Evgeni Irshai is one of the most important contemporary Slovak composers. This year he celebrates his 70th. On this occasion, his joint concert with Milan Paľa will take place in the hall of the Convent of the Brothers of Mercy. The concert will feature works by the personality.
“Compositions for string instruments occupy a rather large place in my work. It is particularly true for works featuring solo violin, violin and piano or violin and orchestra. There are two important reasons for this. First, my father was an excellent violinist and it was only through the wheels of fortune he played only in the orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg all his life. Although I remember as a kid that he had occasional concerts as a soloist. The second important reason is that, by the will of fate, I met and became friends with excellent violinist and musician Milan Paľa in Slovakia. All my compositions for violin that I have composed in Slovakia are inspired by Milan Paľa. And I am very happy that Milan premiered all these compositions of mine,” says Evgeni Irshai. The gala concert is announced for 19 October 2021 at 7 p.m. in the hall of the Convent of the Brothers of Mercy in Brno.
Evgeni Markovich Irshai (*1951) comes from a Russian musical family. He completed his first musical studies at the Special Musical School at the Leningrad Conservatory, and went on to study composition and piano at the conservatory based in his native Leningrad, too. He subsequently worked as a piano teacher at the Leningrad and St. Petersburg conservatories and also gave concerts as a solo pianist. In the 1990s, he started in Slovakia as an accompanist for the State Opera in Banská Bystrica; while in Bystrica, he also taught at the Conservatory of Jan Levoslav Bella and at the Department of Music at the Faculty of Arts of the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. From 2001 to the present he has been working at the Composition and Conducting Department at the Academy of Performing Arts (VŠMU) in Bratislava. Especially in recent years he has been a composer to order for specific performers from Slovakia and abroad; in addition to Milan Paľa, they included Aleksander Gabryš, Ondrej Olos, Zuzana Paulechová, Aleksander Chernušenko, Ladislav Fančovitz, Adriana Kučerová, Jan Kalinowski, Rastislav Štúr and many others. Evgeni Irshai’s work is characterised by experiments with traditional sound, tempo, rhythm, harmony and melody; it is powerful in its musical expression and contains elements of Orthodox liturgical music. While Evgeni was described as a member of Russian “late post-conservatism” at the end of the 20th century, his compositional work is characterised more by a sensitive selection from the European and Russian musical traditions and the transformation of musical material in his own original way.
PROGRAMME:
EVGENI IRSHAI:
Sonata for Edward Grieg for violin and piano
Sonata No. 2 “Hate” for violin and piano
Sonata No. 3 for violin and piano
Sonata No. 4 “Who knows from which one of trash, from silence...” for violin and piano – PREMIERE
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