Piano prodigy Lukas Vondracek, award-winning artists set for Telavi music fest

Internationally acclaimed piano prodigy Lukas Vondracek and award-winning violinist Jiyoon Lee will be among the artists joining Georgia's celebrated pianist Eliso Virsaladze in this year's Telavi International Music Festival launching on Saturday.

Vondracek, winner of the 2016 International Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition and praised as one of the "greatest piano talents of our times" by Stuttgarter Zeitung, will open the festival in eastern Georgia's winemaking province of Kakheti.

The young artist, who played at the prestigious Carnegie Hall venue in New York at the age of 16, will perform works by Antonin Dvorak and Sergei Rachmaninoff at Telavi's Vazha-Pshavela State Drama Theatre.

The concert will showcase the vast talents of the prize winner of the Hilton Head, San Marino and UNISA international piano competitions.

His performance will be followed on Sunday with a chamber music concert dedicated to the memory of famed Swiss clarinettist Eduard Brunner, who died earlier this year.

It will see Virsaladze joined by the David Oistrakh String Quartet featuring Andrey Baranov and Rodion Petrov on violin, Fedor Belugin on viola and Alexey Zhilin on cello.

The evening will feature musical program involving Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Dvorak.

Beside performances in Telavi, the festival will also visit Tsinandali, a town known for the chateau-museum of the 19th century Georgian poet Alexander Chavchavadze.

Czech piano prodigy Lukas Vondracek will play for the audience of the festival on Saturday. Photo: Irene Kim.

Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky, winner of the 1990 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, will offer the audience to hear a piano recital at the estate.

A celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Tbilisi State Conservatoire will see students of the school mark the date with their performance in the capital city.

A roster of established and emerging artists will then take over the program on October 14, with the orchestra of the festival led by conductor Ariel Zuckermann.

They will be joined by the Tbilisi Chamber Orchestra — also known as Georgian Sinfonietta — as well as oboist Giorgi Kobulashvili, violinist Jiyoon Lee and pianist Daniel Petrica Ciobanu.

The evening will aim to present the talents of Carl Nielsen Violin Competition award-winning artist Lee and Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition Public Prize-winner Ciobanu, along with their Georgian counterparts.

South Korean violinist Jiyoon Lee is in the roster of artists for the October 14 concert. Photo: Kaupo Kikkas.

The closing evening of the festival will feature Zuckermann again leading the orchestra as Virsaladze is joined by the Verona International Piano Competition prize-winning pianist Mamikon Nakhapetov and Russian cellist Dmitri Prokofiev on cello.

The Telavi International Music Festival was established by Virsaladze, a prize-winner of international piano competitions and recipient of prestigious state prizes of Russia, Georgia and the Soviet Union, in the 1980s.

In early years it attracted some of the greatest performers from across the USSR, with the event discontinued in 1988.

It was in 2010 that Virsaladze was able to restart the classical music event and turn it into an annual festival with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia.

This year's festival will conclude on October 15.