Programme:
César Franck, arr. Jules Delsart: Cello Sonata in A major
Sarvenaz Safari: Kalebasse auf dem Handfächer
Robert Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op. 73
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Viel Lärmen um Nichts, Suite, Op. 11

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Benjamin Britten: Lachrymae, op. 48
Ernst von Dohnányi: Serenade for String Trio in C major, Op. 10

The Ljubljana Festival held its first masterclasses for student musicians from Slovenia and abroad in 2019 and in this way broadened its activities to encompass the development of young artists. Since then, outstanding musicians and teachers from some of Europe’s most prestigious educational institutions have been returning to Ljubljana year after year. They include cellist Jens-Peter Maintz (Berlin and Madrid), viola player Hartmut Rohde (Berlin and London), violinist Latica Honda Rosenberg (Berlin), bassoonist Ole Kristian Dahl (Mannheim) and pianists Evgeny Sinaiski (Vienna), Ken Nakasako (Berlin), Naoko Sonoda (Berlin and Weimar) and Rie Shimada (Mannheim and Frankfurt). This year’s series of concerts by masterclass teachers will open with César Franck’s romantic Cello Sonata. This will be followed by Kalebasse auf dem Handfächer, a new work by the German-Iranian composer Sarvenaz Safari written especially for Rohde and Maintz, and Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke for bassoon and piano. The first half of the concert will end with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing suite, based on incidental music composed for a Viennese production of Shakespeare’s comedy. After the interval we will hear one of Benjamin Britten’s more serious chamber works, a series of variations on a theme by Renaissance composer John Dowland entitled Lachrymae. The teachers’ concert will end with a performance of Ernst von Dohnányi’s modally inflected Serenade for String Trio, which draws inspiration from the counterpoint of Johannes Brahms.