The moon in the middle of the sky with Anika Vavic and Michael Dangl

Music & Words

The moon in the middle of the sky with Anika Vavic and Michael Dangl

Photos Chrisitne de Grancy and Maria Frodl
Anika Vavic
Piano
Michael Dangl
Actor/actress

PROGRAM

Anika Vavic plays
Frédéric Chopin: Ballade No. 3
Alexander N. Scriabin: from Quatre Marceaux, op. 51 and Sonata No. 3
Sergei Prokofiev: Suggestion diablolique
Ludwig van Beethoven: from the Bagatelles, op. 33

Michael Dangl reads from Nikolai Gogol's Ukrainian Tales and "The Postmaster" by Alexander S. Pushkin

Nikolai Gogol, the founder of modern Russian literature, was Ukrainian by birth.
He was deeply rooted in his love for his country, its people and folk customs. He shared admiration and friendship with Alexander Pushkin.

Fragments from Gogol's Ukrainian and Petersburg stories entwine Pushkin's moving "Postmaster" and create a connection, a union of countries and cultures.

 

ARTISTS

  • Anika Vavic

    Anika Vavic
    Photo: Marco Borggreve

    The Belgrade-born pianist Anika Vavic moved to Vienna at the age of sixteen, where she studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts. She received important inspiration from Elisabeth Leonskaja, Lazar Berman, Oleg Maisenberg, Alexander Satz and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others.

     She works continuously with the conductors Valery Gergiev, Paavo Järvi, Hannu Lintu, Jun Märkl, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Stefan Blunier, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Kirill Karabits, Andreas Orozco- Estrada, Markus Poschner, Yutaka Sado, Enrico Calesso. Kristjan Järvi and Jorma Panula are other recent musical partners.

    In the 2021/22 season, Anika Vavic will make her debut with the Bamberg Philharmonic under the direction of Jakub Hrusa with Rodion Shchedrin's Fourth Piano Concerto, return to Taipei with the National Symphony Orchestra with Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto, but also to The Hague with the Residentie Orkest to perform Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto with Jun Märkl.

    As part of the Imagodei Festival, she honors the 100th anniversary of Alexander Scriabin's death with his "Mysterium", in which she attempts to approach his "mission", the vision of the fusion of all the senses, by combining puppetry and dance.

    With Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto she returns to the Zagreb Philharmonic and the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz, and will be a guest again with the Staatskapelle Weimar with the Piano Concerto by Franz Liszt's pupil Hans Bronsart.

    As a student of the legendary Liszt interpreter Lazar Berman, she is devoting herself to the recording of Beethoven's "Pastorale" in Liszt's arrangement, which will be released by MDG in fall 2022.

    Highlights of recent years include performances with the Mariinsky Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Weimar, concerts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra together with Vladimir Jurowski as part of the BBC PROMS and at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest with Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto, with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra with Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety", with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and others.

    A Beethoven program brought her back to the Ruhr Piano Festival in 2020, the year of the pandemic, where she played one of the first concerts in Germany that was possible again. The recording of this evening was released on CD and broadcast on the most important radio stations in Germany and Austria.

    The first public post-lockdown concert in Austria took place in Anika Vavic's garden - it became a series of cultural evenings in words and music, with programs for adults and children, the "kunst-am-nussberg" festival, which will enter its 3rd season in 2022.

    She has performed at the "White Nights" in St. Petersburg, the Mikkeli Festival in Finland, the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, the Grafenegg Festival, the Heidelberger Frühling, the Styriarte Graz, the Klangbogen Vienna, the Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw, the Istanbul Music Festival, the Carinthian Summer and the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad.

    Anika Vavic is a regular guest at the Vienna Musikverein and Vienna Konzerthaus. Recital tours have taken her to venues such as Carnegie Hall New York, the Kennedy Center Washington, Wigmore Hall London, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Cité de la Musique Paris, the Philharmonie Luxembourg, the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, the Konzerthaus Berlin and the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden.

    Her chamber music partners include Gautier Capuçon, Rainer Honeck, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Caroline Widmann, Claudius Popp, Matthias Schorn, the Quintette Aquilon, the Artis Quartet, as well as Renaud Capuçon and Daniel Müller-Schott.

  • Michael Dangl

    Photo: Maria Frodl

    Michael Dangl began acting at the age of four in his parents' touring company and was engaged by the Salzburg State Theater at the age of eighteen. Further theatrical stops included Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Koblenz, as well as the Salzburg, Bregenz, Reichenau and many other festivals.

    In 1998, Helmuth Lohner engaged him at the Theater an der Josefstadt in Vienna, where he has been engaged ever since, now under the direction of Herbert Föttinger. He is a guest soloist at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, Munich, with director Josef E. Köpplinger (as Prof. Higgins in "My Fair Lady", as "Frosch" in "Fledermaus"), plays leading roles in cinema and TV films, works for the cultural broadcaster Ö1, organizes (concert) readings of his own programmes as well as concerts at international music festivals with partners such as Gidon Kremer, Maria Fedotova and Konstantin Wecker.

    He is the author of books, plays and CDs. His most recent novel "Oranges for Dostoyevsky" was published by Braumüller.

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