich, Kremer and Maisky, and the recently released Bartók Concerto with Berliner Philharmoniker and Boulez. For Onyx he and Moscow Soloists have embarked on a critically-acclaimed series of recordings: chamber symphonies by Shostakovich, Sviridoc and Vainberg; music by Stravinsky and Prokofiev (which received a Grammy award); and a disc of music by composers from the Far East, as well as a recital disc of Encores with pianist Mikhail Muntian.

Here are the exclusive photos of the Nestor Marconi (bandoneon) concert in "Pietrasanta in concerto". With Karin Lechner (piano) and Enrico Fagone (contrabbasso), i cameristi del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Michael Guttman (violin and conductor).
July 28, 2012 (Foto by Bernard Rosenberg).

Here are of the musical program
of the Salvatore Accardo concert and Sophie Pacini, July 29th 2012.

Here are of the musical program
of the Nestor Marconi concert, July 28th 2012.

We've tried to host him since the beginning, but we had to deserve him! Finally, Salvatore Accardo is coming to town, and we are extremely honored. He will also present our festival award for a young Italian talent to pianist Sophie Pacini, the 2012 recipient. To earn it, she will play one of Mozart’s most famous concerti, the "Jeunehomme". From Accardo to Pacini, the violin tradition is alive in Italy!

STRADIVARIUS, PAGANINI, ACCARDO:
ITALIA, THE HOMELAND OF THE VIOLIN
DOMENICA/SUNDAY 29 LUGLIO/JULY 2012, PIETRASANTA, Chiostro, 21.30

SALVATORE ACCARDO violino/violin
SOPHIE PACINI piano (vincitrice del premio "Musica Viva" 2012 per un giovane talento italiano)
I CAMERISTI DEL MAGGIO MUSICALE FIORENTINO
MICHAEL GUTTMAN direzione/conductor
Musiche by MOZART, PAGANINI, PIAZZOLLA


SALVATORE ACCARDO

Salvatore Accardo is an outstanding Italian violin virtuoso, who is particularly noted for his interpretations of Paganini, J. S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, contemporary works, chamber music, and opera conducting. Accardo studied violin in the southern Italian city of Naples in the 1950s. He gave his first professional recital at the age of 13 performing Paganini's Capricci. In 1956 Accardo won the Geneva Competition and in 1958 became the first prize winner of the Paganini Competition in Genoa.

He has recorded Paganini's 24 Caprices (re-recorded in 1999) for solo violin and was the first violinist to record all six of the violin concerti by Paganini . He has an extensive discography of almost 50 recordings on Philips, DG, EMI, Sony Classical, Foné, Dynamic, and Warner-Fonit. Notably, he has recorded an album of classical and contemporary works in 1995 on Paganini's Guarneri del Gesù 1742 violin, the "Canon". Accardo founded the Accardo Quartet in 1992 and he was one of the founders of the Walter Stauffer Academy in 1986. He founded the Settimane Musicali Internazionali in Naples and the Cremona String Festival in 1971, and in 1996, he re-founded the Orchestra da Camera Italiana (O.C.I.), whose members are the best pupils of the Walter Stauffer Academy. He performed the music of Paganini for the soundtrack of the 1989 film Kinski Paganini. In the 1970s he was a member of celebrated orchestra "I Musici".

Salvatore Accardo was awarded the Premio Abbiati by the Italian critics, in recognition of the exceptional standard of his playing and interpretation. Italy's highest honour, the Cavaliere di Gran Croce, was bestowed upon Accardo by the President of Italy in 1982. In 1996 the Peking Conservatoire named him «most honourable Professor». In 1999 he was granted the order of «Commandeur dans l'ordre du mérite culturel», the highest honour of the principality of Monaco and in 2001 he received the prestigious «Una Vita per la Musica» Award.


SOPHIE PACINI

Sophie Pacini was born in Munich in 1991. She began to play the piano comparatively late, at the age of six. However, her outstanding talent was recognised quickly: she made her debut with Haydn’s piano concerto in D major in 2000. In 2002, aged 11, she became a student of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 2004 she was admitted to the Mozarteum’s institute for highly talented musicians, where she not only studied the piano but also improvisation, aural theory, harmonics, composition and conducting. Since 2007 she has been studying in Pavel Gililov’s master class. Simultaneously, she began her regular university studies in piano, which she completed in 2011. In the summer of 2010 she met Martha Argerich who invited her to take part in the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano.

