Thursday 8.1.2026
16:00 Pearls from Armenia
Aram Khachaturian
Masquerade Suite – Waltz (from the incidental music to Masquerade, 1941)
Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 46 – II & III movements
Spartacus – Adagio (from the ballet Spartacus, 1954)
Aram Khachaturian’s music speaks in a language that is instantly recognizable: rhythmically charged, sensuous in color, and deeply rooted in movement. Yet beyond its immediate appeal lies a remarkable emotional range, capable of shifting between theatrical brilliance and inward reflection, between public gesture and private utterance. The works presented here illuminate these contrasting facets of Khachaturian’s musical imagination.
The celebrated Waltz from the Masquerade Suite inhabits a world of elegance touched by unease. Written for the theatre, the music radiates polish and charm, yet beneath the graceful surface something remains unsettled. The swirling triple meter carries a hint of instability, as if refinement itself were masking darker impulses. This tension between allure and menace is characteristic of Khachaturian’s dramatic voice.
The second and third movements of the Violin Concerto in D minor reveal a more personal dimension. The slow movement unfolds as an extended cantabile meditation, placing the solo violin in a state of lyrical introspection. Khachaturian’s gift for melody emerges with striking clarity: the violin line sings with a distinctly vocal quality, hovering between lament and reverie. The orchestra supports rather than confronts, creating an atmosphere of suspended time.
The concerto’s final movement offers a sharp contrast. Here rhythm takes command, propelled by asymmetrical patterns and incisive accents. What was inward and reflective becomes physical and urgent. Dance energy dominates, and virtuosity is not ornamental but elemental, driven by an almost ritualistic momentum.
The Adagio from Spartacus presents yet another emotional register. Often associated with love and loss, it unfolds in long, arching lines and gradual harmonic shifts. The music’s power lies in restraint and concentration, allowing feeling to accumulate slowly, without display. It is Khachaturian at his most vulnerable, where lyricism becomes a form of quiet intensity.
Together, these works reveal a composer whose music is rich in color and movement, yet ultimately anchored in human emotion — direct, unguarded, and profoundly physical.
Edvard Mirzoyan
Shushanic for strings
Edvard Mirzoyan occupies a central place in Armenian musical culture of the 20th century, not only as a composer but as a formative cultural figure. A student of Vissarion Shebalin in Moscow and later a long-serving head of the Armenian Composers’ Union, Mirzoyan belonged to a generation that sought to articulate a distinctly Armenian voice within the constraints and expectations of the Soviet musical system. His music is marked by restraint, clarity of line, and a deep seriousness of intent, avoiding overt nationalism while remaining unmistakably rooted in Armenian expressive traditions.
Shushanic for strings exemplifies this aesthetic. Rather than relying on folk quotation or explicit programmatic narrative, the work unfolds as an inward, concentrated meditation. Its language is spare and economical: long, sustained lines, carefully graded dynamics, and a persistent sense of tension held just below the surface. The string orchestra is treated not as a vehicle for lush sonority, but as a single, breathing organism, capable of both austerity and quiet warmth.
Emotionally, Shushanic moves through a landscape of controlled intensity. The music often feels suspended, as if time itself were momentarily arrested. Melodic gestures emerge slowly, hesitate, and withdraw, creating an atmosphere of introspection and moral gravity. Climaxes, when they arrive, are never explosive; they grow organically out of the texture, then recede without rhetorical flourish.
What gives the piece its particular power is this refusal of excess. Mirzoyan does not seek dramatic confrontation or overt catharsis. Instead, he invites the listener into a space of attentive listening, where meaning is carried by nuance, balance, and restraint. In this sense, Shushanic stands as a quiet counterpoint to the more extroverted strands of 20th-century orchestral writing — music that speaks softly, but with unwavering conviction.
As a portrait of its composer, the work reveals Mirzoyan’s belief in music as an ethical act: measured, disciplined, and deeply human.
21:00 Tom Borrow – Tchaikovsky
Ludwig van Beethoven – Coriolan Overture, Op. 62
Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture is among his most concentrated and uncompromising dramatic statements. Written in 1807 for a Viennese stage production based on the Roman legend of Coriolanus, the music does not illustrate events so much as expose a psychological conflict in its starkest form. From its opening bars, the overture presents a world of tension that admits no compromise.
The work opens with abrupt, forceful gestures, driven by sharply etched rhythms and uncompromising harmonic turns. This music does not persuade or unfold gradually; it confronts. The primary idea is rigid, proud, and unyielding, defined by short, emphatic motifs that seem locked in self-assertion. Beethoven strips away all ornamentation, allowing raw impulse and willpower to dominate the musical discourse.
