On July 19, Pretty Yende travels to Switzerland, where sings the Opening Concert at the Verbier Festival, with Valery Gergiev on the podium. She is joined by violinist Daniel Lozakovich and pianist George Li.
This performance will be broadcasted by Medici.tv and available on-demand until November 6, 2018. For more information click here.
The next generation of superstar musicians takes pride of place in the opening concert of Verbier Festival’s 25th anniversary edition! New music director and Verbier regular Valery Gergiev is joined by brilliant young talents: violinist Daniel Lozakovich, pianist George Li, and golden-voiced soprano Pretty Yende. The program features a winning mixture of works by Mendelssohn, Bernstein, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Saint-Saëns.
At 17, 22, and 33 years old, the soloists of this evening’s concert are some of the classical music scene’s most recent revelations. The Verbier Festival has made a tradition of bringing international celebrities and young prodigies together to perform side by side, and this opening concert confirms that 2018 will be no different!
The young Daniel Lozakovich presents one of Saint-Saëns’s most beautiful compositions, the Introduction et Rondo capriccioso in A Minor, which was initially conceived as the final movement of a violin concerto for the great Pablo de Sarasate. George Li brings all of his impressive technique to Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a feverish work dedicated to Delphine von Schauroth, a pianist and composer with whom he was in love for a time. Finally, Pretty Yende honors the creator of West Side Story by performing selections from Candide, Leonard Bernstein’s operetta inspired by Voltaire’s satirical novel of the same name. Rimsky-Korsakov’s spellbinding Scheherazade and the Symphonic Diptych of longtime Verbier Festival-friend Rodion Shchedrin complete this action-packed opening to a particularly thrilling month in the Swiss Alps.
