Weekend picks: Keyboard Concerts with Svetlana Navasardyan, Fresno State’s violin and viola festival
Classical music fans have some great options this weekend:
Keyboard replacement
The Philip Lorenz International Keyboard Concerts series had to make a last-minute change to its schedule when the original artist, the Tetzlaff String Quartet from Hamburg, Germany, canceled its U.S. tour.
Pictured above: Svetlana Navasardyan in an early video.
Andreas Werz, Keyboard’s artistic director, was able to find a worthy replacement: the celebrated Armenian-American pianist Svetlana Navasardyan, a veteran performer and prize winner at the Queen Elisabeth, Schumann, Bach and Sydney international piano competitions. Navasardyan lives in Los Angeles.
She performs 4 p.m. Sunday, March 23, at the Fresno State Concert Hall.
From her bio:
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A graduate from Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Yakov Zak’s class), Svetlana is a frequent guest at prestigious international festivals and major concert halls around the world – be it the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, the Opera House of Sydney, the Palais des Beaux-Arts of Brussels, the Salle Gaveau of Paris, the Gewandhaus of Leipzig, the Teatro Colon of Buenos Aires, the Asahi Hall of Tokyo, the Phoenix-Hall of Osaka, or the Nybrokajen of Stockholmand. Svetlana Navassardian has extensively toured internationally with recitals in the USA, Canada, Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Japan, China, Australia, Egypt. Kuwait, and elsewhere. Svetlana frequently serves as a jury member for various well-known international piano competitions.
Her Fresno program includes Haydn’s Sonata in C major, Brahms’ “Eight Piano Pieces,” Chopin’s “Five Mazurkas” and “Six Waltzes,” and Komitas’ “Seven Dances.”
The event is co-sponsored with the Fresno State Armenian Studies Program, the Thomas A. Kooyumjian Family Foundation, and the Armenian Benevolent Union, Greater Fresno Chapter.
The concert kicks off a busy week for the Keyboard series. On Friday, March 28, Moscow-born Zlata Chochieva, a protege of Mikhail Pletnev, will perform.
Violins and violas
The Fresno State Violin and Viola Festival brings together faculty and student musicians in two nights of concerts at the Fresno State Concert Hall. A faculty chamber music concert (7:30 p.m. Friday, March 21) features Cho-Liang Lin, violin; Limor Toren-Immerman, violin; Hartmut Rohde, viola; Thomas Loewenheim, cello; and Peter Klimo, piano. The ensemble will perform Dvorak’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major and Brahms’ Piano Quintet No. 3 in C minor.
On Saturday, March 22, the Fresno State Symphony Orchestra will perform at 7:30 p.m. Featured guest artists are Cho-Liang Lin, violin; and Hartmut Rhode, viola. The program includes Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Hummel’s “Fantasie for Viola and Orchestra.”
There will be a pre-concert lecture titled “Turning Point: Dropping Atomic Bombs, 80 Years Later” delivered by professors Lori Clune and Hanayo Oya at 6:45 p.m. in the band room.
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