News
25. April 2022.
Prokofiev and Top Performance of His Turbulent Masterpiece
On Saturday, 23 April 2022, Lisinski Hall hosted two virtuosos, who greatly refreshed the spring concert season with a welcome and extraordinary program.
Portuguese violinist Carlos Damas and Viennese pianist Anika Vavić performed alongside the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Tonči Bilić, and the concert was supported by the Portuguese Embassy.
The obligatory introduction, the parade orchestral work Spanish Capriccio op. 34 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, was followed by the Violin Concerto in F major by French composer Édouard Lalo, rarely performed in Croatia, but equally present in the genre family of equivalent works of Romanticism. Dedicated to the famous violinist Pablo de Sarasate, Lalo's Concerto, gentle and virtuosic, requires a delicately able soloist, as Carlos Damas (who holds a PhD in Education and Psychology of Music!) undoubtedly is, with the help of his expensive violin by Giovanni Battista Gabrielli, the "ex-Isham", dating from 1763.
Damas’s brilliant interpretation was listened to with delight!
And then came the real tour de force, Sergei Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto in C major, Op. 26, the insanely turbulent mastery that only this genius composer could come up with. One must be able to endure the chase between the piano and the orchestra through the lush, rhythmically difficult and melodically beautiful fabric of the Neoclassical pattern always near to Prokofiev, the constant changes of mood and atmosphere achieved by the soloist and the exquisitely rehearsed Philharmonic Orchestra with its precise and inspired conductor Bilić. Apart from her excellent technique, Anika Vavić also has the rare fervour of musical intelligence, which always receives applause from both audiences and orchestras.
Source: Jagoda Martinčević / Jutarnji list
Photo: CROPIX