Fundraising Concert & Dinner with Sir Richard Stilgoe
To raise funds for the Razumovsky Trust’s scholarship for a young gifted Ukrainian cellist from Kharkiv, Ukraine, who escaped from the war zone. Having provided regular on-line lessons since summer, we are now organising her music education and relocation to London next year.
Sunday 20th November 2022 at 6pm, at the Razumovsky Academy, 56 College Road, London NW10 5ET
Music performed by the Razumovsky Ensemble & Academy musicians interspersed with verses written and performed by Sir Richard Stilgoe OBE
6pm Champagne Reception
6.45pm Concert
8.30pm Charity Dinner
£60 (Champagne Reception + Concert)
£125 (Champagne Reception + Concert + Charity Dinner)
Fine champagne, wine and dinner for the evening are generously sponsored by our benefactors, and all artists contribute their performances, so your tickets and donations can be Gift Aided.
If you are unable to attend but would like to support our appeal, we would be enormously grateful for every help you can give, and we will acknowledge your generosity in our concert programmes on the night and throughout the season.
For booking and Trust’s account details please contact [email protected]
Sir Richard Stilgoe OBE DL, British songwriter, lyricist, musician and broadcaster, and Honorary Patron of the Razumovsky Trust, is graciously lending his support to the Razumovsky Academy. He has kindly offered to perform in a concert with the music interspersed with verses written and performed by him. He will also join us for the post-concert dinner.
Musicians:
Dinara Klinton piano, Mariam Obolashvili violin, Oleg Kogan cello, Polina Kogan piano, Benny Kogan violin
George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue for piano solo
Kreisler – Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice
Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, Allegro from Concerto No. 3, “Autumn”
Aleksandre Machavariani – Dolury
George Gershwin – Earl Wild Etude No. 3 “The man I Love” for piano solo
Pablo Casals – The Song of the Birds
Sait-Saëns – The Swan
For further details and booking please contact [email protected]
Sir Richard Stilgoe OBE DL is a British songwriter, lyricist and musician, and broadcaster who is best known for his humorous songs and frequent television appearances. His output includes collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Peter Skellern. He is also a keen puzzler who has hosted several quiz shows and written several books on the subject.
Stilgoe is also notable for his charity work and fundraising. In the 1980s he founded the Alchemy Foundation which is funded from his royalties from the American productions of “Starlight Express” and “The Phantom of the Opera”. He is patron of the Surrey Care Trust in Woking. In the late 1990s he founded the Orpheus Centre which offers performing arts experiences to young people with disabilities. In 2012, Stilgoe was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his extensive charity work.
Stilgoe wrote lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and Starlight Express,[1] and collaborated with Charles Hart on the lyrics to The Phantom of the Opera. He also wrote two musicals for schools, Bodywork and Brilliant the Dinosaur. Stilgoe gave all his royalties as lyricist on Starlight Express to a village in India. Such was the musical’s success that for some years his donations were exceeding £500 a day. He has appeared on the Royal Variety Performance, presented the Schools Proms for over 20 years and toured solo and with Peter Skellern.[1]
In 1984, Stilgoe founded the Alchemy Foundation, which distributes money to good causes. The foundation is funded from Stilgoe’s royalties from American productions of Starlight Express and The Phantom of the Opera.
Stilgoe founded the Orpheus Centre in 1998, in his former family home in Godstone, Surrey, offering performing arts experiences to young people with disabilities; he also started the Stilgoe Family Concerts series at the Royal Festival Hall, which feature young performers and regular commissions of new music. He is President of the Surrey Care Trust in Woking, Surrey, which provides education, training, skills and volunteering opportunities to those who need motivation or a second chance in life.
Violinist Anna-Liisa Bezrodny was born into a distinguished family of musicians in Moscow, currently in great demand as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician all over the world. Already at the age of two she began her violin studies with her parents, and at the age of nine she began her studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, in the class of her parents, Prof. Igor Bezrodny and Prof. Mari Tampere-Bezrodny. Her later years took her to London, resulting in winning the most prestigious award in Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Gold Medal in 2006, previously won by masters such as Bryn Terfel and Jaqueline du Pre.
Over the years Anna-Liisa has appreared as soloist with orchestras in most prestigious concert venues in the world, such as Royal Festival Hall, Barbican Hall, Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Cologne Philharmonie, Cadogan Hall, Finlandia Hall, Estonia Hall, St. Petersbugh Philharmonic Hall, Moscow Conservatoire Great Hall as well as Small Hall and Rakhmaninov Hall, and countless others. Anna-Liisa has worked with outstanding maestros such as Leif Segerstam, Nikolay Alekseyev, Eri Klas, Paavo Järvi, Olari Elts, Sian Edwards, Sascha Goetzel, Juha Kangas, Mihkel Kutson, Robin O’Neil, Arvo Volmer, Paul Magi, and many others.
