ESO'21 - Covid edition
Just like many other organisations in the sociocultural field, the ESO and its mother organisation ESOF are suffering from the consequences of the COVID crisis: funding is dropping, big differences between measures in different European countries remain, and the possibilities for international travel last summer were unclear.
To our great regret, we had to make the difficult decision to modify the original concept of the 2021 ESO edition.
But we worked out an alternative concept, an ESO edition that is totally suited for these COVID times.
The aim of the ESO is to bring students – from all over Europe – who share the same passion, together and make music. And exactly this is what we have done this summer. Because we are a group of over a hundred musicians from about 17 countries, the circumstances prohibited us from coming together in one country. But why not have several smaller ESO-ensembles all over Europe?
So in the summer of 2021 the ESO went on a virtual tour through Europe.
First stop, Belgium – the alma mater of our ESOF organisation. Our enthusiastic Belgian musicians Josefien, Karen, Wannes, Maarten, Ariane and Louis put the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok in the spotlight. Enjoy their performance of the Romanian Folk Dances.
Next we go to Portugal. The Portuguese trio Joana, Mafalda and Alexandre play for us Joseph Haydn’s string trio opus 3 no. 1 in F major on cello, violin and oboe.
Next stop: Serbia! Mina, Maša and Milan perform the trio in C Major (opus 87) by Ludwig van Beethoven, in an arrangement for oboe, clarinet and flute.
Finally, we arrive in Ukraine. Maria, Anton and Marina came together to play for us a trio with piano, violin and cello. They perform the Trio Elégiatique no. 1 in G minor, composed by Sergej Rachmaninov.