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Internationally renowned contemporary pianist Xenia Pestova will perform at the Warkworth Town Hall next month.
Lauded for her “dynamic energy and crystalline precision”, Xenia plays at major music festivals and venues around the world and has recorded a number of acclaimed CDs for Naxos and Innova.
She is equally at home in experimental concert settings and has performed in an underground World War II fortress, tropical gardens and a natural cave system inhabited by hibernating bats.
Xenia’s childhood music education began in Siberia, was followed by study with Judith Clark at Victoria University in Wellington and eventually led to a Doctor of Music degree in Canada.
She is currently the Director of Performance at Nottingham University and continues to mentor emerging musicians in workshops at conservatoires and universities around the world.
She is well known for championing new music, including 20th century classics such as works by Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, and an array of contemporary composers, many of whom have written works especially for her.
As well as conventional piano performance, Xenia is a pioneer in the creative use of cutting-edge digital musical instruments and technologies and in the commissioning of new works for the toy piano.
The programme for Xenia’s Warkworth concert includes works by living composers from Ireland, the United Kingdom, USA, Canada and New Zealand, interwoven with those of the great keyboard masters of the Baroque, Romantic and 20th century periods, such as Debussy, Scarlatti, Clara Schumann and Bach.
Mysterious, dark or playful in turn, each piece offers a glimpse of a different world and teaches us that the music of the present is inseparable from the music of the past.
Xenia is especially pleased to be playing pieces by female composers as well as New Zealand composers, including premieres of new works by Glenda Keam and Miriama Young.
The concert is presented by Warkworth Music in association with Chamber Music New Zealand.
Venue and time: Warkworth Town Hall, Sunday August 6 at 4pm.
Tickets $35 at the door or visit warkworthmusic.org.nz
