For this concert,  Bogdan Vacarescu will be joined by the extraordinary pianist Julian Jacobson who is very kindly standing in for Neil Georgeson. I am really looking forward to this new and exciting collaboration.


Bogdan Vacarescu has won national and international violin and chamber music competitions since he was five. He has made numerous recordings on television and radio across the world, and has toured internationally since his teens. A graduate of the Conservatoire of Music in Bucharest and the Royal Academy of Music in London, he is also a disciple of the “old school” of violin playing developed by Pierre Marsick, Joseph Joachim and Leopold Auer then followed by violin masters including Jascha Heifetz, Jacques Thibaud, George Enescu. Freedom of expression in musical interpretation combined with elegant bowing technique is of paramount importance to Bogdan’s approach. His recital repertoire comprises music close to his heart, spanning Baroque to late Romantics, featuring rarely performed showpieces. "...his fingers move at lightning speed...the bow even faster” (The Tivoli, Australia).
 

Julian Jacobson was born in Peebles, Scotland. His father Maurice Jacobson had had some piano lessons with Busoni while his mother, pianist and composer Margaret Lyell, had studied in Berlin with Else Krause, daughter of Liszt's pupil Martin Krause. Julian studied in London from the age of seven with Lamar Crowson (piano) and Arthur Benjamin (composition), and had published four songs by the age of nine. From 1959 to 1968 he studied at the Royal College of Music where his principal teachers were John Barstow and Humphrey Searle. On graduating with the Sarah Mundlak Piano Prize in 1968 he took up a scholarship to read Music at Queen's College, Oxford. At this time he was also a founder member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. He is currently a professor of piano and chamber music at the Royal College of Music. He was Artistic Director of the Paxos International Festival, Greece, from 1988 to 2004, is Artistic Director of "Rencontres Musicales à Eygalières", and teaches regularly at Cadenza Summer School at the Purcell School, North London. He has given masterclasses in Germany, Paris, Budapest (Franz Liszt Academy), Spain, Sweden, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the Middle East, and on many occasions in Dartington. He has recently added the Sprechstimme recitation role of Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" to his repertoire, giving his fourth performance of it in October 2009 in Jacqueline du Pré Hall, Oxford.

Sonata for Violin and Piano No 2 in F Minor Op 6 - George Enescu
Pavane pour une Infante Défunte - Maurice Ravel
Ciaccona in G minor - Tomaso Antonio Vitali

~ Interval ~

Variations on a theme by Corelli - Fritz Kreisler
Slavonic Dance No 2 in E minor (arr Kreisler) Op 72 - Antonín Dvorák
Hejre Kati (arr Sykes) - Jenö Hubay
Carmen Fantasy - Pablo Sarasate, on themes by Georges Bizet
Nocturne no. 2 Op 27 (arr. August Wilhelmj) - Fryderyk Chopin
La Ronde des lutins (The Dance of the Goblins) Op 25 - Antonio Bazzini