Hungarian violinist Kristóf Baráti is recognised increasingly across the globe as a musician of extraordinary quality with a vast expressive range and impeccable technique, and Festival audiences will have an opportunity to see him in concert on Thursday, 10 August in the Rector’s Palace atrium, at 9:30 p.m. where he will be joined by his compatriots, the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra. On the programme are pieces by Mendelssohn, Mozart, Saint-Saëns and Bartók.
This musical evening in the Rector’s Palace will be started off with the one movement String Symphony No. 10 in B minor by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, after which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, known as a large and exceptionally technically demanding piece, will be performed, as well as Camille Saint-Saëns’ Introduction et Rondo capriccioso, op. 28, dedicated to the brilliant Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate. Lastly, two pieces by Béla Bartók are on the repertoire, the ‘lighter’, neoclassical Divertimento, Sz. 113 and folk inspired Romanian Folk Dances, Sz. 56.
Hungarian violinist Kristóf Baráti is recognised for the poetry and after spending much of his childhood in Venezuela where he played as soloist with many of the country’s leading orchestras, he returned to Budapest to study at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and was later mentored by Eduard Wulfson, himself a student of Milstein and Menuhin. Still residing in Budapest today, Baráti performs regularly across Hungary and together with István Vardái, he is Artistic Director of the Kaposvár International Chamber Music Festival. Baráti plays the 1703 “Lady Harmsworth” Stradivarius, by kind arrangement with the Stradivarius Society of Chicago.
The Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1985 in Veszprém, the historic Hungarian city with rich musical heritage. The orchestra has been led since then by its artistic leader and violin soloist Péter Kováts. Their repertoire ranges from Baroque to contemporary music, and even to jazz. They made the premiere and/or the Hungarian premiere of a significant number of contemporary compositions as well. The International Auer Music Festival was launched in 2014 by the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra. Both the MCO and Péter Kováts were honoured with one of the most prestigious art prizes of Hungary, the Bartók–Pásztory Prize, in 2010.
Tickets for the concert are available via the festival website www.dubrovnik-festival.hr or the service www.ulaznice.hr, at the box office in the Festival Palace (Od Sigurate 1) every day from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and in front of the DTS building (Vukovarska St) from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.