There is music that we return to, or, rather, music that seems to follow us through time. The pieces of the late 19th – early 20th centuries composed by Felix Blumenfeld, Sergei Bortkiewicz, Anatoly Lyadov and Sergei Rachmaninoff will be performed by pianist Damir Durmanovic. For one evening, the concert will submerge the audience in the musical ponderings of the past.
Doors open at 7pm. Concert begins at 7:30pm
The first pieces in the concert are by the Russian Romantic composer Anatoly Lyadov (1855-1914), known for his piano miniatures, a number of orchestral works and folksong arrangements. In 1870 he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatoire to study composition with Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. On graduating, Lyadov became a professor, teaching composition for more than three decades, his students including Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky and other notable figures.
Next in the programme, the Preludes from 1931 by one of Lyadov’s students, Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952) – a Ukrainian Romantic composer and pianist of Polish ancestry, born in Kharkov, then a part of the Russian Empire. After studying in St. Petersburg and Leipzig, from 1904 he spent ten years in Berlin. When the First World War began, he was deported back to Russia. Soon after, the Bolsheviks occupied his family estate, and later took Kharkov. In 1920 Bortkiewicz and his wife fled the country. Spending time in Istanbul and in Belgrade, they finally settled in Vienna. The music of Bortkiewicz is influenced by Chopin and Liszt, as well as Tchaikovsky and early Scriabin. In an interview from 1948 he said, “Today, one is probably inclined to dismiss all melodicists as epigones. Certainly, very often wrongly. As far as I am concerned, romanticism is not the bloodless intellectual commitment to a program, but the expression of my most profound mind and soul.“
The concert will continue with the 1890s pieces by Felix Blumenfeld (1863-1931). He was born into a family of Polish and Austrian Jewish origin, in Yelysavethrad (present-day Kropyvnytskyi city in Ukraine), in Kherson Governorate of then the Russian Empire. Some time after Lyadov, he was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Alongside his composition practice, Blumenfeld was a conductor and a prominent pianist. From 1918 to 1922, he was the director of the Lysenko Music and Drama School in Kyiv, before he moved to Moscow, where, until the end of his life, he taught in the Conservatoire, having an influential role as a piano teacher.
The complete set of Preludes Op. 23 by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) will close the concert. Composer, pianist and conductor, Rachmaninoff was born into Russian aristocracy in the Novgorod Governorate. He studied in the Moscow Conservatoire with A. Siloti (piano), A. Arensky (composition) and S. Taneyev (counterpoint). Being a famous pianist, throughout his life Rachmaninoff was often travelling abroad on tours. Soon after the 1917 Revolution in Russia, his estate was confiscated by the communists. By chance, granted a tour to Scandinavia, he and his family left Russia, and never returned. For the rest of his life he was living between the United States and Switzerland, focusing most of his professional activity on piano performance.
PROGRAMME
Anatoly Lyadov
Three Piano Pieces Op. 57 (1900-05):
I. Prelude
II. Valse
III. Mazurka
Sergei Bortkiewicz
Preludes Op. 40 (1931):
No. 3 Con moto
No. 4 Sostenuto
No. 6 Andantino dolente
No. 7 Appassionato
Felix Blumenfeld
Preludes Op.17 (1892):
No.10 in c-sharp minor
No.15 in D-flat major
Etude de concert Op. 24 (1897)
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Preludes Op. 23 (1901-03), the complete set.
ABOUT THE PIANIST
Damir Durmanovic is an internationally sought-after performer, who has performed at venues and festivals across Europe and the UK. He has won prizes in numerous international competitions, including the Beethoven Intercollegiate Junior Competition in London, Adilia Alieva International Piano Competition in Geneva and Isidor Bajic International Piano Competition in Novi Sad. Durmanovic is a scholar at the International Academy of Music in Liechtenstein and regularly participates in the courses organised by the academy.
Durmanovic began his studies at age of eight in his home country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Maja Azabagic before continuing his studies at the Yehudi Menuhin School where he studied with professor Marcel Baudet. He is a graduate from the Royal College of Music where he studied with Dmitri Alexeev. He is supported by the Keyboard Charitable Trust, as well as the Talent Unlimited Scheme.