Avi Avital, mandolin

In 2010 Avi Avital became the first mandolinist ever to be nominated for a Grammy Award in the classical music category. After studying in Jerusalem and Padua, he built an international career performing in the most prestigious concert halls and working with leading orchestras, conductors and chamber musicians around the world. Through his work he makes a significant contribution to the contemporary development of the mandolin repertoire and regularly commissions new works for his instrument. He is also active as the founder of the ensemble Between Worlds, in which he explores the interplay between classical and traditional music from different cultural backgrounds. Since 2013 he has recorded exclusively for the Deutsche Grammophon label, for which he has released several award-winning recordings, including the album Concertos with Il Giardino Armonico, which received an Opus Klassik award.

The programme of the evening interweaves Baroque heritage with new perspectives on the mandolin. At its core is Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor, one of six works in the cycle composed between 1717 and 1720. Four dance-based movements lead to the monumental concluding Chaconne. Between the individual movements of the Partita the focus shifts to the Prelude for Mandolin Solo by Giovanni Sollima, written especially for Avital and revealing the instrument’s rhythmically vital character, followed by “Nigun” from Ernest Bloch’s Baal Shem, which depicts a scene from the life of the founder of Hasidic Judaism, and the Partita for Mandolin Solo by Filippo Sauli, a composer who explored the technical and expressive possibilities of the mandolin, primarily within dance forms, in the early 18th cenury