In contrast, a secondary idea emerges that is more lyrical and pleading. Its lines are softer, its contours more human, as if offering the possibility of restraint or reconciliation. Yet this alternative voice never gains true authority. It is repeatedly interrupted, overshadowed, and ultimately overwhelmed by the overture’s relentless forward pressure. The drama here is not external action, but the collision of irreconcilable inner forces.
As the overture progresses, the conflict intensifies without resolution. There is no triumphant transformation, no heroic affirmation. Instead, the music gradually exhausts itself. The final pages withdraw into fragmentation and silence, as energy drains away rather than exploding. The ending feels less like defeat than like self-negation — a will turned inward until it collapses.
In this sense, Coriolan stands apart even within Beethoven’s dramatic oeuvre. It is not a portrait of victory or redemption, but of rigidity pushed to its breaking point. The overture’s power lies in its refusal to console: a bleak, unsparing study of character, rendered with extraordinary economy and force.
Maya Brenner: And a Whisper Will Be Heard
Composer’s Note
And a Whisper Will Be Heard was written largely during the war with Iran. I did not set out to compose a martial overture, nor a work about war itself. Yet amid sirens and alerts, waking in the middle of the night, and a persistent sense of helplessness, I found that the musical materials I was working with gradually thickened—becoming layered with clusters, weaving in fragments of the national anthem, and even mourning fanfares.
Throughout this period, one line from Yehuda Amichai’s poem “From the Place Where We Are Right” accompanied me:
“And a whisper will be heard in the place where the house once stood, now destroyed.”
For me, this line holds a reflection on the day after—on a fragile, human voice that seeks to be heard even from within the rupture.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23
Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto is one of the great paradoxes of the repertoire: instantly recognizable, monumental in scale, yet deeply personal in its emotional logic. From its opening bars, the concerto announces itself with an almost audacious confidence. The massive introductory theme — broad, declamatory, and unapologetically expansive — does not return in the conventional sense. Instead, it serves as a symbolic threshold, a statement of emotional scope rather than a thematic anchor.
The first movement unfolds as a landscape of contrasts. Heroic assertion and lyrical introspection coexist uneasily, often colliding rather than resolving. The piano alternates between thunderous rhetoric and intimate song, while the orchestra shifts from confrontation to accompaniment. Tchaikovsky’s drama here is not architectural in the classical sense, but psychological: momentum is driven by feeling, not by symmetry.
The slow movement offers a moment of fragile suspension. Its opening flute melody introduces an atmosphere of tenderness and inwardness, answered by the piano with understated grace. This is music of restraint rather than confession, where simplicity carries emotional weight. The central episode briefly lightens the mood, almost playfully, before the opening calm returns — altered, as if viewed through memory.
The finale releases the accumulated tension in rhythmic propulsion. Folk-inflected themes and driving energy give the movement a sense of physical urgency, yet even here exhilaration is tinged with strain. Triumph is never entirely carefree; it feels earned, even hard-won.
What gives the concerto its enduring power is this emotional candor. Virtuosity is abundant, but it is never decorative. Every technical demand serves expression, every surge of brilliance carries risk. The concerto does not aim for classical balance or heroic idealization, but for immediacy — a direct transmission of feeling, vast in gesture yet unmistakably human.
Friday 9.1.2026
10:30 A Musical Salon: Schubert and Friends
Franz Schubert:
Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, D.898
Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat major, D.929
Schubert’s two piano trios, written in the final year of his life, stand side by side like twin mirrors: similar in form and instrumentation, yet radically different in emotional temperature. Heard together — especially when their movements are interwoven with spoken narration — they reveal not a contrast between “light” and “dark,” but a continuous meditation on time, memory, and the fragile boundary between presence and loss.
The B-flat major Trio often appears first as the more genial of the two. Its opening movement unfolds with expansive calm, marked by a generosity of melody that seems to welcome the listener into an intimate, shared space. Yet even here, Schubert’s characteristic sense of suspension is already at work: themes linger, repeat, hesitate, as if reluctant to move on. The slow movement deepens this atmosphere, not through drama, but through inward concentration — a song without words that feels remembered rather than newly spoken.
The E-flat major Trio inhabits a different emotional register. From its opening, the music carries a greater sense of weight and gravity. The famous slow movement, built on a stark, almost processional theme, has often been described as tragic — but its power lies less in overt anguish than in its steady, inescapable forward motion. Time here does not flow; it advances. The music seems to observe itself, aware of its own passing.
