The cultural boycott against Russian music, Russian musicians who are barred from Western stages because of Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine: one gets the impression that the longer the conflict lasts, the more public interest in this debate dwindles. Anna Netrebko and the Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis, who are accused of being close to the Kremlin, have long since been well booked again. The soprano was just being applauded in Salzburg, Currentzis was kicked out of the program at the Vienna Festival, but he never stopped even after the invasion began on February 24, 2022, when he celebrated his 50th birthday in Saint Petersburg. to conduct his SWR Symphony Orchestra or in Salzburg. He is also socially acceptable again in Munich; on November 1st he will play in the Isarphilharmonie with his “Utopia” orchestra. But now, in April, you can already encounter Russian in Munich’s concert halls.
So the Moscow pianist returns Ivan Bessonov on April 21st (11 a.m.) Prinzregententheater back, where he debuted in 2019 and delighted audiences again last year. The two-meter man, who with his casual blonde hair looks a little like the young man Tadzio in Visconti’s “Death in Venice”, is just 21 years old and has been a star not only in his homeland since he was the first in Edinburgh in 2018 Russian pianist won the “Eurovision Young Musicians” award. In June 2022 he won the International Rachmaninoff Competition in Moscow, where state artist Valery Gergiev conducted. Almost three months after the Putin loyalist, who now directs St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky and Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, lost his position as head of the Munich Philharmonic in Munich. Ivan Bessonov is obviously one of those artists who, like Currentzis, can oscillate between worlds. At the concert in the Prinze with him Munich Chamber Orchestra This time he plays Mozart and Tchaikovsky under the direction of Yuki Kasai. If you should miss it: It will return on January 11, 2025.
For conductor Joana Mallwitz, Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” has the character of a requiem. The composer died a few days after the premiere of his work in 1893.
(Photo: Daniel Karmann/dpa)
Tchaikovsky – his “Pathétique” – is also available in the two academy concerts with a star conductor Joana Mallwitz at the National Theater on April 22nd and 23rd. If you don’t have tickets yet, you’ll have to hurry up. A special discovery, perhaps, can be made two days earlier, on April 20th, at the University of Music (7 p.m., Arcisstraße 12) at a concert in the series “neo classic” make. Cello professor Wen-Sinn Yang There, together with the university symphony orchestra under the direction of Marcus Bosch, she plays the only symphony by the Russian composer Leokadiya Kashperova and places the work in dialogue with Igor Stravinsky’s “Firebird”. The interesting thing: Kashperova was Stravinsky’s piano teacher at the end of the 19th century. And despite all their differences, it is said that the two have one thing in common in their piano works: they make it notoriously difficult for the left hand.