Introduction
Vivacello is an international classical music festival dedicated to cello music. The festival was founded in Moscow in 2008 by the acclaimed cellist Boris Andrianov, who still continues to serve as its permanent artistic director.
For the 2011 edition of the Vivacello festival Vangelis contributed two pieces specially composed for the event: ‘Elegy’ and ‘Dialogue’. On the 27th of September the Vivacello festival opened with the premiere of ‘Elegy’, a 10-minute minimalistic and moving monologue performed at the Moscow Philharmonic by the Moscow Soloists chamber ensemble conducted by Yuri Bashmet with Boris Andrianov on cello. A recording of the festival opening was later broadcast online. Note that Vangelis was not present at the performance, the piece was transcribed for cello and strings by Irina Valentinova-Karpukhina and Alexey Kurbatov.
According to Boris Andrianov ‘this is the first experience of Vangelis in such a genre. We have long been familiar with the composer. I specifically asked him to write a composition for the Vivacello festival. And he agreed, creating a lyrical elegy for the cello and chamber orchestra. The musical material of the composition is distinguished by the unpretentious beauty of the melody, as well as all the music of Vangelis. It seems to me that the composer amazingly managed to reveal the beauty of the sound of the cello and remain in his style’.
The second composition ‘Dialogue’ is a piece for orchestra, violin and cello, and was scheduled for performance on the 3rd of October 2008 during the closing of the festival, with Julian Rachlin on violin and Boris Andrianov on cello. Unfortunately this performance was canceled due to organizational and financial problems, after which ‘Dialogue’ was never heard of again.
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