InterHarmony Announces its 2018 Outstanding Guest Artist Series

InterHarmony International Music Festival’s 2018 summer season is starting soon, and that can mean only one thing: the return of IIMF’s wildly successful Outstanding Guest Artist Series in its 4^th year. The OGAS takes off on July 5, 2018 in Acqui Terme, Italy, a city of great culture with a most sensitive, warm audience and absolutely jam-packing concert halls that make every concert a most unforgettable event.

This coming summer offers students a true chance to meet and better understand what it takes to become a true virtuoso. They will have a chance to meet Queen Elizabeth Competition winners, like violinists Sergey Khachatryan and Nikolaj Znaider, a legend of world pianism, Alfred Brendel, and conductors Christian Vasquez and Nicoletta Conti, Boris Kuschnir, and the Cosmopolitan String Duo. 

After the sensational success at InterHarmony last year, Nikolaj Znaider will be returning to Sulzbach -Rosenberg. He will perform Brahms' Double Concerto with our Music Director and Founder, Misha Quint and give a violin masterclass. Nikolaj Znaider is the most celebrated performer of our time soloing regularly with such orchestras as the Staatskapelle Dresden, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Chicago Symphony.  The 2017/18 season sees Znaider continue his Mozart recording project with the London Symphony Orchestra with the second and third concertos directed from the violin. This gives students a chance to perform for and with the master. 

Regularly cited as one of the instrument's greatest practitioners, Alfred Brendel enjoys a reputation unequalled among living pianists. Despite his improbable, largely self-taught beginnings in a non-musical family, he began concertizing at 17. After a breakthrough program of Beethoven brought him international recognition, he embarked on a recording and performance career which would reinvent the Austro-Hungarian tradition for modern audiences. His discography, one of the most extensive ever recorded by a pianist, includes the complete piano works of Beethoven and all of Mozart's piano concerti. 

He has been recognized with honorary doctorates from Cambridge, Oxford and Yale, as well as the Lifetime Achievement Awards of Edison, MIDEM Classical Awards, the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis and Gramophone Magazine, the recording industry's highest accolade. Since retiring from the stage in 2008, he has concentrated on lecturing, teaching and writing, and is the author of several books on music. Mr. Brendel will hold a lecture on Schubert’s Last Sonatas, on July 20, at the Sala La Meridiana in Acqui Terme. Students will be invited to listen to the ideas, insights and advice of one of the most reflective and articulate musicians of our times.

 Achievements of violin virtuoso Sergey Khachatryan will be an inestimable paragon for students this summer. Khachatryan’s career shot off after becoming the youngest winner of the Sibelius competition and winner of the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels, going on to perform on the world’s most famous stages with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Los Angelas Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony, Berlin Philharmoniker, and Royal Concertgebouw to name a few. He will be performing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the InterHarmony Festival Orchestra and give a violin masterclass. It will be a rare opportunity to really understand making it to the very top in classical music, as students perform with and for the prodigy.

Principal Conductor of Norway’s Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, the rising star Maestro Christian Vásquez, represents a new generation of conductors, becoming one of the most in demand in recent years. Graduate of the famous Sistema in his native Venezuela, he is busy with engagements leading world orchestras like: Vienna Radio Symphony, Camerata Salzburg, State Symphony of Russia, Tokyo Philharmonic, Berlin Konzerthausorchester, Prague Radio Symphony, and Singapore Symphony. In North America, he has conducted the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa) and Los Angeles Philharmonic. It is an opportunity for students to experience the working environment of professional musicians in leading orchestras.

The entrance of Italian conductor Nicoletta Conti onto the InterHarmony stage will bring a new dimension the orchestra program in Sulzbach-Rosenberg. After impressive wins of major conducting competitions, her career set off with major orchestras in Japan, UK, Italy and USA. The first Italian musician to be awarded with the Minerva Prize for the Arts and pupil of Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa and Kurt Masur, Maestro Conti will take on a demanding program of the Brahms Double Concerto with soloists Nikolaj Znaider and Misha Quint. Ms. Conti's tremendous experience conducting not only major orchestras, but also working with young musicians will bring a rare and an invaluable touch to InterHarmony orchestra program in Germany.

The appearance of Cosmopolitan String Duo at InterHarmony Outstanding Guest Artist Series creates an important and long-awaited bridge between Vienna and Sulzbach-Rosenberg. Internationally acclaimed soloist and chamber musicians Elisabeth Kropfitsch and Meehae Ryo spend time with young musicians frequently, giving numerous masterclasses and workshops covering every aspect of playing, from handling an instrument to actual interpretation on stage. Their performance of Handel Passacaglia and Ravel Duos will be combined with cello and violin master classes. This event is important particularly to string player because they will be introduced to the Viennese style of chamber music interpretation. 

Join InterHarmony International Music Festival this summer in Sulzbach-Rosenberg for a masterclass with Boris Kushnir, one of the world's foremost violin pedagogues. A student of David Oistrakh's at the Moscow Conservatory, Kushnir has been described as a modern-day Leopold Auer. His students include Nikolai Znaider, Julian Rachlin, and Lidia Baich, along with more than 40 other laureates of national and international competitions.

Kushnir has given master classes and served as a jury member at competitions across the globe, including the Tchaikovsky in Moscow, the Queen Elisabeth in Brussels, the Nicolò Paganini in Genoa, the Jacques Thibaud in Paris, the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, the Seoul International Music Competition and Eurovision. His own career as a soloist and chamber musician (as co-founder of the Moscow and now the Kopelman Quartet) has been equally illustrious. He performs on the "La Rouse-Boughton" Stradivarius (1703). His masterclass will take place in Acqui Terme, Session 2, in July.