Press Information, 13.February 2013

"intonations – The Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival" from 20 to 25 April 2013 at the Jewish Museum Berlin

The ticket sale for "intonations", the chamber music festival of the capital, has started successfully. From 20 to 25 April "intonations – the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival" will be held at the Jewish Museum Berlin for the second time. The festival, which was founded 15 years ago by Elena Bashkirova in Jerusalem, will now continue in the Glass Courtyard of the Museum. With the festival, the Jewish Museum Berlin is launching a new musical project.
For six days, music lovers will be able to experience a wide variety of chamber music, from classical to contemporary compositions of the highest caliber. International solo artists and top musicians from renowned orchestras such as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, as well as selected emerging players have followed the call of festival director Elena Bashkirova. In addition to well-known musicians like Daniel Barenboim, Gideon Kremer and Isabelle van Keulen, the festival will present several artists that are so far only known to a small circle of experts but nonetheless rank among the world elite.

"intonations" 2013

Besides the classics such as Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and Ludwig van Beethoven, the focus of this year’s program is on the works of great composers whose contributions have been unjustly forgotten because of persecution, expulsion and concentration camps. These include Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krása, Viktor Ullmann and Erwin Schulhoff, who were murdered by the Nazis and whose oeuvre was only rediscovered within the last twenty years.

Concert Highlights and Accompanying Program "intonations" 2013

The first night of the festival will showcase the world premiere of an oeuvre composed specifically for this occasion, the piece "Colors of Dust" by the Israeli composer Ayal Adler. In 2008, this work received the prestigious "Israeli Prime Minister Award for Composers". Another highlight is the performance of Igor Stravinsky´s "L’histoire du soldat", based on a text by Charles-Ferdinand, presented on the third night. The actor Dominique Horwitz will perform the part of the speaker. On 21 April, Dmitri Bashkirov, the internationally acclaimed pianist and music teacher, will teach a master´s class in the Glass Courtyard – listeners are welcome. Admirers of Alfred Schnittke's piano quintet can look forward to the "Critics' Quartet" (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik e.V.). The panel made up of renowned music reviewers will discuss different recordings of the piece which will afterwards be performed by top musicians.

A Music Program of Contrasts

Over the course of six days, the concert program will feature classics and rediscoveries: among them Gideon Klein, well-known in the 1930s mostly as a highly gifted piano player; in his music he tried out both twelve-tone music as well as the integration of folk music elements. As a representative of the Czech avant-garde, Pavel Haas emulated the modernism of composers such as Strawinsky, Milhaud und Honegger, while Hans Krása never questioned tonality as a basis for his music. Viktor Ullmann's works were once again rediscovered by the general public with the Amsterdam premiere of his chamber opera "The Emperor of Atlantis" in 1975. And Erwin Schulhoff, who – at the recommendation of Antonín Dvořák – received piano lessons at the Prague conservatory when he was still a child, had his finger on the pulse of the times with his individual mélange of traditional music, jazz rhythms and an expanded tonality. Mieczysław Weinberg, unjustly considered an epigone of Shostakovich for a long time, had to escape first from the Nazis and later from Stalin's regime of terror. Other musicians represented are Alfred Schnittke, who was unable to work freely as an artist in the Soviet Union even after Stalin had died, as well as Olivier Messiaen, whose »Quartet for the End of Time« premiered on the evening of 15 January 1941 in the  "theater hut" of the German prisoner's camp in Görlitz-Moys.

From Jerusalem to Berlin

Without doubt, the chamber music festival founded by Elena Bashkirova in 1998 ranks as one of the the most important cultural events in Israeli music life. In April 2012, the special spirit of the "Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival" could be experienced in Berlin for the first time, when it premiered with great success in the Jewish Museum Berlin under the title of "intonations" . In 2013, this successful cooperation is now continued at the invitation of W. Michael Blumenthal, General Director of the museum. "I am very happy to have found another artistic home here in Berlin", says Elena Bashkirova.