Programme 12/5 — 4/6

The Prague Spring Festival regrets to inform you that, because of a broken arm, Ivan Moravec is unable to give his Prague Spring piano recital on the occasion of his birthday, in the Rudolfinum, Thursday, 27 May 2010. Instead, that evening’s concert will be given by Oleg Maisenberg. The Russian-Austrian piano virtuoso was, coincidentally, first presented to a Czech audience by the violinist Gidon Kremer at the Prague Spring Festival in 1974.

The programme of the substitute concert will include virtuoso compositions by Chopin and Schumann, both of whom have anniversaries this year (two hundred years since their births).

Mr Maisenbert, who is sixty-five years old, comes from the legendary hot house of talent, Odessa, Ukraine, and graduated from the famous Gnesin Academy of Music, Moscow. At the age of twenty-two he received Second Prize in the Franz Schubert International Competition, Vienna, where, that same year, he also won First Prize at the Vienna Competition for Music of the 20th Century. In addition to his many years of work with Gidon Kremer, which continues unabated to this day, he was, till 1980, a soloist in the Moscow Philharmonic. In 1981, Mr Maisenberg defected to Vienna and began an impressive international career with the Vienna Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Apart from another performance at the Prague Sring Festival in 1996, Czech concert-goers had a chance to hear Mr Maisenberg, for example, at the Musica Iudaica festival, the Strings of Autumn Festival, and recitals in the World Piano Music series presented by the Prague Symphony Orchestra.

The original tickets remain valid. For more information please contact us at +420 257 310 414 or an e-mail address vstupenky (at) festival.cz.