ZMF-2025 / Concert I: Opera Amandante

Zurich Music Festival 2025 / Concert I: Opera Amandante

Composer: Maxim Shalygin (UA/NL)

Program note

A celebration of sonic opulence, philosophy, and irony

“An emotional rollercoaster and a triumph of musical imagination,” praised the Dutch newspaper NRC, naming Amandante one of the ten best musical works of 2024.

Inspired by Plato’s Symposium, Amandante unfolds as a richly layered portrait of Eros — from sensual desire to spiritual love. Paul van der Woerd’s libretto, drawing on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s romantic translation, amplifies the emotional contrasts of the original.

Maxim Shalygin has transformed this material into a vibrant, passionate, and intricately composed score — entirely sung, full of melodic development and dramatic intensity.

“I want the audience to lose themselves in the curves of the melodic lines and be carried away by them.”
Msxim Shalygin

Alongside familiar voices like Socrates and Aristophanes, Amandante also gives space to those overlooked at Agathon’s legendary banquet: Diotima, Agathon’s wife, a flutist, a winemaker. A delicate tension between inner and outer worlds emerges in both text and music — a driving force of this opera.

Maxim Shalygin (1985, UA/NL)

Amandante is the first opera by Dutch-Ukrainian composer Maxim Shalygin. He is considered one of the most distinctive composers of his generation. His music combines spiritual depth, sonic uniqueness, and uncompromising expressiveness. He composes across genres — from chamber and vocal music to electroacoustic works and opera.

His works have been performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Klarafestival, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, and De Doelen in Rotterdam. His current projects include commissions from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and a large-scale work for the Netherlands Radio Choir and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra for AVROTROS. In 2025, he is the City Composer of The Hague.

Program

Mriya Ensemble

Ukraine/Germany

Mriya started in 2022 as a string quartet, but from the very beginning, the goal was always bigger. What began as a small group of musicians soon grew into a full symphony orchestra, all made up of Ukrainian musicians who had found a new home in Germany and other European countries. Their first performance at Laeiszhalle in Hamburg in April 2022 was a turning point — what began as chamber music quickly transformed into something much larger. Since then, Mriya has had the privilege of performing in some of Germany’s most iconic venues, bringing together the beauty of classical music with the heart and soul of Ukrainian culture. From those early days as a quartet to becoming the full orchestra they are today, Mriya’s journey is about passion, resilience, and the belief that music can touch hearts and change lives.

Nova Opera

Ukraine

NOVA OPERA is a group of young Ukrainian artists the aim of which is search for new ways of developing of music theatre. It was founded by director Vlad Troitskyi in 2014. Musicians create the new synthetic genres and experiment with untypical music and stage performances. The music language of the performances hasn’t got any aesthetic borders and freely unites avant-guard and rock, Gregorian choral and trip-hop, new baroque and folk improvisations. The vocal-instrumental ensemble of NOVA OPERA investigates possibilities of human voice and uses non-academic methods ,of playing music instruments such as prepared piano, bit-box, body-percussion and so on

Antonii Baryshevskyi

Ukraine/Netherlands

Antonii Baryshevskyi is a Ukrainian pianist and a winner of the First Prize in some of the most prestigious international piano competitions such as Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, “Premio Jaen”, and F. Busoni International Piano Competition. Mr. Baryshevskyi gives master classes in Ukraine and abroad, as a guest professor in Davidsbündler Music Academy in The Hague and a regular member of the Landesakademie in Ochsenhausen (Germany). Antonii Baryshevskyi graduated from the National Music Academy of Ukraine and École Normale de Musique de Paris where he studied with Profs. Valerii Kozlov and Marian Rybicki. He also trained under Alina Sorkina, Ryta Donskaya, Lily Dorfman.
Antonii Baryshevskyi has been a guest of renowned festivals such as Progetto Martha Argerich, Klavier Ruhr festival, Busoni Festival, projects by Musica Insieme Fondazione, and others. Mr. Baryshevskyi performed at venues such as Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Berliner Philharmonie, Kölner Philharmonie, The Royal Concertgebouw, Warsaw Philharmonic and Teatro Comunale di Bologna. He performed in almost all European countries, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and the USA.
Mr. Baryshevskyi played with some of the leading European orchestras, including Munich Radio Orchestra, The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini under the baton of maestros Asher Fisch, Frederic Chaslin, Howard Griffiths, Oksana Lyniv, Andrey Boreyko, Kirill Karabits, and many others.

Mikheil Menabde

Georgia/Austria

Mikheil Menabde began his artistic career as a soloist at the State Opera and Ballet Theatre of Tbilisi, where he performed for ten years. He received his dance training from the legendary Giorgi Aleksidze. Choreographers – much like conductors – learn to read scores in order to understand musical structures more deeply. This skill ultimately led Menabde to music and conducting. At the age of 25, he began his studies at the State Conservatory in Tbilisi, and on the advice of composer Giya Kancheli, he continued his training at the National Music Academy of Ukraine under Roman Kofman. Since 2017, Menabde has been living in Vienna, where he successfully completed his conducting studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw). As a regular guest conductor of the Kyiv Philharmonic and the Georgian National Symphony Orchestra, he appears frequently at major contemporary music festivals throughout Europe and has earned an outstanding reputation for his compelling interpretations. In addition to his conducting work, Mikheil Menabde is also Artistic Director of Chamber Orchestra Armonia ludus and Vice President of the association CosmoKultur.