Eiropas Ziemassvētki. Georgijs Osokins. Solokoncerts

Georgijs OSOKINS, piano

Programme: 
Johann Sebastian Bach/Ferruccio Busoni, Franz Liszt, Domenico Scarlatti, Pēteris Vasks, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Mieczysław Weinberg

Brilliant and unpredictable, charming and revolutionary: these are some of the words that influential music critics have used to describe Georgijs Osokins. The standing ovations after his performances have echoed through legendary festivals and prestigious concert halls in Tokyo, Hamburg, Berlin, Saltzburg, across Northern America, and right here in the musician’s homeland Latvia. The youngest member of the Osokins dynasty of pianists earned international acclaim with his vivid and surprising interpretations of Frederic Chopin’s music, which was underlined by his success in multiple competitions around this 19th century composer’s work, including the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. And with other composers’ work Georgijs Osokins’ interpretations are equally as deep and heartfelt, shocking and thoughtful, nuanced in tone and original. We will have the chance to experience this for ourselves in the solo concerts that Osokins will hold as part of the festival European Christmas, during which the acoustics of the Riga Great Guild Concert Hall will become a meeting point between modern world views and the soundscape of baroque and romanticism.
Alongside the Italian keyboard aficionado Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata, we will also hear his contemporary, baroque giant Johann Sebastian Bach’s monumental Chaconne in D minor in the masterful transcription by the legendary Ferruccio Busoni. Franz Liszt also earned the reputation of an outstanding concert pianist, and Georgijs has chosen to include multiple emotionally turbulent piano masterpieces from Liszt’s body of work, including Ballade No. 2 and Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata. Another composer who can be called a master of piano is the 20th century romanticist Sergei Rachmaninoff, and his poetically exquisite romances will go wonderfully with our own Pēteris Vasks’ atmospheric miniature Baltā Ainava (White Scenery).