She has won numeros awards including, in 2002 and 2005 1st prize with distinction at “Jugend musiziert” ; in 2006 1st prize at the Grotrian Steinweg competition, Brunswick ; in 2009 1st prize at the Great Scholaship Competition of the Austrian Academies of Music ; in 2009 The Salzburg Mozarteum’s Huebel-scholarship ; in 2011 « Prix Groupe Edmond de Rothschild » of the “Sommets Musiceaux de Gstaad”, comprising a CD recording for the label “Onyx” – Mozart’s piano concerto in E flat major KV 271 and Schumann’s piano concerto in A minor with the “Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz”and Radoslaw Szulc. In 2011, she won the “Förderpreis Deutschlandfunk”. The prize comprises a studio production as artist in residence at the Deutschlandfunk in Cologne as well as a concert engagement at the Musikfest Bremen 2012.

In these days of the Festival is talking a lot of concerts in the progress and success that is getting this sixth edition of 2012. Here's a first selection of articles published in the next few days followed by other items that will be collected and placed here on the web site to document the edition 2012 of "Pietrasanta in concerto". (Press by Valentina Pierotti)

Even the queen of Belgium in the audience of the beautiful evening, "Musical America!" of Friday, July 27, 2012 at St. Augustine cloister, part of the festival "Pietrasanta in concerto."
Here are the protagonists of the musical concert:

Stephen Salters, baritone
Eric Himy, piano
Wendy Sutter, cello
Michael Guttman, violin
Music by: Bernstein, Gershwin;
Glass, Berber; Foss, Cole Porter.

The musical genius Nestor Marconi, bandoneon virtuoso, tango composer, and "last of the greats", will perform the world premiere of the double concerto for violin and piano « Intabolatura I », by Jorge Bosso. Played by Argentinian pianist Karin Lechner and Michael Guttman, the concerto was written specially for Pietrasanta in Concerto by the gifted Italian-Argentinian composer.

Music by Piazzolla, Marconi, Bosso.
Pietrasanta in concerto, Chiostro, 21.30


NESTOR MARCONI

Nestor Marconi is one of the three most celebrated bandoneonists in the history of tango along with Astor Piazzolla and Anibal Troilo. His romantic, relentless and technically superhuman Nuevo Tango style marks the latest generation of tango artists. He appeared on several recordings with Astor Piazzolla, the leading composer of the Tango Nuevo movement of the late part of the twentieth century. As such, he came into demand in classical recording circles with primarily classical artists, such as Gidon Kremer, Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma, and Charles Dutoit, made cross-over recordings of Piazzolla's tango music, and employed side-men artists who had worked with Piazzolla on some of the original concerts and records of the works they proposed to record. He also had a prominent part on an album of music songs by the leading classic tango composer Carlos Gardel with singer Marcelo Alvarez. Throughout his life, he appeared with artists such as Frank Sinatra, Astor Piazzolla, Lalo Schifrin, Gerardo Gandini, Yo-Yo Ma, Juan Carlos Copes and Ballet Argentino in the United States, Central America, Brazil, Uruguay, Spain, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, and Japan. As Director and Conductor of the National Orchestra of Argentine Music, Marconi continues to perform as a soloist with prestigious philharmonic orchestras in Norway, Australia, France, Canada, Russia, England, Switzerland, Austria, and the United States. Marconi is also the leader of his own tango trio with Leonardo Marconi on piano and Oscar Giunto on bass. Grammy-winning composer and performer, he records his works with Milan Sur, Sony Classical and Warner Music labels.

Preview of the musical program
of the concert tonight Friday, July 27th.

MUSICAL AMERICA!
Narrated by American actor Ronald Guttman:
the XXth century of a tormented America
Pietrasanta - Chiostro, 21.30

Stephen Salters, baritone
Eric Himy, piano
Wendy Sutter, cello
Michael Guttman, violin
Music by: Bernstein, Gershwin; Glass, Berber; Foss,
Cole Porter, Simon & Garfunkel

America's identity, successes and struggles, seen through its composers, who reinvented a genuine American language in classical music. Hollywood romance, Broadway swing and New York energy find their refreshing ways into Concert music!

TICKETS
The tickets about MUSICAL AMERICA (from 25 to 40 euro; - 50% per i residenti nel Comune di Pietrasanta) to buy on line: www.laversilianafestival.it; www.ticketone.it; or in Teatro Comunale of Pietrasanta and La Versiliana (Viale Morin, 16 – Marina di Pietrasanta).