Press releases

MINSK, 16 July (BelTA) - Julian Rachlin will take part in the closing concert of the Yuri Bashmet Festival in the Big Hall of the Belarusian Philharmonic on 9 October, BelTA learned form the organizers of the festival.

The 10th International Yuri Bashmet Festival will be running in Belarus from 28 September to 9 October. The program of the opening day and also the names of the participants have not been yet announced. However, the organizers did reveale that the closing concert will feature Julian Rachlin, one of the most exciting and respected violinists of our time. For the last 25 years, he has been captivating audiences around the world with his distinctively rich sound, superb musicianship and outstanding interpretations.

Julian Rachlin plays the 1704 "ex Liebig" Stradivari. This fine example made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona in 1704 is known as the "Ex-Liebig" as it once belonged to an important violin collection owned by Herr Liebig of Vienna during the late 1800s. In the early 1900's, the violin became part of another famous violin collection, The Walter Hamma Collection of Stuttgart. Some years later it passed into the hands of Madame Rauer of Vienna who in 1937 loaned it for the exhibition at the Bicentenario Stradivariano in Cremona. In 1952, Madame Rause sold the Ex-Liebig to Professor Wolfgang Schneiderhan who was the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for many years.

At the end of Schneiderhan's distinguished career in 1991, the Ex-Liebig was sold by Ferdinand Kugler of Vienna to the Rogoff family of New York where it remained for a decade. The violin was then passed to the Swiss dealer Claude Lebet who later sold it to the sponsors of Nikolaj Znaider. The violin was then placed in the care of Julian Rachlin.

Born in Lithuania in 1974, Julian immigrated to Vienna in 1978. He gained international acclaim overnight in 1988 by winning the Young Musician of the Year Award at the Eurovision Competition in Amsterdam. He then became the youngest soloist ever to play with the Vienna Philharmonic, making his debut under Riccardo Muti.

In Minsk Julian Rachlin will play with the symphony orchestra as a soloist and as a conductor.

The tenth edition of the Yuri Bashmet Festival promises to be special. It will once again delight its audience with magnificent programs, unusual projects and, of course, great skill of a whole galaxy of stars. This year the organizers will try to showcase the festival's achievements in the past ten years. The festival has pioneered many large-scale projects such as Classics and Jazz, Classics and Rock, Classics and Poetry and many others. The Bashmet festival is the yardstick for quality and performance level of artists, composers, memorable world premieres.