Festivali Kammermuusika Gala / 12. rahvusvaheline muusikafestival ''Klassika Kütkes''

August 16, 2026, 7:00 PM
Hopner House
Festival Chamber Music Gala

Soloists:
Mihaela Martin - violin, Romania - internationally renowned violin star, winner of several violin competitions: Tchaikovsky, Queen Elisabeth and Indianapolis Violin Competitions

Frans Helmerson - cello, Sweden - renowned cellist, pedagogue and conductor

Michael Bulychev-Okser - piano (USA)

Yuri Zhislin - viola, England - professor, Royal College of Music, London

Miriam Davis - violin, England - soloist, Oxford Symphony Orchestra

The program includes Mozart's Piano Quartet in G minor, Brahms's Quintet in F minor and other works.

Biographies
Romanian-born violinist Mihaela Martin is one of the most outstanding violin virtuosos of her generation, whose playing reveals a chameleon-like versatility in musical expression. Following successful performances at the Tchaikovsky, Montreal, Sion and Brussels competitions, her gold medal at the Indianapolis Violin Competition launched her international career.

Equally at home as an orchestral soloist and chamber musician, Mihaela has performed with the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hamburg State Orchestra and other ensembles in the 2023-2024 season, and has performed at the Verbier Festival, the Enescu Festival, the Budapest Academy Festival, the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival, the Kronberg Festival, the Santander Festival, the Ravinia Festival and Suntory Hall.

She has performed with leading orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. She has worked with conductors such as Manfred Honeck, Andrew Davis, Andrew Litton, Gabor Takacs, Thierry Fischer, Thomas Sanderling, Constantine Orbelian, Nicholaus Harnoncourt, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Masur, Neeme Järvi and Paavo Järvi.

Chamber music plays a very important role in Mihaela's life. In addition to participating in many chamber music festivals, she is a founding member of the Michelangelo String Quartet, with which she has performed at Carnegie Hall, Boulez Hall in Berlin, Wigmore Hall in London, the Library of Congress, the Concertgebouw and the Theatre de Champs Élysée.

Since 2017, she has been the artistic director of the Rolandseck/Bad Honnef Chamber Music Festival and frequently collaborates with musicians such as Daniel Barenboim, Sergei Babayan, Lera Auerbach, Kirill Gerstein, Denis Kozhukhin, Sharon Kami, Nobuko Imai and Gabor Takacs.

Mihaela Martin is a professor at the Cologne University of Music, the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin and the Kronberg Academy. She gives master classes all over the world and is a regular jury member at important international competitions such as the Queen Elizabeth (Belgium), Indianapolis (USA), Concours Musical (Canada), Enescu (Romania) and Tchaikovsky (Russia).

Mihaela Martin has been playing the J.B. Guadagnini violin since 1748.

Frans Helmerson (born 1945) is a Swedish cellist, pedagogue and conductor.

Helmerson was born in 1945 and began playing the cello at the age of 8. She later studied with Guido Vecchi in Gothenburg, Giuseppe Selmi in Rome and William Pleeth in London. Her first public concert was in Stockholm, Sweden, after which she toured Europe, Asia, the United States and Russia. He has collaborated with many conductors, including Sir Colin Davis, Maxim Shostakovich, Neeme Järvi, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Gennady Roshdestvensky, Kurt Sanderling, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Rostropovich, Herbert Blomstedt, Seiji Ozawa, Yuri Temirkanov and Esa-Pekka Salonen, among many others. In 2002 he founded the Michelangelo String Quartet, with which he regularly performs internationally with Mihaela Martini, Daniel Austrich and Nobuko Imai.

Helmerson has taught for many years at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and the Reina Sofia School of Music in Madrid. He was also a visiting professor at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin and currently teaches at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin and the Kronberg Academy in Frankfurt. His recording of the Dvorak Concerto for BIS Records was awarded the Best Classical Recording by critics. He also received critical acclaim for his two Shostakovich cello concertos with conductor Valery Polyansky and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra.

Michael Bulychev-Okser is a world-renowned American pianist, composer, and producer. A recipient of the Who's Who in Music award, Mr. Bulychev-Okser has performed on the world's most prestigious stages: Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Kennedy Center, Salle Pleyel (France), Wigmore Hall (London), Rachmaninov Hall (Russia), Suur Saal (Estonia), and Centermex Theater (Mexico).

Bulychev-Okser is an organizer of international music events: the Gershwin International Music Competition in New York and the Classical Hugs Festival in Estonia. Michael is a guest artist at numerous music festivals, competitions and concert series in England, France, Germany, Mexico, Israel, Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine, Austria, Finland, South Korea, China, Serbia, Singapore and the USA.

