Jacob’s Dream Sonata Fantasia for Viola and Piano to be Performed in Germany
On September 13 and 14, Berlin will host two concerts featuring the premiere of Baruch Berliner’s Jacob’s Dream fantasy sonata for viola and piano, performed by virtuoso violist Andrey Gridchuk and pianist Mikhail Mordvinov.
Andrey Gridchuk is a remarkable musician who debuted as a soloist at the age of six with the philharmonic orchestra of his native Irkutsk. As a member of the Moscow Soloists ensemble, he performed at many of the world’s most prestigious venues until victories at two viola competitions—the 1984 All-Union Viola Competition in the USSR and the 1989 Maurice Vieux International Viola Competition in Orléans—paved the way for his distinguished solo career.
In 1994, he was appointed principal violist of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, a position he continues to hold today.
Since then, Mr. Gridchuk has become a sought-after soloist, performing with orchestras such as the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Oper Berlin Orchestra, the German National Theater and Weimar State Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, and many others. He has collaborated with conductors including Rudolf Barshai, Yuri Bashmet, Marco Boemi, Kent Nagano, Krzysztof Penderecki, Christian Thielemann, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Ulf Schirmer, Riccardo Chailly, Marek Janowski, Roman Kofman.
Pianist Mikhail Mordvinov is a multiple award winner and laureate of prestigious international competitions. Since 2000, he has been a soloist with the Moscow State Academic Philharmonic, and in 2004 he began teaching piano at the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music. Since 2016, he has held faculty positions at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin and at the Anton Rubinstein International Music Academy in Düsseldorf.
Competition victories propelled the pianist onto the international stage. His busy performance schedule spans Russia, most countries of Eastern and Western Europe, Japan, Korea, and the United States. Mr. Mordvinov is a frequent guest at prestigious music festivals, including the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Paris Chopin Festival in France; Music Festival in Portogruaro, International Chamber Music Festival of Cervo, and Trecastagni International Music Festival in Italy; the Athens Festival, the Berlin International Music Festival, Braunschweig Classix, and the Blurred Edges Festival in Germany; as well as Ars Longa, Art-November, the Diaghilev Festival, and Vozvrashchenie in Russia.
Mr. Mordvinov has worked with conductors such as Yuri Simonov, Damian Iorio, Vladimir Ponkin, Vladimir Verbitsky, Fedor Glushchenko, Karen Kornienko, Pavel Sorokin, Teodor Currentzis, Dmitry Vasiliev, Dmitry Polyakov, Velizar Genchev, Stephen Sloan, and others. He has performed with the Munich Philharmonic, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Ural, Omsk, Irkutsk, and Moscow Philharmonic Orchestras, as well as the musicaAeterna orchestra and choir.
Produced by Nachum Slutzker