LAMENTO – a personal affair
You have referred to “Lamento” on the one hand as an “insane project”, on the other as a “matter of the heart”. How do insanity and the heart go together?
Insanity and the heart fortunately go very well together. The project of doing Bach concertos with a chamber ensemble of solo strings had been going around in my head for almost a decade. And Bach, in a way, is the core of the programme on this CD. His music often tends to be combined with other works: with new music, or with Romantic music. Piazzolla’s Four Seasons are often coupled with those of Vivaldi. Thus the idea of combining Baroque music with tango isn’t new. But this specific repertoire is something quite different.
Then we have my personal journey with tango: my ensemble Cuarteto SolTango and my passion for dance. What grew out of all this? A rather large-scale project (for chamber music), with musicians from many different countries – and an intense week I will probably never forget.
Bach and tango: why, for your ears, do they fit so well together?
First and foremost, they obviously each stand for themselves. We play tango as tango, and Bach as Bach. The combination emerged from my personal connection with each of them. What is more, the Lamento runs like a red thread through the entire programme. I hear lamentation in each of these styles. The title Lamento is inspired by the tango song Mi lamento, and lamentation naturally plays an outstanding role in Bach’s music: not always, but quite often. (Excerpt from the booklet)
JONIAN ILIAS KADESHA has Greek-Albanian roots and lives in Berlin. The young musician not only
speaks Greek, Albanian, German and English but also has a keen interest in philosophy and rhetoric.
His playing is characterized by stylistic accuracy and exactness in his articulation, in the interpretation
of early to contemporary works. With boundless sound imagination Kadesha is always in search of
something new.
He is a prizewinner at Deutscher Musikwettbewerb, Windsor International and the Leopold Mozart
Violin Competition.
The young violinist recently made his debut with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in the Tivoli Copenhagen,
with the RTE Orchestra at the National Concert Hall Dublin, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra,
the New Russian State Orchestra under Yuri Bashmet and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the
Kronberg Festival. Kadesha made his debut with the Athens State Orchestra in autumn 2019 performing
Skalkottas‘ Violin Concerto, whose Small Suites he has recorded for CAvi-music together with works
by Enescu and Ravel.
Kadesha appears in major concert halls and well-known festivals throughout Europe, such as the
London Wigmore Hall, Handelsbeurs Concertzaal Gent, Louvre Paris, Philharmonie Berlin, Salle
Moliere Lyon, Salle Garnier Montecarlo, and the Golden Hall Augsburg as well as the Schubertiade,
the Heidelberger Frühling, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Boswiler Sommer, Mantua
Chamber Music Festival or the Resonances Festival in Belgium, among others.
He has performed with orchestras such as the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the
Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestras Lübeck and Coburg as well as
the Albanian and Greek radio orchestras.
Chamber music connects him with renowned musicians such as Martha Argerich, Steven Isserlis,
Nicolas Altstaedt, Thomas Demenga and Gábor Takács-Nagy, Ilya Gringolts and Pekka Kuusisto. He
was also heard in Kronberg‘s Chamber Music Connects the World and the Verbier Academy Festival.
Jonian Ilias Kadesha is co-founder of the award-winning Trio Gaspard, which is a regular guest at
music centers in Europe and the USA.
Kadesha studied with Antje Weithaas at the Kronberg Academy. His previous teachers included
Salvatore Accardo, Grigori Zhislin and Ulf Wallin. He studied chamber music with Hatto Beyerle in
Hannover and at the European Chamber Music Academy. Masterclasses with Ferenc Rados, Steven
Isserlis, Ivry Gitlis, Leonidas Kavakos and Eberhard Feltz complete his studies. Since 2018, Kadesha
has been supported by the Young Classical Artists Trust in the United Kingdom.
Kadesha plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1749), on private loan.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He enriched established German styles through his skill in counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. Bach's compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor, two Passions, and hundreds of cantatas. His music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth.
Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest in and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.
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