Talented Flutists at Kotorart Academy

It has long been a practice that, in addition to formal education, young talented musicians improve their skills by learning from eminent pedagogues at master classes. KotorArt Don Branko’s Music Days, within the festival segment titled KotorArt Academy, offered violin, flute and piano master classes. This year’s lecturers – violinist Stefan Milenkovich, flutist János Bálint and pianist Kemal Gekić, who all have rich performing careers and many years of teaching experience, have been guests of the Festival in previous years  but most often as performers. 

After the young violinists presented their achievements at the Milenkovich master class, young flutists from the country and the region, taught by flautist János Bálint in the previous days, performed in the Church of the Holy Spirit, on Friday July 29. János Bálint also presented himself performing works of Doppler, Bartók, Debussy, Massenet and Borne with pianist Oleksiy Molchanov.

János Bálint holds master classes all over the world, and is a professor at several universities: Hochschule für Musik in Detmold (Germany), Faculty of Philology and Arts in Kragujevac (Serbia) and Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice (Poland). During several days in Kotor, the participants of the master class had the opportunity to present their playing skills and improve them through lessons with Bálint. The results of the master class were first presented by Petra Lekić from Montenegro, a student at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, performing Carl Reineke’s Undine Sonata for flute and piano. Then, Ana Bašić from Croatia, who completed the Eli Bašić Secondary Music School in Zagreb, performed Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Etude. At the end, Marija Mila Milas from Bosnia and Herzegovina, a student at the Music Academy in Sarajevo, performed Sonata for flute and piano by Francis Poulenc.

The rest of the evening was dedicated to flutist and pedagogue János Bálint as a soloist, who together with pianist Oleksiy Molchanov performed Albert Doppler’s Hungarian Pastoral Fantasy, Jules Massenet’s Meditation, Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances and François Borne’s Carmen Fantasy. Bálint also performed a composition for solo flute, Claude Debussy’s Syrinx. János Bálint began his performing career in the Radio Hungary Symphony Orchestra in the eighties of the last century, and continued in the Hungarian National Philharmonic. As a soloist, he has appeared in most European countries, as well as in the USA, Japan, Taiwan, Israel and Korea, collaborating with, among others, András Schiff, Martha Argerich, Miklós Perényi, and Zoltán Kocsis. The audience at KotorArt had the opportunity to recognize Bálint’s characteristic interpretation – a clear intonation, technical mastery, ease of leading a musical phrase and high level of virtuosity.
Boris Marković