La controversia musicale - Christoph Soldan (Piano)

In collaboration with Ente Villa Carlotta
The ticket includes the visit of Villa Carlotta. You can enter the garden and the museum from 16:00. Concert will take place at 18:30. Festival box office at Villa Carlotta opens at 16:00.

PROGRAMMA

Great piano music from the 19th century is on the program in this special evening with pianist Christoph Soldan. The two protagonists Brahms and Liszt are representative of very different aesthetic-musical conceptions. Liszt composed mainly on literary models. He, the creator of the symphonic poem, dedicated himself to what we generally call program music. Brahms, on the other hand, saw himself in the tradition of Beethoven and preferred to understand music as absolute music. Christoph Soldan shows that today we consider both composers as creators of brilliant music using the example of Brahms’ Handel Variations and Liszt’s “Années de pélérinage”.

Johannes BRAHMS: Variazioni su un tema di Händel op. 24

Franz LISZT: da Années de pélérinage
Sposalizio
Les jeux d’eau à la villa d’Este
Angelus 

THE ARTIST

Born in 1964, the pianist studied with Prof. Eliza Hansen and Christoph Eschenbach at the Hamburg Academy of Music. The breakthrough to lively international concert activity came through a joint tour with Leonard Bernstein in the summer of 1989. The world-famous conductor Christoph Soldan commented: “I am impressed by the spiritual greatness of this young musician.” Since then, Soldan has performed numerous tours with renowned orchestras throughout Europe. Piano recital tour in October 1997 in Mexico and other Central American countries. In August 1998 he made his debut in Salzburg and in the Chamber Music Hall of the Philharmonie in Berlin, in May 1999 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. In March 2000 three piano recitals in Japan. Radio and television productions at Hessischer Rundfunk, Deutschlandfunk, SWR, ORF and ZDF. Bayerischer Rundfunk recorded his piano recital live in the Munich residence in October 1998 and his concert in the Musiktage Bad Brückenau in May 1999. Further live recordings at Radio Bremen and Bayerischer Rundfunk in summer 2002. 1996 to 2006 Christoph Soldan recorded the complete Mozart piano concertos together with the Cappella Istropolitana, the Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim and the Schlesische Kammerphilharmonie Katowice. The concert cycle ended in January 2006 with the piano concertos for 2 and 3 pianos.

The pas de deux for dance and piano – “moments of a lifetime” – was developed by his wife, the dancer and choreographer Stefanie Goes. This theatrical feature film had its premiere in Stuttgart in May 2000 and has changed constantly since then. To date, a total of 7 different versions have been created. Since 2000, Christoph Soldan has worked regularly with the writer Peter Härtling. In the spring of 2001 he played in Hamburg and Berlin, as well as concerts as part of the Prague Spring and with the Baden-Baden Philharmonic. In September 2002 live recordings at the Augsburger Mozartsommer and at the Maulbronn monastery. In January 2004 the new dance piece “Something of People and Angels” debuted, followed by a tour through South Africa. Since 2007 he has been working as a conductor in connection with the performance of piano concertos by Bach and Mozart. He currently performs piano recitals, recital concerts, children’s concerts, various tours with a total of 5 Mozart Piano Concertos, the Schumann Piano Concerto, Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto, the Double Concerto of Mendelssohn, Brahms’ Piano Quintet opus 34, Schubert’s “Trout Quintet”, Chopin’s Piano Concerto in E minor, Ravel’s Concerto in G major in Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Poland, Slovak Republic and the United States.

The Deutsche Presse describes Christoph Soldan as an artistic personality who, in contrast to a purely technical-virtuosic orientation, deals with the spiritual density and spiritual dimension of a work of art. This demand on music and oneself has become quite rare nowadays.