Kuhmo Chamber Music to receive award at Cremona

27.9.2018

Kuhmo Chamber Music’s Artistic Director Vladimir Mendelssohn will receive the Cremona Music Award on Friday 28 September in Cremona. Conductor Valeri Gergiev, violinist Maxim Vengerov and composerGiya Kancheli are among those also receiving awards.  Kuhmo Chamber Music’s award is in the category ‘Projects’, the first festival to be so honoured. The event will also see the first performance of Vladimir Mendelssohn’s new work for piano, violin, viola, cello and narrator.

The reasons given for this token of recognition included the fact that the Festival has a unique format. The concerts put on over the two-week period mix the very rare with the familiar and famous musicians with rising stars,with an informal approach that avoids cult stardom. The judges said that the Kuhmo Festival was an innovative example of something that also works in terms of production and finances, thanks to the enthusiasm of the musicians.

The spirit of Kuhmo will be very much alive at Cremona with the premiere of Vladimir Mendelssohn’s piece, as the ensemble will be formed on site, festival-style, and three young Italian musicians will be playing with Mendelssohn himself.

Director of Cremona Music, Roberto Prosseda, thinks highly of Kuhmo Chamber Music. He says that at Kuhmo no player is a star: it is the music that counts. According to him, Kuhmo is the Stradivari of festivals.

All those receiving the award this year represent the best from the world of music. The Cremona Music Award goes to Valeri Gergiev, conductor, to Maxim Vengerov, musician, and to Giya Kancheli, composer. Other recipients include the Italian musicologist Alessandro Baricco and guitar builder Hermann Hauser III.

The awards have been given since 2014, and earlier recipients includethe Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Shlomo Mintz, Krysztof Penderecki, Alfred Brendel and Michael Nyman.

The event, which takes place 28─30 September, is host to the world’s leading instrument makers and retailers as well as numerous international artists, all congregating at the hometown of Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati. Originally the event was just a meeting place for violin builders, but later it became an internationally important venue for musical professionals. Last year it attracted 17,000 visitors.

More information:

http://events.cremonamusica.com/en/events/?event=120

Kuhmo Chamber Music, tel. +358 8 652 0936, www.kuhmofestival.fi