Anna-Liisa is a recipient of countless awards and prizes, for example winner of special prize of the Rotary Club, winner of the Ian Fleming Charitable Award of the Musicians Benevolent Fund (London), winner of the Martin Musical Scholarship Award, (London), Hattori Foundation and Myra Hess Trust prizes, Ricci Foundation Winner 2009, Young Artist of the Making Music Foundation 2009, The Razumovsky Trust, Heifetz International Violin Competition, Brahms International Competition. In 2005 Anna-Liisa Bezrodny was awarded the PROMIS Award for talented young musicians from the London Symphony Orchestra, and in the same year received an honorary prize from the Pro Musica Foundation in Finland. Most recently Anna-Liisa was awarded an honorary Musician of the Year Award from the Estonian Cultural Foundation, for her internationally prosperous and productive concert-activity. She is currently an Artistic Director of the International Chamber Music Festival in Tallin, Estonia.
Anna-Liisa currently plays on an Amati violin, on loan from the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Pianist Dinara Klinton was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and has completed the Artist Diploma in Performance course at the Royal College of Music where she was under the tutelage of Dina Parakhina. Prior to this, she was awarded a Master of Performance degree with distinction at the RCM. Upon graduating from the Moscow Central Music School, where she studied with Valery Pyasetsky, she went on her Graduate Diploma with Honors at the Moscow State Conservatory, where she worked with Eliso Virsaladze. Dinara currently holds a position of Professor of Piano at the Royal College of Music.
Klinton has won many awards in prestigious international competitions, among them are Third prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition, USA (2016), Third prize BNDES International Piano Competition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2014), Second Prize and Special prizes for the best performance of the Semi-final recital, Chopin’s composition and Paderewski works at the 9th International Paderewski Competition in Bydgoszcz, Poland (2013), Second Prize at the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy (2007). She has also received the Diploma for the best pianist who did not qualify into the Final of the Chopin competition in Warsaw (2015). Dinara has appeared at many international music festivals including the “Progetto Martha Argerich” Festival in Lugano, Rheingau Music Festival, Ravello Music Festival, International Festival of Piano “La Roque d’Antheron”, “Chopin and His Europe” in Warsaw, Cheltenham Music Festival, Aldeburgh Proms. Dinara has performed at such venues as Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall in London, Tchaikoivsky Concert hall in Moscow, Great hall of Moscow State Conservatory, Berlin Philharmonic, Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, Warsaw Philharmonic, Tokyo Sumida Triphony Hall. She has worked with orchestras such as The Philharmonia Orchestra, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia, Musica Viva and The Moscow Virtuosi. Her performances have been broadcast by EBU, BBC2, BBC Radio3, All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company.
Dinara’s debut recording Music of Chopin and Liszt was made at the age of 16 with an American label DELOS. Her second album Liszt: Études d’exécution transcendante, S. 139 was released in 2016 with GENUIN Classics, and the most recent CD has been launched in summer 2017 and is a part of renown recording series “Chopin. Complete Works on contemporary instruments”, released by The Fryderyk Chopin Institute.
Violinist Mariam Obolashvili is a student of Lucia Ibragimova at The Yehudi Menuhin School, Surrey. She started playing violin at the age of 7 at the music
seminary of Tbilisi Conservatory in the class of Manana Kantaria and at the age of 8 she already became a national competition winner and also Winner of the Balys Dvarionas Iinternational Violin Competition. This was followed by successes in Italy “Andrea Postacchini” (2nd prize), “Piccolo violino magico” (special prize for the best performance of Bach), the Liana Isakadze international festival and the “Batumi
Music Fest”. In Budapest she won the Ilona Feher international violin competition, in Tbilisi she won the 2022 Marine Iashvili II international string competition, then
Erben music festival (Munich) 2022 – special prize – a new bow was awarded for 2 years. She also held solo concerts and took the masterclasses from famous musicians such as Schlomo Mintz, Julia Fischer and Vadim Gluzman.
Benny Kogan plays violin from the age of 5 studying with the legendary teacher violinist Gayane Pogosova, a pupil of Yuri Yankelevich. Benny is a music scholar at Sussex House School in London. At the age of ten he appeared as a soloist with Saint Mary Magdalene Music Society orchestra performing Charles de Berio Violin Concerto No 9.
Polina Kogan studied at the Lithuanian Academy of Music with Olga Šteinbergaitė and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with Philip Jenkins. After gaining the degree of Master of Music (Performance) with Distinction she was invited to teach at the RSAMD. Polina had lessons with Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia and Vladimir Ashkenazy. She was a winner of the Prokofiev Award at the Prokofiev International Competition in St Petersburg, the first prize at the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe Competition in London and the second prize at the Anton Rubinstein Competition in Israel. Polina has performed solo and as a chamber musician in Britain, USA, Israel, Switzerland, Poland and the Baltic countries and has performed concertos with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra and the Lithuanian National orchestra amongst others. Polina’s performances have been broadcast on Israel Radio, Classic FM, BBC Radio 3 and PBC (USA). Together with her husband Oleg Kogan she founded the Razumovsky Academy in 2006.
For booking please contact [email protected]