Malta International Music Festival

2021

Maltese Eurovision Star

15 June - 11 July 2022

20
June
8pm
Maltese Eurovision Star

Kyiv Virtuosi Orchestra

Dmitry Yablonsky(USA ∙ Israel ∙ Spain)

Bernice Samut Attardpiano(Malta)

Floriana
Robert Samut Hall


Dmitry Yablonsky

Grammy-nominated conductor, cellist, and conductor Dmitry Yablonsky was born in Moscow into a musical family. He began playing the cello when he was 5 years old and was accepted to the Central Music School for gifted children. At the age of 9, he gave his orchestral debut playing Haydn’s cello concerto. Since then, his career had taken him to the most important stages in the world, such as the Carnegie Hall, La Scala, Moscow Great Hall, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall, Taiwan National Hall, Teatre Mogador, Cite de la Musique, Louvre, among others.

He regularly plays with important artists as Boris Berezovsky, Vadim Repin, Shlomo Mintz, Itamar Golan, Yuri Bashmet, and has collaborated with artists as Monserrat Caballé, Roberto Alagna, Olga Borodina, ... He played Mº Penderecki’s Cello Concerto with the composer at the podium.

He has also an important career as Conductor that begun in Camerino (Italy), where he had his first opportunity to conduct an orchestra. He was 26 years old and since then, has collaborated with many important orchestras as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra (principal guest conductor 2000-2004), Novaya Rossiya (Principal Guest Conductor 2012-), Israel Symphony Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, Antwerpen Orchestra, North Netherlands Orchestra, Maastricht Orchestra, Russian State Orchestra, Orchestre National d'Ile de France, Taiwan National Orchestra, Catania Opera Orchestra, Holland Symphonia, Bologna Chamber Orchestra, Ofunam (México), etc..

His mother is the famed pianist Oxana Yablonskaya, with whom he immigrated in 1977 to New York where he studied with Lorne Munroe (solo cellist of New York Philharmonic Orchestra), David Soyer, cellist of Guarneri quartet, and with Aldo Parisot.

In the summer of 1979, at the age 16, Dmitry was accepted to participate in Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and was the youngest participant. There, he had the opportunity to meet many great musicians as M. Horszowski, M. Tree, M. Schneider, M. Foley... and after playing for David Soyer, cellist of Guarneri quartet, he offered him to come to Curtis Institute of Music to study with him.

In 2010 Dmitry Yablonsky received the Diploma of the Honorary Academician at the Independent Academy of Liberal Arts at the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has transcribed and edited works for cello, which was released by International Music Company and Dover Publications. Naxos records released his recording of all 40 Popper etudes for solo cello in the fall of 2008, which received great critical acclaim.

But maybe, his most important recording is the Piano trio recording for Erato/ Warner with Vadim Repin and Boris Berezovsky that has won numerous awards.

Dmitry Yablonsky has an enthusiastic and charismatic character that takes him to initiate many projects. He has organized many festivals all over the world and is the artistic director of Gabala Festival in Azerbaijan.

Dmitry Yablonsky is Music Director of Kiev Virtuosi and Conductor Laureate of Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Since fall 2016, he teaches at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University and has been recently named Head of International Relations of the same University.

Dmitry plays two cellos: a Joseph Filius Andrea Guarneri and a Matteo Gofriller.

Bernice Samut Attard

Piano

22-year old Bernice Sammut Attard is one of Malta’s leading young musicians. She is a pianist and violinist who just finished her 4th and final year of her Bachelor of Music degree at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow (a world Top 3 institution in the QS World University Rankings 2021). She studies piano with Professors Fali Pavri and Petras Geniušas. Ruth Hahn is her violin teacher. In September, Bernice will start her Masters. Most recently, Bernice has been awarded the Conservatoire’s prestigious Sibelius Essay Prize for her work on Scriabin’s Modernist Ideas and the ABRSM Teaching Diploma with Distinction. She is the winner of the Malta Eurovision Young Musicians 2018 competition and represented Malta in Edinburgh in the same year, giving an 18-min recital which was broadcasted live and watched by around 5 million people - a performance which was highly praised amongst many local and foreign musicians. She has performed in many countries including the UK, Poland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Seattle.

On the 4th of June 2022, Bernice played a recital at the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Malta consisting of works by Wagner/Liszt, Bach, Bartok and Chopin.

At the start of this year, Bernice played Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto with her professor Petras Geniušas. This year’s conservatoire projects included her playing the Dvorak Piano Quintet, a solo piano recital in June and playing as part of a piano duo during the Piano Festival.

In 2020, she was very lucky to have had her piano recital happen exactly prior to the cancellation of events due to the Covid-19 pandemic. On the 1st of March, Bernice gave a 1hr piano recital at the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Malta.

Bernice performed the Grieg Piano Concerto with a number of orchestras ‒ including the North Caucasus Orchestra, the Eurasian Symphony Orchestra, the Ryazan Symphony Orchestra and the Astrakhan Symphony of the Astrakhan Opera and Ballet Theatre ‒ collaborating with conductors like Alexei Galea Cavallazzi, Mikhail Kirchhoff, Sergey Oselkov and William Garfield Walker. These concerts were organised by the European Foundation for support of Culture as part of the “Days of Maltese Music” programme in Armenia, Kazakhstan and Russia.

She was the first Maltese to attend the UK’s prestigious music school – Chetham’s School of Music, in Manchester, where she attended 6th form and studied piano and violin as a joint principal study with Duncan Glenday and Ruth Hahn respectively from 2016-2018. In Malta, she started her music studies at an early age, studying piano with Karen Briscoe and violin with Marcelline Agius.

In 2017, she was a finalist in the Chetham's Bosendorfer competition and in the same year she was awarded 2nd Prize in the Malta International Music Competition together with an honourable mention prize in violin and joint 3rd Prize and joint best Maltese pianist in the Malta International Piano Competition.

Kyiv Virtuosi Orchestra

Grammy Nominated cellist/conductor Dmitry Yablonsky has been Chief Conductor of Kyiv Soloists for 3 years before deciding to organise a renovated orchestra, Kyiv Virtuosi. All musicians were hand picked to join this exclusive ensemble and immediate success was obvious. All concerts in Kyiv are performed to a sold out audience. Musicians in Kyiv Virtuosi are the best chamber music players and professional soloists, who performed all over the world from Paris to Japan and from London to San Francisco, not to mention many countries in South America. In addition to the intense activity as a chamber orchestra, Kyiv Virtuosi are also a symphony orchestra that is very demanded for special projects. In summer 2016, Kyiv Virtuosi chamber orchestra and Kyiv Virtuosi Symphony orchestra were both in residence of Gabala Music Festival in Azerbaijan, and have toured Italy, France, Spain and Switzerland. In February 2017 Dmitry Yablonsky become the initiator of the tour devoted to the 25th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Izrael. There were 17 concerts in the different places such as: Herzliya, Rishon, Le Zion, Motzkin, Tel-Aviv, Rehovot, Beer-Sheva, Haifa, Hahariya, Ashkelon, Or Akiva, Petah Tikva, Modiꞌin.

A symphonic serie with important soloists have been organized at the Franco Theatre in Kyiv, with a great welcome by the audience and specialized critic.

Kyiv Virtuosi perform and tour around the world, and are starting a very vast and intense recording schedule for Naxos Records, with Chamber Symphonies by Shostakovich and Silvestrov among others.

Programme

Coming soon...

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