‘As the saying goes, 'Klassiek Centraal sends its sons out,' and they cross the borders of our geographically small country, yet culturally belonging with the greats. There's so much happening domestically that we can't cover, so why follow concerts abroad?
This stems from press invitations from organizations that discovered our website and absolutely want us to cover one of their events. When someone is able to make it – which doesn't always work out – we're happy to accept such requests. This is how I ended up at the world congress of carillonneurs in Mafra, Portugal, and immediately afterward in the Swiss historic border town on the Rhine, Rheinfelden.
Cloister Olsberg during the Solsberg Festival
You won't find Solsberg on the map, Olsberg with some luck you might. It's actually an old cloister, situated high enough to never flood when the Rhine acts up. In the surrounding area lives and works the renowned cellist Sol Gabetta. She founded a chamber music festival there, and it was named with a blend of Sol and Olsberg into Solsberg. Swiss Rheinfelden is small and exceptionally charming with much history. The bridge over the Rhine is not only a border crossing between two countries, it's also the border of the navigable river. German Rheinfelden is a younger city from the 19th/20th century that grew larger than its neighbor across the way thanks to industry, but lacks so many picturesque corners and hardly boasts historic buildings. The border is cultural, and yes, partly linguistic too. Swiss German and Swabian (the German from the Black Forest to western Bavaria, shall we say for simplicity) differ in sound formation, vocabulary, expressions, and Swabian itself is quite noticeably different from the standard High German I learned. There concludes our linguistic and tourist introduction.
Solsberg Festival is a real winner
We'd strongly recommend, should the opportunity arise, to visit and explore Swiss Rheinfelden and the surrounding area and combine it with attending all or part of the Solsberg Festival. It's more than worthwhile in every respect. Beautiful music performed at its best in an environment inspired and calmed by history and nature, where you can also treat your inner self well – isn't that ideal?
Vsevolod Zavidov: a phenomenon
On the first evening of my stay, the previously unknown 20-year-old Russian pianist Vsevolod Zavidov performed a recital in the cloister church at Olsberg. Zavidov is an unusual, striking figure with the bearing of a seasoned, somewhat older pianist. His fingers are lightning-fast and very strong; he makes hardly any mistakes, if any, all notes stand apart from each other, you shouldn't expect legato playing. It's more sensational and remarkable than purely musical to hear him at work.
He performed an arrangement of Bach's Partita No. 3 for violin BWV 1006 by Rachmaninov (1873-1943). Tempestuous, overwhelming, astounding, and then again extremely quiet, almost inaudible, from my perspective much too fast shifting to heavily slowed. I found his Schubert (1797-1828) unrecognizable, the four Impromptus Op. 90 (D 899). During this performance, I felt lost, unsure what to think and how to describe it. Theatrical isn't the right word, though it was that too. It wasn't Romantic and yet... Masterfully, remarkably skillfully sounded the work I never liked before and now absolutely do: Stravinsky's (1882-1970) Trois Mouvements de Pétrouchka. The way Zavidov performed it, you won't hear it a second time. This deserved to be recorded. Thus the recital concluded with a pianist who reminds me of Volondat...
Solsberg Academy's first closing concert
The festival has more to offer than just concerts centered on the cello. Younger musicians, all teenagers brimming with talent, had the opportunity to attend a masterclass with Ivan Monighetti. Of the six who performed, we'll certainly remember at least three who played at a very high level. Two others will certainly manage a healthy career and one raises question marks. Let's briefly review these six young people between 12 and 19.
The Spanish 19-year-old cellist Luis Aracama is the young man with question marks. He plays very hard, aggressively, with lots of forte and fortissimo, very technically but unmusically. Very distracting is his constant heavy sniffing and exhaling throughout his entire performance. The playing of 12-year-old Chinese Keruixi Ma was quite different. Fragile and small as she may be, she plays enchantingly romantically, full of love for the music, the instrument, and the audience. Remarkable was that she performed Fantaisie sur deux Airs Russes Op. 13 by Flemish composer Adrien-François Servais (1807+-1866). Much feeling, great warmth and pure bows in a broad legato style, with full power, singing and phrasing. Bravo!
Emilie Richter (Switzerland) performed the cello sonata by Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) in an overly biting manner with sometimes scratching bow entries. It's an especially difficult work, full of tricks just to mean something. Hard to judge someone on this work. Where you can judge someone is on Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), for example.
The 14-year-old Rey Gergov from Vienna performed Brahms' Sonata No. 2 for cello and piano. The accompanist was pianist Alessandro Tardino, who conducted himself humbly and played in service with the young cellists. The Brahms sonata demands energy and Gergov had it in abundance, playing with strong nuance and total control. This was confirmed in his interpretation of the first movement of Dmitri Shostakovich's (1906-1975) Cello Concerto No. 1. I'm not exaggerating to say he played at the level we heard one and a half months earlier in the KEW Cello final. If this boy doesn't have a future as a cellist, who does?
Yiqi Chen from China played exactly the same works as Luis Aracama. Never before have I heard such a striking difference in musicality, interpretation, insight into the score and composer. This 19-year-old cellist is ready for the big stages and will always know how to captivate his audience with the most beautiful cello sounds. The Bach – excuse me, but the cello suites are really glorified finger exercises – he elevated to a rarely performed excellent beauty. The second work by Alfredo Carlo Piatti (1822-1901) sounded now instead of like a composition more like a fragile, sensitive work, rich in song and nuance as it only exists in Romanticism. Even György Ligeti's (1923-2006) cello sonata became a dialogue full of phrasing, and Chen knew how to elevate the work's value to a higher level.
Luxembourger Matis Griso likewise turned 19 with generally well-executed variations on a Rococo theme by Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). You could have enjoyed it more, had this young cellist too been made clearly aware that sniffling breathing is distracting and really doesn't belong.
Sol Gabetta
Sol lets loose!
The closing evening offered a trio of violin, cello, and piano with works by Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), Shostakovich, and Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996). By the last composer it was a work full of painful violence, a sense of loneliness and absolute uncertainty. Not a pleasant closing piece, it can make listeners depressed. The performance by Sol Gabetta on cello, Bomsori Kim on violin, and the excellent pianist Yulianna Avdeeva was at a very high level, though that couldn't dampen the darkness of this piece. Before that was listening to a violin sonata by Szymanowski, a rather intellectual work where passion wasn't highlighted by the violinist. The pianist did just that and how inviting she was, the violinist didn't follow. Then the cello and piano sonata by Shostakovich was much better on all fronts, say excellent. Gabetta and Avdeeva play very smoothly together, the balance couldn't be better. Intimate warmth resonates in a broad legato riveting style, rich in emotions, very sensitive, mystery fills the church space and also secretiveness. Praying, that's the most fitting word for this work.
The concert and immediately the festival was closed with as an encore the first movement from a piano trio by Mendelssohn. Delightful music, infinitely beautiful.
