British pianist Andrew Zolinsky will perform an hour-long programme featuring works by Valentin Silvestrov (Ukraine), Tigran Mansurian (Armenia) and Laurence Crane (UK). The concert presents three living composers, outlining connections between the music formed in the Ukranian and Armenian avant-garde of the ‘70s, and the British experimentalism of the ‘80s and ‘90s – each attempting to establish new grounds in the melodic, the tonal, the lyrical and the familiar.
Photo by Max Svitlo
The concert has been organised to raise funds for people affected by the ongoing war in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis it has caused. 70% of the ticket proceeds will go to the Disaster Emergency Committee’s Ukraine Appeal to support refugees from Ukraine.
Organised by Marat Ingeldeev and Sasha Elina.
PROGRAMME
Tigran Mansurian:
Nostalghia (1976)
Valentin Silvestrov:
Three Waltzes (2002-2003)
1. Waltz of the moment
2. Waltz Fugitive
3. Waltz of the moon
Laurence Crane:
Three pieces for James Clapperton (1989)
20th Century Music (1999)
Looking for Michael Bracewell (1989)
Three Preludes (1985)
Valentin Silvestrov:
Piano Sonata No. 3 (1979)
1. Preludio (attacca)
2. Fuga (attacca)
3. Postludio
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Andrew Zolinsky is a pianist whose unique style of programming and interpretation have secured worldwide performances at many venues and festivals. These include Merkin Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music and Le Poisson Rouge in New York, the Venice Biennale, International Piano series at London’s Southbank Centre, Piano Rarities Festival in Husum, Germany, and in China, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Spain, Taiwan and Canada.
His concerto repertoire includes Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin and Barber. He has performed these composers with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Concert Orchestra and the Orchestre National de Lorraine.
Andrew has given world and regional premieres of many of David Lang’s works, including the complete set of Memory pieces. Lang’s ‘This was written by hand’ was written especially for Andrew and recorded on the Cantaloupe label.
Andrew has performed Unsuk Chin’s complete Etudes for solo piano at the Festival Musica in Strasbourg, Wigmore Hall in London and the Venice Biennale. He also gave the London premiere of her Piano Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. In 2011, he gave the UK premiere of the Double Concerto with percussionist Owen Gunnell and the London Sinfonietta conducted by Stefan Asbury at the Barbican Centre.
Andrew has premiered and performed works by, among others, Deirdre McKay, Judith Weir, Anna Meredith, Julia Wolfe, Karen Tanaka, Unsuk Chin, Betsy Jolas, Carla Bley and Linda Catlin Smith, Laurence Crane, Michael Finnissy, Michael Zev Gordon, Simon Holt, Valentin Silvestrov and Diderik Wagenaar.
As a chamber musician, he has worked with the Belcea Quartet, the Vanbrugh Quartet, Emily Beynon, Krzysztof Chorzelski, Michael Collins, Benjamin Marquise Gilmore, Andrew Haveron and Daniel Hope.
Andrew is professor of piano at the Royal College of Music, London, and at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Valentin Silvestrov is a Ukrainian composer and pianist born in Kyiv in 1937. He graduated from the Kyiv Tchaikovsky Conservatory in 1964, by which time he was already recognised as one of the leading figures of the "Kyiv avant-garde". In the early 1970s, Silvestrov's musical approach shifted towards what he termed a "metaphorical" style reminiscent of post-Romanticism, further describing it as “metamusic”. In 1970, he was nominated for the International Gaudeamus Composers’ Prize. In 1998-99, he was a visiting fellow of the DAAD in Berlin. Silvestrov’s work has been performed widely across Europe, as well as in Japan, Russia and the United States.
Tigran Mansurian is one of Armenia’s leading composers. Born in 1939 in Beirut, in 1947 he and his family returned to their homeland and settled in Yerevan. Mansurian studied composition at the Yerevan Conservatory, where he later both taught music theory (1967-86) and acted as director (1992-95). His work includes film music, orchestral, chamber and choral music – in much of which a strong spirit of the Armenian folk tradition can be heard. Mansurian was nominated for the Grammy Awards in 2004 for his Monodia album, and in 2017 for his Requiem dedicated to the Armenian genocide. His music has been performed in the largest concert halls of London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, New York, Los Angeles, and other cities.
Laurence Crane is a composer born in Oxford in 1961. He studied composition with Peter Nelson and Nigel Osborne at Nottingham University. His music is written for the concert hall, film, radio, theatre, dance and installation. Chords and intervals in their most basic state, arpeggios, drones, cadences, fragments of scales and short stepwise melodies are presented in regular and irregular repetitions or juxtapositions that are partly intuitive and partly structured according to a formal scheme. Crane has worked with many ensembles in the UK and abroad, including Apartment House, Plus-Minus Ensemble, Ixion, London Sinfonietta (UK), Ives Ensemble, Orkest de Volharding (Netherlands), Cikada Ensemble, asamisimasa (Norway), Ensemble Kore (Canada) and 175 East (New Zealand).