The Volodymyr Krainev Invites Fourth International Music Festival ends

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this event, which can be at least proved by the full houses at Ukraine’s National Philharmonic. The festival lasted for nine days, with each concert being a real treat for the audiences. Krainev’s concerts are distinguished for their particular hail fellow well met quality, when world famous musicians like Volodymyr Krainev, Naum Shtarkman, Makvala Kasrashvili perform on the Lysenko Hall of Columns stage shoulder to shoulder with Krainev contest laureates, as well as the famous pianist’s students, such as the maestro’s favorite tyro, Ihor Chetuyev, or the tiny Dasha Dashutina.

With each passing year, the festival is expected to discover new talents, and it must be admitted that what the audiences saw this year lived up to their expectations. One of the festival’s main discoveries is perhaps the Bulgarian piano duet, Aglika Genova and Liuben Dimitrov. These performers stand out owing to the high culture of ensemble play and heart-to-heart consonance. It is no accident that Krainev said this is the world’s best duet of today. His words can be confirmed by the fact that Genova and Dimitrov have won the top prizes at practically all the piano duet contests in the world.

I think many will agree with me that one of the brightest figures at the festival was Ihor Chetuyev, a pianist who had combined depth and willpower and whose play simultaneously features subtle humor and irony sometimes bordering on sarcasm. He brilliantly demonstrated all this in the Shostakovich concerto he played, accompanied by the National Philharmonic Orchestra. On that day, the piano was played by a true creator, a poet, as Mr. Krainev himself said.

According to Krainev, he wanted to invite Yelena Obraztsova and Zurab Sotkilava to the final concert, musicians with whom the maestro shared the Peter Tchaikovsky Contest prize in 1970. It was planned to call the concert Thirty Years Later. Much to our regret, the maestro’s wishes were not fated to come true this year due to the tight tour schedule of these singers. Nonetheless, I think that if great musicians gather at the Krainev soirees next year, the listeners will hardly be fretting over this function not being timed to coincide with a certain jubilee. In addition, Thirty-One Years Later is a far more original title.