TOWER– The draw of European performers and the arrival of an old and rare instrument from Eastern Europe helped to pack the house at the Lake Vermilion Cultural Center here last Wednesday.
It was all part of the Northern Lights Music Festival’s three-week-long musical gala held in conjunction with a summer music camp and opera apprentice program.
The highlight of the evening was a performance on an unusual instrument called the cimbalom by Ivan Curtean, considered one of the leading cimbalom virtuosos of his generation. Curtean, a guest of the music festival, has performed all over Europe. His active role in contemporary music for the cimbalom led to a collaboration with the joint program of Manhattan School of Music in New York and the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music (Budapest).
Curtean performed both classical and folk music, including tunes from his home country of Moldova. Curtean, who is in his early 30s, fell in love with the instrument when he was 12 years old, and chose the cimbalom as his instrument of focus while studying music both as a child and in college. He is now pursuing his doctorate in music at the Academy of Music in Budapest.
The cimbalom is similar to a large hammered dulcimer primarily associated with Hungarian folk music and used in Eastern European ensembles. It has a trapezoidal body with metal strings stretched across it, and a pedal mechanism for damping the strings. The instrument is played by striking the strings with beaters. At times, Curtean’s beaters were moving so fast it was impossible to see anything except a blur.
The instrument was on loan from the Czech mission in Chicago.
“They are hard to find here,” he said. The instrument was invented as early as the 1500s. The music originally written and played on the instrument was all destroyed during World War II, he said, which means musicians had to adapt other music for the stringed instrument.
“This is like the grandmother of the piano,” he said. “You can touch the strings and feel it resonate. It is very versatile.”
The concert also featured classical guitarist and music festival faculty Carlos Bedoya, violinists Oksana Gyrtsai and Serhiy Matviychuck, and longtime festival faculty and world-renown violinist Alexander Markov, who played selected pieces from Paganini. Markov was born in Russia but emigrated to the United States with his parents and became a citizen in 1982. He is featured in the internationally acclaimed film about great violinists, “The Art of Violin,” directed by the legendary film director Bruno Monsaingeon. His CD release and the video of the 24 Paganini Caprices, distributed world-wide by Warner Classics International, caused a sensation and became a best-seller.