The acclaimed Fashionable Composers Worldwide Music Competition (ModComFest), led by its President, Konstantin Ishkhanov, will return in September 2026 with a brand new version that locations the music of Max Richter on the coronary heart of its programme, persevering with the competition’s mission of giving modern composers the visibility, context, and international consideration that their work deserves.
Happening from the fifteenth to the twenty third of the month within the Spanish metropolis of Barcelona, this newest iteration of ModComFest shall be hosted within the Hospital de Sant Pau and the Palau de la Música Catalana, two of essentially the most storied venues within the metropolis. Audiences shall be offered with a complete of six live shows in all, deliberately designed to supply a broad perspective of Richter’s oeuvre throughout the span of the composer’s profession.
I’m very happy to be a part of this newest version of Fashionable Composers Worldwide Competition”, Richter stated. “Festivals like this provide a uncommon setting through which music might be skilled not as one thing remoted, however as a part of a wider trade between composers, performers, venues, and audiences. I’ve all the time felt that music finds its deepest resonance when it’s encountered via completely different contexts and views, and this competition displays that concept superbly, bringing a number of works collectively inside a single shared creative journey. I hope these performances invite listeners to have interaction carefully, to seek out moments of stillness and reflection, and to find their very own private reference to the music, permitting it to talk to them in their very own method.”
Certainly, the competition will open with a chamber music sequence on the Hospital de Sant Pau, the place Richter’s works shall be carried out by a distinguished group of worldwide musicians. Among the many artists collaborating are violinists Marc Bouchkov (Belgium), Lir Vaginsky (Israel), Miguel Colom (Spain), and María Florea (Spain); violists Diemut Poppen (Germany) and Joaquin Riquelme García (Spain); cellists Sebastian Klinger (Spain) and Alexander Chaushian (United Kingdom); double bassist Yamila Pedrosa (Spain); pianists Giuliano Mazzoccante (Italy) and Sofia Raichenko (Belgium); flautist Albert Mora (Spain); and clarinettist Josep Fuster (Spain), to say just a few.
Talking forward of the competition, Bouchkov described the mission as “a beautiful alternative to method Max Richter’s music in a concentrated and significant method”, including that “it is rather necessary to rejoice not simply the music of the previous but additionally the masters of the current, who’re creating fantastic works in our personal age!”
Chaushian, in the meantime, additionally welcomed the possibility to be a part of the programme, noting that “ModComFest affords one thing very precious, as a result of it permits audiences and musicians alike to spend time with a composer’s world. Richter’s music has a uncommon capability to really feel intimate and common on the identical time, and I believe this competition will present that superbly.”
Following the chamber live shows, ModComFest 2026 will then transfer to the Palau de la Música Catalana, the place there shall be three orchestral performances, that includes the Franz Schubert Filharmonia, with María Florea showing as each violin soloist and conductor. These live shows will convey Richter’s music into a bigger symphonic setting, with a specific concentrate on his well-known work, Recomposed: Vivaldi – The 4 Seasons, together with items by each Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi.
By way of these performances, Konstantin Ishkhanov and ModComFest itself are persevering with with their mission of championing a imaginative and prescient of classical music as a residing, evolving artwork type, and one which honours its previous whereas additionally giving area to the voices defining its current.
For extra data, the most recent updates concerning the Competition, Max Richter or Konstantin Ishkhanov, go to the official ModComFest 2026 web site at maxrichter.modcomfest.com.
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