The Sochi Winter Arts Festival opened on Thursday evening with a gala performance program that blended the unanticipated and unfamiliar with a line-up of familiar favorites. It is certainly not a somber occasion. It begins as the target market gets in the theater.
The lower foyer of the Winter Theater is hosting an exhibit of video clip art curated by Antonio Geusa called “Echoes of Eco”: 15 brief video functions that check out ecology and human intervention. The annual exhibition, which has actually belonged to the festival because 2011, is the lengthiest running video art event in Russia.
In the music hall, the music program opened with a piece by Enri Lolashvili for viola and also orchestra, done by Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists Chamber Orchestra.
It was followed by an opening night: “My Shadow,” a composition for piano and also band by the acclaimed Korean author Donghoon Shin, performed by pianist Ksenia Bashmet.
Naoyuki Manabe Alexei Molchanovsky Donghoon Shin was new to the target market, but they welcomed back Japanese author Atsuhiko Gondai, whose structure for European strings and also the shō (a traditional Japanese reed pipeline) was carried out by the amazing Naoyuki Manabe. Later in the program the audience was presented to 3 even more brand-new instruments: a viola d’amore, a hardanger fiddle and also nyckelharpa, played by the Swedish group Northern Resonance.
They carried out a piece called Hemfard that established feet touching throughout the theater.The first half of the program ended with Dmitry Lukyanov’s “Fantasia on Themes from Bizet’s Opera Carmen,” billed as a duet for percussion and also strings executed by Eleonora Kostina as well as Ilya Kucherov. The target market started to buzz when the stagehands rolled out 2 xylophones, which were followed by 2 willowy performers together black. As the Moscow Soloists started Lukyanov’s “Fantasia,” both musicians danced as well as slid behind their instruments like Fred as well as Ginger while playing perky as well as remarkable “Carmen” on their xylophones and also drums. The target market, captivated, had them appear for a second drape telephone call.
The night included an outstanding performance by one of the world’s biggest countertenors, Max Emanuel Cenčić, and also the expressive as well as effective Italian baritone Mattia Olivieri, that performed works by Rossini and also Mozart and afterwards a duet with the young Russian soprano Elmira Karakhanova. They were accompanied by the Russian Youth Symphony Orchestra, carried out by Bashmet.
Stage magic was provided by the lights developer Ivan Vinogradov, that lit the very first half of the show with an enormous ring. It first hung reduced over the Moscow Soloists and bathed them in blue light, and after that was lifted up like a halo that spot-lit the entertainers, or circled around them, or developed a delicate net of beams.
In the second half of the program, the Youth Orchestra was lit by loads of slim steel tubes hanging above them that dropped and also rose in altering patterns, lighting up totally or in spirals and also beacons of blue, white, red, and yellow.