Saleem Ashkar Comes to Den Norske Opera This Month

Saleem Ashkar comes to Den Norske Opera this month as part of the Piano Series. The performance is set for April 30, 2023.

According to the Israeli-Palestinian pianist Saleem Ashkar, music can build bridges. When he takes the stage at the Oslo Opera House, he will be performing what he plays best, namely Beethoven, in addition to modern works from a country in constant conflict.

"Through music I crossed and left behind national boundaries," Ashkar once said in an interview. Together with the Galilee Chamber Orchestra, he is known for bringing together young Palestinian and Israeli musicians who do not have the possibility to study music in their home countries.

At the concert piano, he will be surprising the audience with a modern Arabic or Israeli work during his performance, in addition to Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms.

Ashkar has distinguished himself as an eminent Beethoven interpreter since his debut at the age of 22. The programme for this performance includes Appassionata, one of Beethoven's personal favourites. The piece was written during a time when the composer realised he was going deaf and as the title suggests, it is filled with emotional contrasts. This makes the sonata even more challenging to play - and interpretations range from hardly being affected to bordering on hysteria.

A love letter in disguise, notes on a troubled mind or an ode to German Romanticism: Schumann's Kreisleriana is all this and more. It was written in rapture over the course of four days, when the composer was madly in love with Clara Wieck.

The title of the piece originates from Germany's prolific author E. T. A. Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler, a lonely musical genius continuously caught up in violent emotions. Schumann's music was known for alternating between being withdrawn and expansive. He often called these contrasts Florestan and Eusebius after two fictive characters and, of course, they both appear in Kreisleriana.

When Ashkar performs this magnificent piece on the Main Stage, it is the contrasts of life itself that are expressed.

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