This preview has been provided by the Eastern Music Festival.
Guest artists George Vatchnadze and Tasmin Little join EMF Faculty in performances of chamber music. Repertoire to include Britten’s Phantasy Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Viola and Cello, op.2 and Brahms’ String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, op.18.
Geroge Vatchnadze has appeared with orchestras and in recital throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Finland, Italy, Israel, Russia, Japan, Taiwan, as well as Central and South America. Among others, he has performed at the Hollywood Bowl Festival, Ravinia Festival, Stresa Festival, and Rotterdam Philharmonic’s Philips Gergiev Festival. He has also been a frequent guest of St. Petersburg’s “White Nights” and “Mikkeli” (Finland) festivals, directed by Valery Gergiev. Mr. Vatchnadze’s recent engagements have included several performances with Kirov Orchestra under the direction of Gianandrea Noseda, at the St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater and London’s Covent Garden, as well as multiple performances at the Gilmore International Festival. Currently he is on the faculty at DePaul University where he serves as Chair of the Piano Department.
In 2008, Tasmin Little was the subject of a television documentary which followed her ground-breaking project “The Naked Violin”. This ambitious project, which boldly embraced the internet and offered up a free downloadable recital of works for solo violin, achieved phenomenal success and was widely hailed as ‘revolutionary’ and ‘inspiring’. She received a Classic FM Gramophone Award for Audience Innovation for this project at Dorchester, London, on September 25, 2008.
In a career that has taken her to every continent of the world she has play/directed orchestras such as Royal Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, London Mozart Players, English Chamber Orchestra, Norwegian Chamber, European Union Chamber Orchestra and Britten Sinfonia. Performances in 2011-12 take her back to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam for a performance of Dritte Musik by Rihm, and she will give three concerto performances in London at the South Bank, Cadogan Hall and the Barbican. She returns to China, Singapore, Dublin and Philadelphia; makes her debut in Dubai in December and in March 2012 she will give the World Premiere of the completed version of Roxanna Panufnik?s World Seasons with the London Mozart Players.
In 2011, Tasmin made her seventeenth appearance at the BBC Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall in a performance of Elgar?s Violin Concerto with Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Her 2003 tour with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle, during which she performed the concerto at the Proms, Berlin Philharmonie, the Salzburg Festival, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, received unanimous critical acclaim. In 2007 she returned to the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.
In 2006, Tasmin was Artistic Director of her hugely successful ‘Delius Inspired’ Festival, which was broadcast for an entire week on BBC Radio 3 in July. Events ranging from orchestral concerts and chamber music to films and exhibitions reached 800 school children in an ambitious program designed to widen interest in classical music for young people.
Her discography reflects a repertoire ranging from Bruch and Brahms to Karlowicz and Arvo Pärt. Her recording of all the four Delius Violin Sonatas with Piers Lane won the prized Diapason d’Or. In March 2009 she released the disc ‘Partners in Time’, her follow-up to The Naked Violin, and in Autumn 2010 her long-awaited recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto was released on the Chandos label to unanimous critical acclaim. The recording celebrated the 100th anniversary of the concerto?s premiere and included a re-creation of a special version of the accompanied cadenza. Tasmin won the much-coveted “Critic’s Choice” award for the Elgar disc at the May 2011 Classic BRIT Awards Ceremony.
Tasmin is an Ambassador for The Prince?s Foundation for Children and the Arts, is a Fellow of the Guildhall of Music and Drama, is President of ESTA (European String Teachers Association), an Ambassador for Youth Music, and has received Honorary Degrees from the Universities of Bradford, Leicester, Hertfordshire and City of London. She plays a 1757 Guadagnini violin and has, on kind loan from the Royal Academy of Music, the ‘Regent’ Stradivarius of 1708.
The Eastern Music Festival’s mission is to promote musical enrichment, excellence, professional collaboration, innovation, and diversity through a nationally-recognized teaching program, music festival, concerts, and other programs which will enhance the quality of life, health, and vitality of our region. The Eastern Music Festival and School, founded in 1961 in Greensboro, North Carolina by Sheldon Morgenstern, is an internationally-renowned classical music festival and institute for young musicians that runs for five weeks each summer. The institute accepts students ages 14 through 22 from around the country and the world. The EMF faculty consists of world-class performing artists selected from top orchestras and music schools nationally and internationally. Led by music director Gerard Schwarz, the Eastern Music Festival and School celebrates its 51st season in 2012.
