The Zagreb Quartet and guitarist Ana Vidović had their first performance together last night, 2 August, in the Rector’s Palace atrium, dazzling the Festival audiences with their virtuoso renditions of the impressive classical programme of the evening which consisted of Beethoven’s String Quartet in D major, Vivaldi’s Concerto for guitar and strings in D major and C major as arranged by Karl Scheit for guitar and string quartet, Ruždjak’s Classical Garden and Ravel’s String Quartet in F major.
The joint performance of the exalted Croatian chamber music ensemble the Zagreb Quartet – who has, in April 2019, celebrated 100 years since its founding – and guitar prodigy Ana Vidović consisted of two Vivaldi concertos for lute and mandolin in arrangement for guitar and strings by the virtuoso and pedagogue Karl Scheit, who is known as the “Austrian Segovia.” Ana Vidović had her first performance at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival in 1997, a performance which won her the coveted Orlando Award when she was just seventeen, making Vidović the the youngest winner of the award. She returned to the Festival exactly twenty years ago, in 1999, for the second time. “The Rector’s Palace is a wonderful venue, especially for classical guitar. Its acoustics are ideal and such perfect places are in fact very rare, [places] which are at the same time beautiful, and that inspire musicians in a very special way,” said Vidović on the occasion of her eagerly-awaited third performance at the Festival. She has, since her first concert at the tender age of eight, performed all over the world and delighted audiences in more than a thousand concerts at prestigious halls and concert venues. She has been, for over 15 years now, living and working in the USA and her appearances on Croatian stages have been, unfortunately, rare. Last evening’s performance was also the first musical collaboration of Vidović and the Zagreb Quartet who have been, since their establishment 100 years ago, regular guests at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. Over the years, the Zagreb Quartet have held around thirty concerts at the Festival since their first performance in 1958. Their last individual one was 10 years ago, on their 90th anniversary, when they were joined by singer Krešimir Špicer. The great interest for the concert by the esteemed Quartet and guitar master Vidović comes as no surprise then. The musicians delivered a brilliant interpretation of the carefully thought-out programme to which, after Vivaldi, Vidović added Francisco Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra) as a special musical treat for the exuberant audiences in the Rector’s Palace. Music lovers were dazzled also by the Quartet’s delivery of Beethoven's third string quartet, in D major, the most lyrical and sophisticated of the Opus 18, Ruždjak’s Classical Garden – the piece which the Quartet first performed in 1978, right here in the Rector’s Palace, and Ravel’s only string quartet which the musical genius composed in his student days.
Next on the 70th Festival's music programme are international classical music sensations pianist Yuja Wang and clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer who will be holding a concert in the Rector's palace atrium on Tuesday, 6 August, at 9.30pm. Tickets are available for purchase at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival website www.dubrovnik-festival.hr or via www.ulaznice.hr ticketing service and at the box office of the Festival Palace (Od Sigurate 1) every day from 9am to 9.30pm. All residents of Dubrovnik-neretva county are offered a 30% discount on all tickets. Purchases made with Mastercard® and Maestro® cards receive a 10% discount while all purchases and orders over 500 kuna receive a 30% discount voucher for Festival souvenirs.