An unusual recital

The Russian cellist Boris Andrianov will be taking us on a musical journey – with his trusty partner on lute and guitar. From a time-honoured sonata by Vivaldi through Moldavian folk music to numbers by Piazzolla.

For years now, the flamboyant Swiss cellist Ophélie Gaillard has been collaborating with dancers and performers from many other disciplines. Together with world tap dance champion Daniel Leveillé and pianist/arranger Bruno Fontaine, she’s created a programme – Rhythm’n cello – especially for this year’s Cello Biennale.

The Italian musical wizards Mario Brunello and Giovanni Sollima will each be bringing their own variant of the cello piccolo, as well as their modern-day cellos. They’ll be performing Bertali’s well-known early-Baroque work Ciaccona and the sublime Chaconne from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 2. (Brunello will also be playing the entire partita the morning after this concert on his cello piccolo.)

Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky once arranged an incredibly difficult version of Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne for violin and cello. Not to be outdone, Sollima and Brunello have upped the ante by performing the violin part on cello piccolo, too!