In 2022, Michael Bulychev-Okser performed Mendelssohn's Double Concerto with renowned violin virtuoso Shlomo Mintz. Michael Bulychev-Okser is Professor of Piano and Chamber Ensemble at the Lucy Moses School at the Kaufman Center in New York.

Miriam Davis is a British concert violinist who has performed worldwide as both a soloist and chamber musician. She has recently been a featured guest on Classic FM and won first prize at the Agiumus Padova International Competition in 2021. In recent years, she has performed as a soloist at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Stoller Hall in Manchester, Elgar Hall at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Konserthus Sommerkoncert Series in Stavanger, Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki, Parco Della Musica in Rome, St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and Hall 1 at the Sage Gateshead. Miriam has won prizes at numerous international competitions, including first prize at the Grand Virtuoso International Competition (with an invitation to perform at the Royal Albert Hall in London), the IMKA Competition, the North Online International Competition and the Virtuoso Belcanto International Competition dedicated to Paganini. As a concert soloist she has performed with conductors such as Peter Szilvay and Oliver Weder. Festival appearances include: Freedom Festival Hull, Stavanger Chamber Festival, Norwegian Youth Chamber Festival, Cheltenham and Lake District Music Festivals, Tunnell Trust Coll and the Prussia Cove International Musicians’ Seminar. Miriam currently collaborates in a violin-piano duo with renowned Jewish-American pianist Michael Bulychev-Okser. She has performed chamber music at festivals with such distinguished musicians as Laura Mikkola, Jelger Blanken, Gabriele Ragghianti, Jan Bjoranger and Amaury Coeytaux. Miriam is a keen advocate of contemporary repertoire, including recently giving the Norwegian premiere of Edward Cowie’s GAD for the NyMusikk Society in Norway. Miriam specializes in romantic repertoire and performance style, following a nostalgic concept of traditional beautiful sound culture combined with effortless virtuosity. In 2022, she will give concerts in Europe and the USA and record and release her debut album “Ode to Lost Time” under Avie Records. Since 2017, Miriam has studied with renowned French violinist Philippe Graffin, receiving an artist diploma from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in 2018. She has also completed further training and master’s studies with renowned musicians, including Eszter Haffner, Jan Bjoranger and Andras Keller, at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. Miriam completed her bachelor’s studies at the Royal College of Music in London with a full scholarship. She has participated in master classes with Schlomo Mintz, Pavel Vernikov, Svetlana Makarova, Pierre Amoyal, Felix Andrievsky, Viktor Tretyakov, Natalia Likhopoi, Kaija Saariaho, Benjamin Schmid, György Pauk, Kolja Blacher, Keiko Wataya, Thomas Zehetmair, Amaury Coeytaux, Kungsbacka Trio, Hugh Bean and Emanuel Hurwitz. Miriam is also a dedicated violin teacher with 15 years of teaching experience, her current students include members of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the National Children's Orchestra of Great Britain. She is the founder and artistic director of the online music academy www.virtualvirtuoso.online, launched in 2020. Miriam also has considerable orchestral experience, including winning the first violin position of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 23 (with whom she worked for four years and had the honour of performing the complete Mahler symphony cycle and recording all of Shostakovich's symphonies on Naxos with conductor Vasily Petrenko), and performing with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Oxford Philharmonic, London Chamber Orchestra, Aurora Chamber Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and 1b1 Ensemble. As a young woman, at the age of 12, Miriam performed as concertmaster with the National Children's Orchestra at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. She also won first prize in the James Etherington Music Competition. At the age of 13, she was accepted into the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, where she later performed as assistant concertmaster at the BBC Graduation Ceremonies at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

The Strad magazine described Yuri Zhislin as "a virtuoso of a truly romantic temperament" with an active and illustrious career as a soloist and chamber musician. In 1991, Yuri entered the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied under his father and later Dr. Andrievsky, winning the BBC Radio 2 Young Musician of the Year award in 1993. Orchestras with which Yuri has performed include the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and Santiago de Chile Symphony Orchestra. Zhislin made his debut at Carnegie Weill Hall in New York in 2014 and has performed at major concert venues in Europe, the USA, South America, Australia and Japan. His discography includes a concert CD released on SOMM in 2005, a violin/viola duet CD released on Naxos in 2009 and a string trio CD released on Nymbus Alliance with Dmitri Sitkovetsky on violin and Luigi Piovano on cello. A passionate chamber musician, Yuri has worked with artists such as Maria-Joao Pires, Maxim Vengerov, Barry Douglas and Natalie Clein, among many others. Yuri formed the Russian Virtuosi of Europe ensemble in 2004, which is made up of outstanding string players from Europe. They have recently toured in South America and Russia and released their debut CD on Orchid Classics, which received excellent reviews and was selected as the BBC Music Magazine's Record of the Month in April 2016. Yuri is Professor of Violin and Viola at the Royal College of Music in London and is a highly sought-after visiting professor at the European Summer Academies.