Two weeks in a row to be admired in the AVROTROS Vrijdagconcert

An Edison for her first CD, the same prize for a CD with the Van Baerle Trio that she forms with pianist Hannes Minnaar and cellist Gideon den Herder, a Diapason d'Or... The Russian violinist Maria Milstein (Moscow, 1985) arrived in the Netherlands via France and is enjoying international recognition. This season she is 'artist in residence' at the AVROTROS Vrijdagconcert. She plays no less than four concerts: two with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, one with the Van Baerle Trio, and the first, on 26 November, with her sister, the pianist Nathalia Milstein. One week later, she will perform Max Bruch's beloved First Violin Concerto.
Maria Milstein had already appeared in the Friday Concert on 3 March 2017 with Glazunov's Violin Concerto. On the following Monday, the NRC wrote: "Milstein impressed with compelling narrative power. With her pithy tone she made the lilting passages glow, but just as easily she conjured sparkling staccato's and intimate whispering sounds from her instrument."

26 November: Grieg, Szymanowski, Debussy & Franck
Milstein consciously does not focus solely on a career as a star violinist for an orchestra. With equal conviction she chooses to play chamber music. Her 'narrative power' is admirable there too. She will prove it in Grieg's much too little heard First Violin Sonata opus 8 with which she opens her first performance in this series. A work from 1865 by a 22-year-old Grieg, somewhat reminiscent of Schumann, carried by his unprecedented melodic inventiveness, but much more original than is usually claimed - just take the 'Nordic'-like playfulness in the middle section, which you also encounter in Grieg's Lyric Pieces for Piano. After the rarefied colours by the Pole Karol Szymanowski and the Violin Sonata by the Frenchman Claude Debussy, she concludes with the famous Violin Sonata by the French Belgian César Franck, with a piano part that, like Szymanowski, is notoriously difficult to play. Franck - another piece that only convinces when the two musicians are really able to drag you into the (purely musical) 'story'.

3 December: Bruch's First Violin Concerto
In Max Bruch's First Violin Concerto, the violinist/narrator immediately takes the lead. Besides the concertos by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and perhaps Brahms and Sibelius, it is one of the most frequently played Romantic violin concertos. The violin "can sing the melody better than a piano, and: melody is the soul of music", Bruch thought. Beethoven and Brahms resound in his notes, but that Adagio, the middle movement: how lyrical can you make a violin sound? And: how powerful the violin, as in the finale?
Many years after the premiere in 1866, Bruch regretted having sold his most famous score as a 28-year-old to a publisher for next to nothing. It could have been a nice retirement, when things no longer went his way and the rest of his music was sorely neglected...

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The four AVROTROS Friday concerts with Maria Milstein
in TivoliVredenburg

26 November 2021 - 8.15 pm
Chamber music by Duo Milstein
Maria Milstein, violin
Nathalia Milstein, piano
Grieg First violin sonata
Szymanowski Myths
Debussy Violin Sonata
Franck Violin Sonata

3 December 2021 - 8.15 pm
Maria Milstein plays Bruch
Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
Edo de Waart, conductor
Maria Milstein, violin
Diepenbrock Overture 'The Birds
Bruch First Violin Concerto
Strauss Eine Alpensinfonie

11 February 2022 - 8.15 pm
Chamber music by the Van Baerle Trio
Van Baerle Trio
Haydn Piano Trio no. 42 in E-flat
Verbey Trio for violin, cello and piano
Schubert Second Piano Trio in E flat D929

1 April 2022 - 8.15 pm
Milstein soloist in Ravel and Knigge
Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
Stanislav Kochanovsky, conductor
Maria Milstein, violin
Ravel Tzigane
Knigge Violin Concerto (world premiere, commissioned work AVROTROS Friday Concert)
Skrjabin Third symphony 'Le divin poème

Maria Milstein was trained by Pavel Vernikov in Italy (with whom Nicola Benedetti and Alexander Sitkovetsky also learned part of the trade), Ilya Grubert in Amsterdam, David Takeno in London and Augustin Dumay at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium.
At 32, Milstein won the Dutch Music Prize, the highest possible Dutch distinction. A reviewer: "Those who listen to her CD immediately understand why the jury had its eye on this violinist. The result of Maria & Nathalia Milstein is breathtaking. Milstein is a great personality, with a tone that sounds of melancholy, of profundity, of something vulnerable, reminiscent of the young Yehudi Menuhin."
You can imagine worse comparisons....