Baïka

French-Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulovic takes us on a magical tour of the East, visiting Armenia first for an electrifying performance of Khachaturian’s all-too-rarely performed Violin Concerto, a work full of vitality and packed with Armenian folk song. Alongside clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer and pianist Laure Favre-Kahn, Radulovic rescues the composer’s equally colourful Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano from obscurity. At the heart of Baïka is a stop in Baghdad for a new, gypsy-inspired solo-violin arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. But it’s contemporary composer Aleksandar Sedlar who has the last word, his thrilling music instantly whisking us to the thronging streets of Istanbul and the bustling ports of the Black Sea.