Lost musical treasures revived

Forgotten gems will be the theme as String Quartets Rediscovered perform for the Festival of Chichester.
Bogdan VacarescuBogdan Vacarescu
Bogdan Vacarescu

Their Amici Concerts performance will be on Wednesday, July 12 at 7.30pm in St Pancras Church, Eastgate Square.

Romanian violinist Bogdan Vacarescu presents his latest project – a classical ensemble reviving lost and rarely-played chamber music. The programme includes virtuoso string quartets by Antonio Bazzini and Fritz Kreisler.

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“String Quartetz Rediscovered is not the final name for the quartet,” Bogdan says. “It is very new. I just thought it’s up at the beginning of the year. I was thinking about going back to some classical music for a while but the whole point was doing some music that is hardly ever played. There is only one other quartet that did the Bazzini quartet, and they are in Italy. Bazzini was influenced by Rossini. I came across Bazzini a long time ago. He is very well known for one piece of music which is among the greatest pieces for music for violin in terms of virtuosity. He is very famous for that but very few people know his true background which was as an excellent chamber musician. Paganini discovered him and pursued him to follow a solo career which always came back to chamber music which he loved. He wrote six string quartets. I’m doing one and six to start with, and we are also going to do a quartet written by Kreisler, another quartet that is hugely underrated. It’s quite jazzy for quite long stretches. It seems quite Gershwinian which is quite a good contrast to the Bazzini which is pure melody.

“I really hope that these two will get all the people interested. We all know and love Shubert and so on but they have been played so much now that you think about going to a concert to hear them yet again… But is great to hear these pieces that are not played so much. It is interesting to hear something that is kind of new but also very old. For me it will be interesting. Bazzini was appreciated by Verdi and he was also a teacher of Puccini. I don’t know how he is so overlooked and so little talked about when he was quite a prominent composer and interpreter and a massive virtuoso on violin. I am on a mission to play as much music as I can of all this beautiful forgotten music.”

Bogdan is a Romanian concert violinist who has toured internationally as a soloist and chamber musician in halls such as Athenaeum in Bucharest, Sydney Opera House and The U.N. Concert Hall in New York. He has performed solo concertos under conductors including Daisuke Soga and Ilarion Galati and recorded film music for Oscar winners Stephen Warbeck and Gabriel Yared.

He will be joined by Japanese violinist Akiko Ishikawa, an internationally-touring chamber musician and occasional soloist. Recent performances include a recital at St Martin in the Fields and as a soloist with the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra in Taiwan.

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Brooke Day on viola grew up and started his musical career in Canada. He moved to England in 2007 to do his masters degree at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

Vanessa Lucas-Smith also performs. Vanessa is the cellist of Britain’s oldest chamber group, the Allegri Quartet. A regular performer at the Wigmore Hall, QEH, Purcell room, Kings Place and at festivals throughout the world – Edinburgh, Kronberg, Orlando, Cervo, SoWeCa (Canada), she can be heard on radio – BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, Radio Netherlands and on TV and film as a frequent session musician.

Tickets from the Chichester Box Office at The Novium.

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