Maxim Rysanov, Ashley Wass and Oleg Kogan together with the rising stars from The Yehudi Menuhin School
Thursday 12 January 2023, 7.30pm
At the Razumovsky Academy, 56 College Road, London NW10 5ET
7pm doors open, welcome drink
7.30pm concert (with an interval)
9pm reception
Tickets:
£30 (£40 to include reception)
£15 (Under 25’s)
For further details and booking request please contact [email protected]
Programme:
Robert Schumann – Fantasiestücke, Op.73 – Maxim Rysanov & Nigel Hutchison
J.S. Bach – Violin Sonata No 3 in C Major – Adagio & Allegro Assai – Yume Tomita
Sergei Rachmaninov – Daisies Op 38 No 3; Lilacs Op 21 No 5 – Mischa Carr piano
Sergei Rachmaninov – Etude-tableau op. 33 No. 7 in E Flat – Mischa Carr piano
Robert Schumann – Adagio and Allegro, Op.70 – Maxim Rysanov & Nigel Hutchison
Interval
César Franck – Piano Quintet in F minor – Lucrezia Lavino Mercuri violin, Ignacy Stefanowicz violin, Maxim Rysanov viola, Oleg Kogan cello, Ashley Wass piano
For further details and booking request please contact [email protected]
Over the many years Maxim Rysanov has taken part in numerous Razumovsky Ensemble and Academy concerts and gave masterclasses helping artistic development of many gifted young musicians.
Grammy nominated Ukrainian-British violist and conductor Maxim Rysanov has established himself as one of the worldʼs most vibrant and charismatic musicians. As a violist, he is principally known as a frequent guest of the crème of the international music scene, such as BBC Last Night of the Proms and the festivals of Edinburgh, Salzburg and Verbier.
Among his concerto highlights are the Russian National Orchestra (Mikhail Pletnev), BBC Symphony Orchestra (Jiří Bělohlávek), Residentie Orkest the Hague (Neeme Jarvi), Svetlanov State Symphony Orchestra (Vladimir Jurovsky), Seattle Symphony (Andrey Boreyko), Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (Vasily Petrenko), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (Tugan Sokhiev), Moscow Philharmonic (Yuri Simonov), Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (Vassily Sinaisky), Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne (Sir Mark Elder), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (Philippe Herreweghe), NDR Philharmonic Orchestra (Eivind Gullberg Jensen), Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra (Juraj Valcuha and again with Michał Nesterowicz), Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (Arvo Volmer), Danish National Symphony Orchestra (Michael Schoenwandt), Shanghai Symphony (Long Yu), European Union Youth Orchestra (Matthias Bamert), Czech Filharmonic (John Axelrod), Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Olari Elts), Spanish National Orchestra (Josep Caballe Domenech) and Beethovenorchester Bonn (Dirk Kaftan).
Maxim enjoys a busy career as a conductor parallel to playing the viola. Often he combines conducting and directing a concerto from viola. Maxim studied conducting with Alan Hazeldine at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and has taken part in several masterclasses with Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Jorma Panula. Here are some of the orchestras he conducted: Svetlanov State Symphony Orchestra, La Verdi Orchestra Milan, Basel Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Tatarstan State Symphony Orchestra, Spanish Radio Orchestra (RTVE), Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Dala Sinfonietta, Danubia Symphony Budapest, London Mozart Players, Southbank Sinfonia, Riga Sinfonietta, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, I Musici de Montreal, Detmold Chamber Orchestra, Musica Viva (Moscow), Voronezh Youth Orchestra, Kiev Soloists, Częstochowa Philharmonic Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra Chaarts, Budapest Festival Academy Orchestra, Classic FM Orchestra (Bulgaria), Georgian National Symphony Orchestra, Plovdiv Philharmonic, Sofia Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Sofia Philharmonic, Pfortseim Theatre Orchestra, Badische Philharmonie, Vivaldi Orchestra Morbegno.
His enthusiasm for new music generates many exciting collaborations which extend the viola repertoire. This includes world premieres by Dobrinka Tabakova, Pēteris Vasks, Richard Dubugnon, Mate Balogh and Elena Langer. Other composers with whom Maxim has developed a close working relationship include Benjamin Yusupov, Leonid Desyatnikov, Giya Kancheli and most recently Gabriel Prokofiev who is planning to write a symphony-concerto for Maxim, where the performer will have to combine skills of both soloist and conductor.
Maxim’s recordings have gained numerous award nominations including Gramophone Editor’s Choice, ECHO, ICMA. Maxim featured as both soloist and conductor on the debut disc of composer Dobrinka Tabakova (ECM) in 2013 – a disc that reached number 2 in the UK classical charts and was shortlisted for a Grammy Award. His last album “in Schubert’s company” was selected as Gramophone Critic’s Choice of the Year. New CD is planned for a spring 2020 release on BIS. Sinfonietta Riga under Maxim’s direction are performing music by Peteris Vasks. It will include the premier recording of the Viola Concerto written and dedicated to Maxim, coupled with the Symphony no 1.
Maxim is a recipient of he Gramophone Young Artist of the Year Award and the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Award. He is also a top prize-winner at the Geneva, Lionel Tertis and Valentino Bucchi competitions.
Maxim studied viola with Maria Sitkovskaya in Moscow and John Glickman at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama London. He is delighted to play a 1780 Giuseppe Guadagnini Viola known as ‘II Soldato’, on private loan that was kindly arranged by Premiere Performances of Hong Kong.
