Latica Honda Rosenberg, Harmut Rohde and others

The Ljubljana Festival organizes masterclasses for student musicians from Slovenia and abroad and in this way broadens its activities to encompass the development of young artists. Outstanding musicians and teachers from some of Europe’s most prestigious educational institutions have been coming to Ljubljana year after year. They include cellist Jens-Peter Maintz (Berlin and Madrid), viola player Hartmut Rohde (Berlin and London), violinist Latica Honda Rosenberg (Berlin), bassoonist Ole Kristian Dahl (Mannheim) and pianists Evgeny Sinaiski (Vienna), Ken Nakasako (Berlin), Naoko Sonoda (Berlin and Weimar) and Rie Shimada (Mannheim and Frankfurt). This year’s series of concerts by masterclass teachers will open with César Franck’s romantic Cello Sonata. This will be followed by Kalebasse auf dem Handfächer, a new work by the German-Iranian composer Sarvenaz Safari written especially for Rohde and Maintz, and Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke for bassoon and piano. The first half of the concert will end with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing suite, based on incidental music composed for a Viennese production of Shakespeare’s comedy. After the interval we will hear one of Benjamin Britten’s more serious chamber works, a series of variations on a theme by Renaissance composer John Dowland entitled Lachrymae. The teachers’ concert will end with a performance of Ernst von Dohnányi’s modally inflected Serenade for String Trio, which draws inspiration from the counterpoint of Johannes Brahms.