What unites both trios is Schubert’s extraordinary handling of scale. Movements stretch beyond conventional proportions, not for virtuoso display, but to create a feeling of lived duration. Repetition becomes reflection; return becomes transformation. In this context, narration does not interrupt the music, but resonates with it — giving words to the very pauses, hesitations, and silences that Schubert builds into the fabric of the score.
Together, the two trios form a single emotional landscape. One speaks with warmth and human closeness, the other with distance and inevitability — yet both share the same quiet urgency. They do not argue or resolve; they accompany. This is late Schubert: music that does not seek to conquer time, but to dwell within it, attentively, tenderly, and without illusion.
17:00 The Virtuoso Trumpet Player
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33
Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme occupy a unique place in his output: a work that looks backward in style while remaining unmistakably his in emotional contour. Written as a tribute to the elegance of the 18th century—especially Mozart, whom Tchaikovsky revered—the piece adopts the clarity, balance, and grace of the Classical era, yet filters them through a Romantic sensibility that is more intimate than dramatic.
The opening theme is deliberately simple and poised, almost ceremonial in its restraint. It presents a world of order, proportion, and refined beauty—an idealized past rather than a historically accurate one. From this calm starting point, the variations unfold not as displays of sheer virtuosity, but as shifts in character and emotional shading.
Some variations are light and playful, dancing effortlessly across the surface, while others turn inward, allowing lyricism to blossom with a gentle, almost vocal expressiveness. Tchaikovsky uses ornamentation not to dazzle, but to speak—each embellishment feels like a new inflection of the same thought. As the work progresses, moments of heightened intensity emerge, where Romantic warmth briefly breaks through the Classical façade, only to be quickly re-contained.
The famous slow variation stands at the emotional center of the piece: introspective, tender, and quietly vulnerable. Here, time seems to suspend itself, offering a glimpse of Tchaikovsky’s inner world beneath the polished exterior. The later variations gradually reintroduce brilliance and momentum, culminating in a finale that sparkles with elegance rather than triumph.
The emotional journey of the Rococo Variations is thus one of refinement rather than conflict: a continuous negotiation between discipline and feeling, nostalgia and immediacy. It is music that invites the listener not to be overwhelmed, but to listen closely—to nuance, to line, and to the poetry of restraint.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
It is difficult to overstate the stature of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: it is perhaps the most instantly recognizable orchestral work in the history of music. The four opening notes—three short, one long—have become almost a universal symbol. Yet their power lies not only in their immediate recognizability, but in their structural function. This rhythmic and motivic kernel permeates the entire work, forging deep connections between its movements and endowing the symphony with a rare sense of inner necessity.
The first movement is not “dramatic” in the conventional sense, but rather a mechanism stretched to its breaking point. There is no truly consoling second theme; even the more lyrical moments offer no genuine repose. Beethoven constructs an unrelenting, almost obsessive tension, in which every gesture is driven beyond its natural limits. The brief oboe solo near the end of the movement—a rare moment of breath—does not dissolve the tension, but instead underscores its inevitability.
The second movement, a theme and variations, appears at first to provide relief. Yet here, too, there is no romantic tranquility. It is a broad, restrained, and insistent movement, governed by strict classical discipline. Within this framework, the shadow of the opening motif repeatedly intrudes, like a memory that refuses to fade. The nobility here is not softness, but steadfast resolve.
The third movement is perhaps the boldest in the symphony. Its character is secretive, dark, and alert; ideas emerge, disintegrate, and reassemble themselves. Whispering strings, restrained dynamics, and a prominent role for the timpani create a state of sustained anticipation—an ongoing walk along the edge of a knife. Toward the end, the music seems to contract inward, preparing the ground for what is to come.
And that moment—the transition into the fourth movement—is among the most revolutionary in the history of music. Out of charged silence bursts a blinding light. For the first time in a Beethoven symphony, trombones appear—not merely as a new orchestral color, but as a conceptual statement: a passage from darkness into light, from struggle into resolution. The finale is an unapologetic celebration—a continuous, demanding, and brilliant motion that propels the symphonic language toward a future previously unheard.
The journey as a whole is not a tale of easy victory, but of persistence. This is a symphony that does not release its listener—and does not allow them to remain unchanged.
20:30 The Viennese Coloratura
Rossini: Semiramide – Overture
Mozart: Die Zauberflöte aria by the Queen of the Night
Mascagni – Cavalleria Rusticana – Intermezzo
Verdi: La Traviata – Ah, fors’e lui… Sempre libera
Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor – Mad Scene
Verdi: Rigoletto – Caro nome
This concert traces the expressive possibilities of coloratura across the 19th century — not as virtuosity for its own sake, but as a dramatic language capable of embodying power, innocence, denial, and ultimately psychological collapse. What begins as brilliance and control gradually fractures, until technical mastery itself becomes the sound of disintegration.
