6. -9. august 2020

I would like to thank everyone who participated in this year’s Rosendal Festival which, with its central focus on Shostakovich, proved to be a particularly intense and emotional journey into the diversity of Russian music. There are so many moments that I will remember for a very long time.

We have exciting concerts coming up for you next year as well and Beethoven has a big birthday! Do keep the dates Aug 6-9 2020 in your calendar. The programme will be announced sometime in the new year.

Leif Ove

Highlights of reviews from the 2019 Rosendal Festival

“The art of chamber music festival curating: lots of music, but not overwhelming; change of concert halls and formats, variable lengths, good artist mixing, an exciting topic. Leif Ove Andsnes took all this into account in the fourth edition of his Rosendal Chamber Music Festival, this time dedicated to Dmitri Shostakovich & Friends.”

Brug’s Klassiker, Die Welt

“Cradled by towering mountains, waterfalls, and streams with the scents of a rose garden and fir trees filling the air, the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival is set to become one of the must attend festivals of the European summer.”

Opera Wire

“The 4 day experience of this music festival is indescribable. With the backdrop of such wonderful scenery, the festival is somehow augmented by a deeper concentration of the theme and the high level of performance. It is impressive.”

Asia’s Music Weekly

“Heavy material? Yes, definitely. Worth the effort? Absolutely … These were intense days, where elite performers and ensembles sometimes created moments of rare musical greatness.”

NRK Klassisk Radio

“For the Shostakovich panorama, which is as compact as it is complex, Leif Ove Andsnes has brought in the expert Gerard McBurney, who is equally enthusiastic in his introductions and talks. Not only did he make arrangements and completions of some of the chamber music works but also brought with him Alexander Vustin, born in 1943, as well as introducing works by deceased contemporaries of the central figure. With only six compositions, Vustin is to act as a strong voice of the Soviet-Russian descendants.”

Brug’s Klassiker, Die Welt

“That the festival is successful as an introduction to Shostakovich’s personal style … is thanks to the excellent, well-known performers who came to Rosendal, such as the pianist Marc-André Hamelin. Anthony McGill, solo clarinettist of the New York Philharmonic, explores the entire spectrum of colour and articulation on his instrument. In a thoughtful evening programme, violist Tabea Zimmermann naturally lets Igor Stravinsky’s elegy flow into the following Shostakovich Sonata … On the side of the young up-and-coming artists, the carefree, highly passionate violinist Veriko Tchumburidze makes a special impression.”

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“… The highlight of the (second) evening concert was Andrei Bondarenko in a great program of Shostakovich tone settings of Pushkin lyrics. And the Danel Quartet and Leif Ove Andsnes performed Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quintet from 1976. It has been said that Western musicians are not able to bring out the «pain factor» in the music of the Soviet era. But the Danel Quartet and Andsnes did it in any case – it is rare that one has heard such an uncompromising, dissonantic, and painful performance of this work. “

Bergens Tidende

“One concert concentrated the spirit of these four days. At 10 p.m. on August 10, in the evangelical Church located high up, swept by the elements and surrounded by tombs (it’s like the Bergman of the Communicators), the performers unfold a program of an intransigent grandeur, of a blackness that would be difficult to bear without the Norwegian public, of extraordinary concentration, and above all without extraordinary performers. Subtle beyond possible, Andsnes and Marc-André Hamelin on piano, Anthony McGill (soloist of the New York Philharmonic) on clarinet, Mark Danel on violin and Tabea Zimmermann on viola reveal the bareness of Alexander Vustin’s Piano Lamento and its secret sensibility; behind the gruelling violence of Ustvolskaya’s Trio for clarinet, violin and piano, the desperate passion; behind the stripping of Shostakovich’s Sonata for viola and piano, an upsetting solitude – one that would soon engulf the creator in a definitive night.”

Diapason

“One of the great moments of these days has been, without any doubt, the screening on Friday night of the film New Babylon (1929), by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, carefully restored by Marek Pytel and with the recovery of the original piano music composed by Dmitri Shostakovich, a frequent composer and performer of film music especially in his youth age. It was performed, with an amazingly perfect synchronization with the images, by the Ukrainian pianist Sasha Grynyuk, who astonished all of us present in the hall and who was awarded with one of the longest, most sincere and enthusiastic applauses of these days.”

El Pais

“As a real finale, Shostakovich 15th and final Symphony, arranged by Viktor Derevianko for piano trio and 13 percussion instruments, can be heard as the orchestral conclusion. So fine and sparse we are once again surprised by the playing with its material like shapes. You just can’t be saturated with Shostakovich. Can there be a better festival summary? Especially since this final opus is also performed by the PERCelleh boys, Christian Krogvold, Sonoko Miriam Welde and Clemens Hagen with wild temperament and the finest instrumental skills.”

Brug’s Klassiker, Die Welt

“The concert hall for five hundred seats, converted from an old barn several years ago and installed with a speaker system by Meyer Sound, received full houses for four days in a row with an ideal audience of listeners who perceived music completely unfamiliar to them with intense attention, without almost breathing. All this testified to a colossal ardent interest in Russian music.“

Russian Gazette