Review of EMCY's Stars of Tomorrow Tour 2011 Concert in Passau

12.09.2011

This press review was released in the Passauer Neue Presse on 5th July 2011:

The adventure called music

Prize winner concert of the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth

Experiencing young professional musicians is one of the greatest pleasures of the ‘Festspiele Europäische Wochen’ in Passau if nothing else, because of its atmosphere. At this year’s prize winner concert of the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth (EMCY) in the ‘Großer Redoutensaal Passau’ it is still unsteady walking with high heeled shoes, the audience makes you nervous and the applause is still uncomfortable. Here, suffering and laughing while playing Schumann and Mendelssohn is still allowed. All in all, this special concert let you sense music as an enormous adventure and reveals what a great delight it is to have music in your life.

From an artistic view, these musicians surely are no longer unprofessional artists: their confident, masterly technique, their boundless creative will, their stylistic independence and their very professional culture of chamber music playing make it clear that these four young people already belong to the elite. Hrvoje Hresc from Croatia (16, cello) starts with a simply stupendous performance of Gaspar Cassadó’s cello suite. With its fluent tonal elegance and its glowing expressiveness this solo performance absolutely has studio quality. Léa Hennino from France (20, viola) convinces the audience with her performance of ‘Pavane’ by Philippe Hersant. She gets the maximum colour and sound out of the pleasant and deep sounding body of her viola. The audience is thrilled by her maximal sound control reaching the smallest nuances. Sofija Nikoska from Macedonia (20, violin) enchants the audience with her perfect intonation, her pure sound and her enraptured inwardness in Tomislav Zografski’s piece ‘Song for Violin’.

The most brilliant highlight of the concert is Mireia Frutos from Spain (20, piano): it is not just that she brings to life the piece ‘Almería’ from the ‘Iberia-suite’ by Isaac Albeniz playing in wistfully drawn images of shattering emotion but she appears totally unfazed by the immense technical demand of this composition. With her exceptionally confident playing, her artistic awareness beyond the sheets of music and her talent, she manages to grasp works as a coherent narrative whole. Due to that she is the beating heart of the chamber music performances giving both the C minor Trio by Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the Quartet in E flat Major by Schumann a splendid common pulse.

This prize winner concert has been indeed a real treat. Not least knowing that one day you can say: “I’ve seen them once before at the very beginning of their career in Passau…’