Next Generation at its best

As some may have realized, today I have been to Switzerland to listen to a concert. The concert was called „Next Generation“ and was part of the VP Bank Classic Festival in Bad Ragaz, south of Liechtenstein. It is a beautiful place amid the Swiss Alpes. You could see the mountains from the concert hall.

The reason for me to go there was the 15 year old Cellist Philipp Schupelius who I have heard already twice. And it will not have been the last time. 

The concert started with a violin and piano duo. The violin player Clara Shen was only 13 years old and plays already amazing. She was accompanied by Polina Sasko who was the senior today with 25 years. Together they played a piece by Beethoven and another by Saint-Saens. Then Philipp played a Cello solo by Ginastera and after that he played a duo with Polina Sasko by Martinu. 

After the interval we heard the piano sonata no. 2 of Rachmaninow played by the 15 year old Arsen Dalibaltayan. That was fantastic!

The main act then was the piano trio no. 1 of Rachmaninow played by Clara, Arsen and Philipp. It is such a strong piece and it was a wonderful performance. You could sense that the three of them had fun playing the piece. And Philipp was regularly making eye contact with his fellow musicians. That intensifies the performance enormously (in my eyes). I looked up that piece in Youtube and found a nice version but the players don’t look at each other. For me that means that the performance does not have the same emotionality.

There was a massive applause at the end, naturally. The musicians didn’t make a fuss and played the Gypsy trio by Haydn as an encore.

The concert by the way was quite intimate with only about 150 listeners. But the hall was full. I like this kind of concerts! And the audience was also professional: no coughing or other noise at all, and everybody waited for a reasonable time before they started clapping.

I was wondering whether I should copy the trio by Rachmaninow here or a performance of Philipp. I decided for the latter. He was only 13 during that performance, you can imagine he has gotten even better.