Glittering Vienna Moscow Virtuosi, Peter Guth : Moscow State Philharmonic Society

    Glittering Vienna
    Moscow Virtuosi, Peter Guth

    November 12, 2017

    Rachmaninov Concert Hall (Philharmonia-2)

    directions to the hall
    Moscow Virtuosi
    Chamber Orchestra
    Peter Guth, сonductor & soloist (violin)
    Martin Breinschmid (percussion)
    Program:

    Classic Viennese dance music

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    Moscow Virtuosi State Chamber Orchestra

    Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra

    In 1979, the outstanding violin virtuoso violinist Vladimir Spivakov united the best musicians of the Russian capital in the chamber orchestra Moscow Virtuosi. The principles of the legendary partnership of musicians remain inviolable today. The Star Ensemble of Soloists and Concert Masters of the Best Moscow Orchestras, which included members of the renowned Borodin Quartet Mikhail Kopelman, Andrei Abramenkov, Dmitry Shebalin and Valentin Berlinsky, handed over the baton to new generations of talented musicians, winners and laureates of international and national competitions. Not only professionalism and skill, but also human qualities and a high ethics of relations have always been and remain in the first place.

    Today musicians do not have undeveloped areas of the world’s cultural space. The orchestra’s concerts are triumphant in European countries, the USA, Canada, Mexico, South America, Israel, China, Korea, Japan, Turkey and others. The musicians perform not only in the best, most famous halls (Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Musikverein in Vienna, Royal Festival Hall and Royal Albert Hall in London, Pleyel in Paris, Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, etc.), but also in ordinary concert halls of small towns. The geography of Moscow Virtuosi tours also includes all regions of Russia and the post-Soviet space. Traveling around Russia is invaluable, and meetings with a wonderful audience are unique. 

    The orchestra has been performed by such outstanding musicians as Mstislav Rostropovich, Elena Obraztsova, Yehudi Menuhin, Vladimir Krainev, Saulus Sondeckis and Jesse Norman, Yuri Bashmet, Maxim Vengerov, Hibla Gerzmava, Evgeny Kisin, Misha Maisky, Denis Matsuev, Shlomo Mints, Mikhail Pletnev, Julian Rachlin, Giora Feydman, Michel Legrand, Pinchas Zuckerman. Excellent contemporary musicians Christian Zacharias, Vadim Repin, Peter Gut, Andres Mustonen, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Vladimir Feltsman and others became conductors. Young talents make their debut and perform with the orchestra, some of them – violinist Daniel Lozakovich from Sweden, Israeli cellist Daniel Akta, Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev – have today become real stars on the stage. The concert programme entitled Moscow Virtuosi. Today and Tomorrow, where the soloists are talented scholars of the Vladimir Spivakov International Charitable Foundation, laureates of international competitions. 

    In every performance, the Moscow Virtuosi succeeds in the main thing: to emotionally excite and intellectually entice anyone, even unprepared people, to give them the joy of communicating with musical masterpieces, to awaken in them a desire to come to the concert once again. Moscow Virtuosi treats traditions with care. The orchestra’s extensive repertoire includes music from various styles and eras, from Baroque to works by Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Bela Bartók, Astor Piazzolla, Krzysztof Penderecki, Rodion Shchedrin, Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, Arvo Pärt and Giya Kancheli. 

    The orchestra continues its hard but joyful creative work, maintaining the highest performing level and the right to the ambitious title Moscow Virtuosi. Here every musician is a bright personality, and together they form a world-class ensemble. What distinguishes him from many other chamber orchestras is a truly high European culture of ensemble performance, attention to the smallest details and nuances, careful, informal, active creative position in relation to the author’s idea, bright artistry, love and respect for the audience who came to the concert. 

    The outstanding violinist and conductor Vladimir Spivakov has been the permanent artistic director and chief conductor of the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra since its creation. It is thanks to Maestro Spivakov, his many years of painstaking work with the orchestra that Moscow Virtuosi are among the best chamber orchestras in the world, with a constant and grateful audience everywhere, recognition and the highest reputation that has been won over years of hard work and creativity. Since 2003, the Orchestra’s permanent rehearsal base has been the Moscow International House of Music.

    Peter Guth

    The incomparable way of sweeping musicians and audiences along and to conduct in the tradition of Johann Strauss also playing the violin, has made him internationally known.

    He conveys the joy of music wherever he appears. Repeatedly invited as a guest conductor and sought after specialist for Viennese music by more than hundred renowned symphony orchestras and important festivals, he has made an exceptional career in the big musical centres of the world.

    Concert series and TV-Galas associate him in frequent cooperation with many famous top-orchestras, like the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the San Francisco Symphony, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the English Chamber Orchestra, or the Moscow Virtuosi.

    In his considerable number of recordings, the first CD-presentation with music by the Danish “Strauss of the North” Hans Christian Lumbye won the British Music Retailers Award and his recordings with the RSO Vienna were rated as the best of the Marco Polo-Strauss Edition.

    In 1978 he founded his Strauss Festival Orchestra Vienna and was able to establish it with worldwide tours, CD- and DVD-recordings as international top ensemble for the authentic interpretation of Viennese music. With his colleagues he gets enthusiastic acclaim also from audiences in Asia (Japan, PR China, Taiwan and South-Korea), and in the past years with concert-tours in Russia and Eastern Europe.

    He has accompanied many prominent vocal-soloists, was music director of the first Vienna Operetta Festival in Japan and conducted new operetta-productions at international opera houses. Several times he directed New Year’s Concerts in the Tokyo Suntory Hall and in the New York Lincoln Center for the US-Canadian company “Salute to Vienna” who also presented Peter Guth as artistic director for their TV-Operetta-Galas in Vienna, in 1999 with Gregory Peck as host and in 2013 with Maximilian Schell and Frederica von Stade.

    In Russia he appears regularly with leading orchestras. In Moscow in the Grand Hall of the Conservatorium, in Tchaikovsky-Hall, in the Dom Musiki, or for the opening of the Vienna Days. In Saint Petersburg he performed with the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia and in the summer festival “The Grand Waltz” of the Hermitage Museum. In 2007 he was appointed as first guest conductor at the Saint Petersburg State Theatre of Musical Comedy, where he conducts several operettas, as well as annual galas with international stars. He also has a regular cooperation with the world known “Moscow Virtuosi” of Vladimir Spivakov.

    After his education at the Vienna Academy of Music, Peter Guth studied three years with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory and was internationally successful as a soloist and with the Vienna Trio (1st prize at the ARD-Competition in Munich). Educational work, publications on modern violin methodology, an active concern for new music, as well as his earlier position as first concertmaster of the RSO Vienna give a comprehensive picture of this versatile, well known Austrian artist. In 2006 he was awarded the City of Vienna’s Golden Sign of Merit.