Rossini’s Semiramide Overture opens the evening in a world where virtuosity is already woven into the orchestral fabric. Precision, propulsion, and formal elegance define a theatrical universe in which brilliance is structural rather than ornamental. The orchestra sets the stage for a vocal tradition in which agility and command are inseparable from drama.
Mozart’s Queen of the Night represents an early, extreme deployment of coloratura as authority. Her writing in Die Zauberflöte is not merely dazzling; it is coercive. The voice cuts with crystalline exactness, turning technical perfection into a weapon of moral absolutism. Here, coloratura asserts power through control.
At the emotional core of the program stands Donizetti’s Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor — one of the most radical moments in operatic history. In this scene, coloratura ceases to function as mastery and becomes the audible unraveling of consciousness itself. Fragmented phrases, obsessive repetitions, and florid passages stripped of triumph transform vocal brilliance into a portrait of psychological fracture. The very techniques that once signified control now expose vulnerability, isolation, and delirium. It is not excess, but exposure.
Verdi inherits this language and reshapes it. In La Traviata, coloratura becomes denial: a glittering assertion of freedom that barely conceals emotional fragility. In Rigoletto, it is innocence — weightless, trusting, and fatally unprotected. Verdi uses vocal agility not to dominate the stage, but to reveal what characters cannot yet see about themselves.
Mascagni’s Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana offers a final, wordless counterpoint. Here, the voice is absent, and emotion is carried by the orchestra alone. Its stillness and restraint remind us that intensity does not always require display — that silence and simplicity can speak with equal force.
Together, these works reveal coloratura as a mutable expressive force: brilliance that commands, fractures, denies, and confesses. Not decoration, but drama itself — etched into the breath.
Saturday 10.1.2026
10:30 Vag Papian – Recital
Johann Sebastian Bach – Italian Concerto in F major, BWV 971
Bach’s Italian Concerto occupies a special place in his keyboard output: a work that translates the spirit of the Italian concerto into a purely solo medium. Written for a two-manual harpsichord but equally at home on the modern piano, the piece stages an imaginative dialogue between soloist and ensemble — both roles embodied by a single performer.
The opening movement bursts with clarity and rhythmic buoyancy. Its brilliance lies not in weight, but in articulation: sharply defined gestures, quick exchanges, and an almost orchestral sense of contrast between “tutti” and “solo” textures. Bach creates the illusion of spatial breadth through dynamics and figuration, allowing the listener to sense forward momentum and rhetorical exchange rather than contrapuntal density.
The central slow movement shifts the focus inward. Here, the music unfolds as a sustained cantilena, supported by a gently pulsing accompaniment. The affect is intimate and contemplative, marked by expressive dissonances that resolve with measured inevitability. Time seems suspended, as if the music were listening to itself. This is Bach at his most vocal, shaping melody with an almost operatic sensitivity.
The final movement restores energy and brightness, propelled by crisp rhythms and tightly woven patterns. Yet beneath its surface sparkle lies a remarkable discipline of form: every flourish serves the larger architecture. The joy here is lucid rather than exuberant, grounded in balance and proportion.
Taken as a whole, the Italian Concerto offers not drama or conflict, but perspective — a celebration of motion, clarity, and expressive economy, in which virtuosity is inseparable from intelligence.
Johannes Brahms – Three Intermezzi, Op. 117
Brahms’s Three Intermezzi, Op. 117, belong to his late piano works — music that turns away from public statement toward inward reflection. These pieces do not seek contrast or display; instead, they inhabit a shared emotional climate of restraint, memory, and quiet resignation.
The first Intermezzo unfolds like a lullaby, its gentle rocking motion evoking consolation rather than sleep. Beneath the surface calm, subtle harmonic shifts introduce a sense of unease, as if tenderness were shadowed by loss. The music speaks softly, but with grave seriousness.
The second Intermezzo is more restless. Fragmented gestures and shifting inner voices create an atmosphere of introspection tinged with doubt. The flow is hesitant, shaped by pauses and sighing figures that suggest thought interrupted by memory. Here, Brahms allows silence and hesitation to carry as much meaning as sound.
The third Intermezzo brings the set to a close with stoic dignity. Its steady tread and dark coloration suggest acceptance rather than despair — a music that neither resists nor yields completely. The emotional temperature remains cool, yet deeply human.
Across all three pieces, Brahms achieves intensity through compression. Motives are small, textures spare, dynamics carefully contained. Nothing is overstated. These are not confessional outbursts, but private utterances — music that invites the listener to lean in rather than be overwhelmed.