Described as an ‘endlessly fascinating artist’, Ashley Wass’s musical career is one of unusual creativity and variety. Alongside his work as soloist and chamber musician, he is co-founder of Mash Productions, was Artistic Director of the Lincolnshire International Chamber Music Festival for eleven years and Deputy Head of Keyboard Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music from 2018-2020, and is now the Director of Music at the Yehudi Menuhin School. The diverse list of people and organisations with whom he has collaborated include film festivals, art galleries and animators, children’s television presenters and stars of the stage and screen, illustrators, literary festivals and renowned authors, and mime artists and comedians.
Ashley began playing the piano at the age of five, and studied music at Chetham’s School of Music from age 11. In his teens he studied on a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, where his teachers included Christopher Elton, Maria Curcio and Hamish Milne. His watershed moment came in 1997 when he won the London International Piano Competition (the only British winner this far), a success that led to a recording contract with Naxos, making him the first solo artist to obtain an exclusive deal with the label. His debut recording was a highly praised CD of César Franck piano music, released in 1999. He was also a prizewinner at the Leeds Piano Competition, and is a former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist.
Ashley has performed at many of the world’s finest concert halls, including the Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Vienna Konzerthaus. He has performed regularly as soloist with all of the BBC orchestras, the Philharmonia, Orchestre National de Lille, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Slovak Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, RLPO, and Bournemouth Symphony under the baton of conductors such as Simon Rattle, Osmo Vanska, Donald Runnicles, Ilan Volkov and Vassily Sinaisky.
He appeared alongside the likes of Sir Thomas Allen, Mstislav Rostropovich and Angela Gheorghiu in a gala concert at Buckingham Palace to mark the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, a performance broadcast live to millions of viewers around the world. He made his BBC Proms debut in 2008 with Vaughan Williams’ Piano Concerto, and returned in following seasons to perform works by Foulds, Stravinsky, Antheil, and McCabe.
Recent highlights have included a debut at the Melbourne Recital Centre, acclaimed performances with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and BBC NOW, and a tour to South America, as well as an extensive solo recital tour with a programme of music inspired by Shakespeare.
Renowned for a broad and eclectic repertoire, Ashley has received great critical acclaim for his recordings of music from a wide range of styles and eras, with glowing reviews of his interpretations of composers such as Liszt, Franck, Beethoven, and Bridge. His survey of Bax’s piano music was nominated for a Gramophone Award and his discography boasts a number of Gramophone ‘Editor’s Choice’ recordings and BBC Music Magazine ‘Choices’.
Much in demand as a chamber musician, Ashley is a frequent guest of international festivals such as Pharos (Cyprus), Bath, Ako (Japan), Cheltenham, Kuhmo, Mecklenburg, Gstaad, City of London, and Ravinia and Marlboro in the USA, playing solo recitals and chamber works with musicians such as Mitsuko Uchida, Sarah Chang, Steven Isserlis, Emmanuel Pahud, Maxim Rysanov, Richard Goode and members of the Guarneri Quartet and Beaux Arts Trio. He is also a co-founder of Trio Apaches, alongside the violinist Matthew Trusler and the cellist Thomas Carroll. The group has broadcast frequently on BBC Radio 3, including Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the BBC NOW, and is renowned for its imaginative programming and engaging stage presence.
A long-standing collaboration with Matthew Trusler has been particularly rewarding and in 2016 they co-founded Mash Productions, a production company that is focused on realising innovative and ambitious projects. Together they have commissioned over a dozen new works from some of the world’s leading composers, produced a series of musical plays, worked with illustrators and animators to create a number of short films set to music, collaborated with Carl Davis and the Chaplin Foundation on a show about the life and music of Charlie Chaplin, and curated a number of mini-festivals for leading arts organisations around the UK. Their acclaimed series for children – Musical Myths – which combines their own specially written scripts with great pieces of classical music has been toured and performed to thousands of children by orchestras around the UK and Europe, including the Bournemouth Symphony, Opera North, Southbank Sinfonia and the Lahti and Latvian Symphony orchestras.
Ashley Wass was the Artistic Director of the Lincolnshire International Chamber Music Festival from 2007-2018 and helped develop the festival into one the UK’s leading events of its type, with with sold-out performances of challenging and diverse repertoire, and regular broadcasts on BBC Radio 3.
Ashley is the Director of Music at the Yehudi Menuhin School and is a Professor of Piano at the Royal College of Music.
Oleg Kogan was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine and studied cello with the legendary Ukrainian teachers Tamara Virnaya (Kharkiv) and Maria Tchaikovskaya (Moscow). He won the All-Soviet Cello Competition in 1989 and has performed widely in Ukraine, the Baltic states, Kazakhstan and other Soviet republics. From 1991 Oleg has regularly performed internationally as soloist in recitals and with many orchestras, recorded for Doron DRC in Switzerland, Op.111 in France and Linn records in the UK, and broadcast on Radio France, Swiss Romande, Israel Radio, Classic FM and BBC Radio 3. At the age of 25, Oleg was the youngest professor of cello at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and since 1996 he has been a professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. Many of his students have developed distinguished careers and have won major awards and prizes worldwide. In 1998 Oleg founded the Razumovsky Ensemble performing more that 100 programmes at London’s Wigmore Hall, and in 2005 he launched the Razumovsky Academy, offering exceptionally gifted young musicians opportunities to learn and to perform in public at the highest artistic level. In 2016 Oleg realised his vision building a dedicated musical venue in London, a unique professional performance facility available to both established musicians and gifted young performers. Since 24th February 2022 Oleg organised numerous public events collecting funds in support of music and musicians in Ukraine.
For further details and booking request please contact [email protected]