It’s been five years since the Pharos Arts Foundation collaborated with the Embassy of Austria in bringing to Cyprus Emmanuel Tjeknavorian – the phenomenal young Viennese violinist who just a few months before his debut in Cyprus had won not one but two major prizes at the 2015 Jean Sibelius International Violin Competition in Helsinki.
Nowadays, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian is considered one of the greatest artists on the international music scene, having made a name for himself both as a violinist and as a conductor, and inspiring audiences and critics with his depth, technical brilliance, and great versatility. Tjeknavorian’s busy schedule includes frequent performances with the world’s top ensembles and orchestras and regular appearances in Europe’s most prestigious concert halls and international music festivals.
For his third exclusive visit in the Pharos Arts Foundation’s Concert and Recital Series, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian will join forces with the impressive 19-year-old piano wunderkind from Vienna, Kiron Atom Tellian, in presenting works by Poulenc, Schubert, Tchaikovsky and Faurè. The recital, which is kindly supported by the Embassy of Austria in Cyprus within the framework of the Weeks of the German Language, will take place on Friday 19 November, at The Shoe Factory, Nicosia / 8:30pm.
PROGRAMME
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
Violin Sonata, FP 119 (1943)
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Rondo in B minor for violin & piano, D.895 (1826)
Interval
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Meditation in D minor, Op.42, No.1 (1878)
Gabriel Faurè (1845-1924)
Sonata for violin & piano No.1 in A major, Op.13 (1876)
EMMANUEL TJEKNAVORIAN violin
Despite his young age, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian is already one of the great artists of our times. Born in Vienna in 1995, he has made a name for himself both as a violinist and as a conductor, and he inspires audiences and critics with his depth, technical brilliance, and great versatility.
Tjeknavorian has achieved international acclaim since 2015, when he participated in the Jean Sibelius Competition and won the Second Prize as well as the Award for Best Interpretation of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Apart from the Sibelius, Emmanuel had won prizes in numerous other international violin competitions such as the 2014 Fritz Kreisler Competition (the first Austrian in the history of the competition to have won a prize) and the 2011 Johannes Brahms Competition.
Nowadays, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian regularly performs with the world’s great ensembles and orchestras, including the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony.
He is also a frequent guest at international classical music festivals, including the Enescu Festival in Bucharest, Grafenegg Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, and the Menuhin Festival Gstaad. Tjeknavorian was selected as a “Rising Star” of the European Concert Hall Organisation, a “Great Talent” of the Vienna Konzerthaus, and a protege of the Orpheum Foundation in Zürich, and performed in Europe’s most prestigious concert halls including the Vienna Musikverein, the Munich Prinzregententheater, the Boston Symphony Hall, and the Helsinki Music Centre, amongst others. As the youngest Artist-in-Residence in the history of the Vienna Musikverein, he created his own cycle at the tradition-rich house in the 2019/20 season. Particularly significant were his performances at the Salzburg Mozart Week and at the Festival de Paques in Aix-en-Provence, where he played Mozart’s own Costa violin.
During the 2021/2022 season, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian appears with the Filarmonica della Scala under the baton of Riccardo Chailly, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic under Yuri Temirkanov, and the Accademia Nazionale de Santa Cecilia under Sakari Oramo. The Essen Philharmonic is dedicating an artist’s portrait to him, and as Artist-in-Association, he is a frequent guest with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra.
In recent seasons, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian has also made his conducting debuts with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra at the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Tonkünstler Orchestra, the Camerata Salzburg, the Munich Symphony Orchestra and the Basel Symphony Orchestra. During 2021/22, he conducts the Graz Philharmonic, the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra, and the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, among others. Having already taken conducting lessons with his father, composer, and conductor Loris Tjeknavorian since 2014, and attended master classes in England and Italy, Emmanuel intends to focus more on conducting in the future.
In 2018, Tjeknavorian’s debut album, Solo, was released on Sony Classical, and was met with high acclaim, having received the OPUS Klassik prize. As part of a new exclusive contract with Berlin Classics, his second album, recorded with the HR Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt under the baton of Pablo González, featuring the violin concertos of Jean Sibelius and Loris Tjeknavorian, was released in February 2020. In 2021, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian’s first CD as a conductor was released, featuring Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade with the Tonkünstler Orchestra on their in-house label. In addition, Berlin Classics released the album Brahms Concerto & Songs, in which Tjeknavorian performs the Brahms Violin Concerto with the WDR Symphony Orchestra under the baton Cristian Măcelaru.
Emmanuel Tjeknavorian plays an Antonio Stradivari violin (Cremona, 1698), generously loaned to him by a patron of the Beare’s International Violin Society London.
KIRON ATOM TELLIAN piano
Born in Vienna in 2002, piano wunderkind Kiron Atom Tellian is a prize winner in numerous national and international competitions, including the First Prize and the Haydn Prize at the 17th Ettlingen International Piano Competition in Germany (2020), the First Prize at the Rudolf Heydner Piano Competition in Vienna (2019), the Grand Prize and Special Prizes at the 10th Savshinsky International Music Competition in Saint Petersburg (2019), the Grand Prize and Special Prize at the 3rd International Feurich Competition (2018) in Vienna, three First Prizes in three different categories at the 5th Rosalyn Tureck International Bach Competition in New York (2017), the First Prize at the 11th Lagny-sur-Marne International Piano Competition in France (2017), the First Prize and EMCY Prize at the 15th Peter Toperczer International Piano Competition in Slovakia (2017). Kiron is also a composer, and his pieces – spanning from solo piano to ensemble and symphony orchestra works – have won prizes in a number of composition competitions, and most recently the Austrian Composers’ Association “Jugend komponiert” Prize.
Kiron Atom Tellian started studying the piano at the age of five and made his debut with an orchestra at the age of nine. He studied at the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW), having completed the Programme for the Exceptionally Gifted Young Pianists in the class of Prof. Alma Sauer, and since 2018 he studies with Prof. Vladimir Kharin. Tellian has already appeared in prestigious halls around the world such, more recently in Vienna Konzerthaus, the Schloss Höfling in Regensburg, Junge Philharmonie Wien, and he appears frequently in chamber music concerts with cellist Julia Hagen, soprano Chen Reiss, violinists Benjamin Schmid and Emmanuel Tjeknavorian, and double-bass player Dominik Wagner.
When Friday, November 19
Where The Shoe Factory, 304 Ermou Street 1017, Nicosia