Op. 117 offers a journey not toward resolution, but toward understanding: a portrait of inwardness shaped by experience, restraint, and profound emotional honesty.
Sergei Prokofiev – Piano Sonata No. 4 in C minor, Op. 29
Prokofiev’s Fourth Piano Sonata stands at a crossroads in his early career, combining youthful experimentation with an emerging sense of psychological depth. Unlike his more overtly aggressive piano works, this sonata is inward, elusive, and shadowed — a piece shaped as much by ambiguity as by propulsion.
The opening movement establishes an atmosphere of unease from the outset. Fragmentary ideas surface and recede, refusing to settle into clear thematic hierarchies. Harmonic instability and sudden shifts of register create a sense of disorientation, as if the music were searching for solid ground. Tension here is internalized rather than explosive.
The slow movement deepens this introspection. Its long, unfolding lines suggest a bleak lyricism, restrained and haunted. The piano’s sonority is often veiled, with dark harmonies and muted resonance contributing to an atmosphere of nocturnal reflection. This is not romantic lament, but emotional suspension — feeling held in check.
The finale reintroduces motion, yet without triumph. Rhythmic drive returns, sharp-edged and insistent, but the music never fully releases its grip. Abrupt gestures, biting accents, and compressed climaxes convey urgency rather than resolution. Even moments of brilliance feel hard-won.
The Fourth Sonata resists easy categorization. It is neither a virtuoso showpiece nor a traditional dramatic arc. Instead, it presents a psychological landscape marked by tension, irony, and restraint — an early glimpse of Prokofiev’s distinctive voice, already capable of unsettling depth.
Sergei Rachmaninov – Selected Preludes
Rachmaninov’s preludes form a musical diary spanning much of his creative life. Each is a self-contained world, yet together they reveal a composer deeply attuned to mood, atmosphere, and pianistic color. In these brief forms, Rachmaninov achieves a remarkable concentration of expression.
Some preludes unfold as expansive lyrical statements, shaped by long, arching melodies and rich harmonic support. Others are driven by rhythmic insistence or tolling gestures, evoking bells, marches, or distant processions. Despite their variety, a shared emotional gravity unites them — a sense of longing that never quite resolves.
Rachmaninov’s piano writing is both idiomatic and orchestral. Thick textures and wide spans demand physical breadth, yet moments of transparency and stillness are equally central. Virtuosity is always expressive: technical difficulty serves atmosphere, not display.
Emotionally, these preludes oscillate between introspection and grandeur. Melancholy often dominates, but it is not static; it swells, recedes, and transforms. Even the most dramatic moments retain an inward pull, as if the music were remembering itself in the act of speaking.
Heard together, a selection of preludes does not form a narrative in the traditional sense, but a constellation of emotional states. They offer the listener a sequence of fleeting yet vivid encounters — fragments of a larger, unspoken story, unified by voice, color, and unmistakable emotional weight.
15:00 Guy and Rotem encounter Bizet
Georges Bizet: Symphony in C
Bizet’s Symphony in C is one of the great miracles of youthful creation: a work of astonishing assurance, written when the composer was just seventeen, yet speaking with a voice that is already lucid, elegant, and unmistakably individual. Long unknown and performed only decades after Bizet’s death, the symphony feels less like an apprentice piece than a confident declaration of musical joy.
The first movement bursts forth with irrepressible energy. Its themes sparkle with clarity and charm, propelled by buoyant rhythms and a natural sense of momentum. Yet beneath the apparent ease lies remarkable craftsmanship: phrases are balanced with instinctive precision, and transitions unfold with a fluency that never calls attention to itself. The music smiles, but it is a knowing smile.
The slow movement reveals another facet of Bizet’s gift. Here, lyricism takes center stage, shaped by long, singing lines and tender harmonic shading. The atmosphere is intimate rather than sentimental, and the dialogue between winds and strings carries a sense of gentle conversation. It is music that breathes, unhurried and sincere, offering a moment of repose without ever losing focus.
The scherzo is light on its feet, playful and sharply articulated. Rhythmic wit and quicksilver changes of texture give the movement a teasing, almost mischievous character. Nothing lingers longer than it should; the music darts forward with youthful confidence, delighting in its own agility.
The finale brings the symphony to a close with exuberant brilliance. Spirited themes tumble over one another, driven by momentum and a keen sense of theatrical timing. There is no grand struggle to resolve, only the exhilaration of motion and the pleasure of sound.
Taken as a whole, the Symphony in C offers not drama or conflict, but vitality. It invites the listener into a world of freshness, balance, and unforced delight—a reminder that mastery can sometimes announce itself not with weight, but with lightness and grace.
