In these times, there is something life-affirming and defiant about an invitation to dance. “Keep On Dancing” is the motto at the start of the Audi Summer Concerts 2022 on Thursday, June 30, in Ingolstadt’s Klenzepark. It is a work of great symbolic power, which violinist and festival director Lisa Batiashvili puts at the beginning: together with the Munich Philharmonic and Santtu-Matias Rouvali, she interprets Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77, on which the Russian composer has already worked began to write in mid-1947, but it could not be premiered until two years after Stalin’s death in 1955. For Georgian-born Batiashvili, this work is “a symbol of freedom at a time when it was difficult to function within this incredibly brutal system”.
Violinist Lisa Batiashvili has been artistic director of the Audi summer concerts since 2019.
(Photo: Audi AG)
Immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lisa Batiashvili took a clear stance against Putin’s war of aggression. Showing attitude and giving hope, this point of view is also expressed in the motto of this year’s summer concerts: “Visions of the future”. The current political situation was reacted to with short-term program changes: Batiashvili will play a solidarity concert (July 6) together with the International Symphony Orchestra Lviv.
The future could be his: The Georgian Tsotne Zedginidze, born in 2009, is a scholarship holder of the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation and is regarded as a talent of the century on the piano and as a composer. On July 1st, together with the Georgian Chamber Orchestra Ingolstadt, he will give the world premiere of a piano concerto that he composed under the impressions of the Ukraine war. In times of dwindling (financial) resources, the world of classical music also needs future visions in order to appeal to an audience. Batiashvili is therefore also concerned with crossing borders. In addition to classical stars such as mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, who is accompanied on the piano by her husband Simon Rattle (July 7), she presents the Goldmund Quartet (9 June) or the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra also jazz and fusion sound between electronic and classical music.
Audi summer concerts, 30.6. until 10.7., Ingolstadt, www.audi.deall proceeds from ticket sales go to aid projects in Ukraine