Last year the annual Phnom Penh International Music Festival celebrated its 20th year.  This weekend, the 21st festival, a series of three concerts to be held at Raffles Le Royal, has the theme Eastern European heritage, highlighting four European capitals – Leipzig, Prague, Budapest and Kyiv – to take a look at Ukranian music.  LengPleng sat down with Artistic Director Anton Isselhadt to discuss this year’s programme.

“This year is the first edition of what will be several years exploring European music traditions,” says Anton. “We will be exploring Eastern European composers, contempories from the mid-19th Century to the mid-20th Century.  Alongside lesser known Ukranian composers are big names like Dvorak, Chopin, Franz Liszt – all from countries surrounding Ukraine.

“These composers found their orientation and their education looking to the west, not to the east.  They didn’t go to Moscow and St Petersburg, they went to Prague, Leipzig, Vienna, Paris.  And we can still see this today – Ukranians don’t want to be Russians, they want to be Europeans.  This is already a very clear tendency from the 19th Century composers.”

Anton relishes the work from the planning of each show to the stacking up of chairs at the end.  “I’m an artist first, then I’m an artistic director, then I’m a managing director, then I’m a stage manager, then I’m the cashier, then I’m guest relations manager, and then at the end ‘I’m the cleaner’.  This is what makes my job exciting, being creative in deciding – also with the team – what to do, what will be attractive.  In the end it is entertainment.  Listening to music, or watching a Shakesperean drama – in German the word entertainment has often a negative connotation, which I think is wrong.  We are not in the entertainment industry, but arts should be entertaining.”

This year the festival is offering pre-concert talks on each night by freelance guitarist and teacher Christoph Stadtler.  “I ask myself what will support the audience’s enjoyment?  We to offer an opportunity to the concert-goer to learn more, for some people it’s an added value.”

The programming itself is a long and slow process.  “Programming is a matter of balancing what I want and what I can get – composers, musicians, instrumentation – what is possible and what is available.”

What are the details for the performances this year?  “The Friday concert is a piano trio – piano, violin, cello – opening with a work by Ukranian composer Vasil Barvinsky, followed by Czech Josef Suk and ending with Dvorak’s Dumky trio.

“The second night is a song recital with mezzo soprano LiYing Chiang and Issei Sakano on piano, singing songs in Ukranian language by Stanyslav Lyudkevych, followed by works by Zoltan Kodaly and Franz Liszt from Hungary.  Liszt is always regarded as a Hungarian, but interestingly he didn’t speak a single word of Hungarian; the songs are based on German poetry, by Heinrich Heine, Goethe and others.  Music by Liszt, poetry by Goethe, what more do you want?

“On Sunday is a piano recital by Lee Jae Phang, featuring Lyatoshynsky and Lysenko from Ukraine, Szymanowsky from Poland, Reger from Germany and the Polish hero Chopin. ”

And what is coming up in the next couple of years?  “Next year will be a fantastic programme – European salons.  This is so interesting!  In Berlin, in London, in Milan, in Paris.  What was happening in these salons?  Everything was happening.  Literature, politics, discussion, music.  We will focus on piano music in European salons.  You will see the big names of the composers and you will wonder – wow, these guys are playing in salons?  That is one of the few places where they could play.  In 2026 we will look at the spread of the classical guitar throughout Europe, starting in Andalusia and ending in the United Kingdom, from the Renaissance until contemporary times.”

All concerts will be held at Raffles Le Royal.  The full programme may be viewed here.