ALEXANDER GADJIEV (Italy/Slovenia) – CLOSING CONCERT

CLOSING CONCERT

Alexander Gadjiev, piano

Piano virtuoso Alexander Gadjiev is the personification of transnationalism. Born into an international family in Gorica, a city that unites two countries, he soon developed an extraordinary ability to absorb and process different musical styles and languages. He performed as a soloist with an orchestra for the first time at the age of nine, and at the age of ten he performed his first solo piano recital. At the age of seventeen, he graduated with honors and won the Premio Venezia, a prestigious piano competition for Italy’s most talented young musicians. After that, he became an unstoppable winner at the world’s most prominent piano competitions. He drew international attention to himself in 2015, when he won the first prize and the audience prize at the prestigious triennial Hamamatsu International Competition in Japan, and in 2017, when the jury was chaired by the legendary Martha Argerich. In 2018, he won the prestigious World Piano Masters competition in Monte Carlo. Between 2019 and 2022, he was a BBC New Generation Artist, and in the summer of 2021, he won first and several second prizes at the Sydney International Piano Competition, and then second place and the prize for the best sonata reconstruction at the 18th Chopin Competition in Warsaw. The Sydney competition opened the doors to the biggest stages of the southern hemisphere for him; thus, he closed 2022 magnificently with a more than three-month tour of Australia and the Far East, and in 2023 he played a tour in Japan. He recently performed with the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra in Vienna’s Musikverein and in Florence with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino orchestra and choir under the baton of the famous Zubin Mehta.

“The Festival Prečkanja – Sconfinamenti, which I imagine as a hybrid plant that has taken on various characteristics from different environments and is ready to survive even in the most extreme conditions, takes place in both its organisational and production parts between two neighbouring countries, in close contact between two neighbouring towns, Nova Gorica and Gorizia, but also more widely in the Italian and Slovenian cultural territory. In addition to educational events, the festival offers concerts of the highest level with established and emerging young musicians.

As the ancient Latin proverb “Ars longa, vita brevis” states, our aim is also to highlight both the knowledge of the masters of new and old generations, as well as the new approaches of young performers who inspire us with their efforts to establish themselves and discover the extraordinary wealth of world and local music.

This year’s programme will focus on the piano, an instrument capable of synthesising the most disparate sensibilities and having an almost infinite range of expression.

The closing of the Festival will see me involved with a “first time” that I am particularly pleased about: a recital at the Teatro Verdi in Gorizia, with works by Beethoven, Debussy, Bartok, Schumann and, in closing, the famous Second Sonata by Rachmaninov.

We look forward to seeing you there!”

Admission free.

In collaboration with: Terzo Teatro

Sponsored by: Municipality of Gorica