Soloist has warm feelings for Siberia
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff | June 18, 2004

Boston Globe, MA
June 18 2004

Tonight is Armenian Night at the Boston Pops, and conductor Bruce
Hangen’s program is called “Classic Pops” — it includes the
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Hangen will present an unusual soloist,
Mikhail Simonyan, now 18.

Born to Russian and Armenian parents in Novosibirsk, Simonyan began
to play the violin at 5. (Evidently that’s one of the things children
in Novosibirsk enjoy doing: Two of today’s leading soloists on the
instrument, Maxim Vengerov and Vadim Repin, as well as Ilya
Konovalov, concertmaster of the Israel Philharmonic, grew up in the
Siberian city.)

At 13, Simonyan became a sensation in Russia and in New York in the
demanding First Concerto by the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. An
American sponsor brought him to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis
Institute of Music; more recently, successful businessmen based in
Novosibirsk have supported him — a usual situation in a country
whose cultural infrastructure has collapsed. Simonyan has already
played with the National Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the
Kirov Orchestra under Valery Gergiev.

Inspired by Gergiev’s example, Simonyan plans to return to Russia as
his home base for his international activity and contribute to the
musical life of his native land — unlike many of his contemporaries
and predecessors, who prefer easier living in the West.

Grand tour: The Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras will tour
Estonia and Latvia and play in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday
through July 4 under the direction of music director Federico
Cortese. The organization’s season-ending concert tomorrow in Sanders
Theatre is also a send-off concert for the tour and will include some
of the same repertoire, including Osvaldo Golijov’s “Night of the
Flying Horses” and Brahms’s Third Symphony.

Prize winners: Conductor Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra
Project won an award for adventurous programming from the American
Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers at the recent national
conference of the American Symphony Orchestra League. BMOP and Rose
won first place in the category of orchestras with annual operating
expenses between $420,000 and $1.625 million, chiefly for last year’s
“Opera Unlimited” festival, produced in collaboration with the former
Boston Academy of Music (now Opera Boston).

Robert Mealy, Baroque violinist and orchestra leader, has received
this year’s Thomas Binkley Award from the professional service
organization in the field, Early Music America, during the group’s
annual convention in California. The award recognizes distinguished
achievement in performance and scholarship by the director of a
university or college early-music ensemble. Mealy was cofounder of
the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra in 1995 and serves as director
of the Yale Collegium Players. He has been active as a performer with
many ensembles (including the King’s Noyse, Sequentia, the Boston
Camerata, and Les Arts Florissants) and in many festivals, including
the Boston Early Music Festival. He is the Christopher Hogwood Fellow
at the Handel and Haydn Society and is one of the most elegant
writers on the subject of early music.

Violist David Kim, who will be a senior at the New England
Conservatory in the fall, has won the second prize of $5,000 in the
annual Irving M. Klein International String Competition in San
Francisco. Kim played the Bartok Viola Concerto and music by Bach and
Brahms.

Schumann season: Emmanuel Music will perform what is apparently the
Boston premiere of Schumann’s opera “Genoveva” next season, as well
as Handel’s oratorio “Israel in Egypt,” both under the direction of
founding conductor Craig Smith. The oratorio is Nov. 13, the opera
April 2. Several generations of Emmanuel singers will participate,
including James Maddalena, Frank Kelley, Sarah Pelletier, Krista
River, and Aaron Engebreth.

Emmanuel also will launch a five-year series of the complete piano,
vocal, and chamber music of Schumann. The first season consists of
seven concerts featuring the Lydian Quartet, Triple Helix, and
violinist Danielle Maddon; pianists Randall Hodgkinson, Judith
Gordon, Leslie Amper, and Smith; and Emmanuel singers including Jayne
West, Jane Bryden, Mark McSweeney, and Donald Wilkinson. The regular
series of Sunday morning Bach cantata performances runs Sept. 26
through May 15. Smith leads most cantatas, but other conductors
include John Harbison, John Ehrlich, Michael Beattie, Leonard
Matczynski, Scott Metcalfe, Benjamin Zander, and James Oleson.

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