A family affair! With the Raanana Symphonette, the Karnis - violist Gilad Karni, violinist Eugenia Karni and conductor Gerald Karni - will perform on the same stage.

 

Gerald Karni, Eugenia Karni, Gilad Karni (Courtesy Gilad Karni)

History of the arts testifies to the fact that music has flowed in the veins of many renowned musician families for more generations than we can count – familiar to us are the Couperin family, the Mozart family, the Haydns, Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, the Strauss family and, of course, the some-50 musicians of the Bach family…to name a few. Some families with musical genes have enjoyed less prestige. Take the Brahms family, for example. Johannes Brahms' father Johann Jakob, who played violin, viola, 'cello, flute, and the flugelhorn, made a career playing the double bass in a sextet as well as in the orchestras of the Stadttheater and the Philharmonic Society in Hamburg. Of Johannes' brother Fritz Brahms, known around town as “the wrong Brahms", Clara Schumann claimed that he possessed quite a good piano technique, "only I find his playing so very dull". Fritz eventually established himself as a respected music teacher in Hamburg. 

 

Today's concert platforms attest to the fact that many musician families prevail on the contemporary music scene; one such kinship is the Karni family. Born in Israel in 1968, violist Gilad Karni comes from a musical family. His aunt was the renowned soprano Gila Yaron. Karni was a student at the Manhattan School of Music under the guidance of Paul Neubauer, Chaim Taub and Gad Lewertoff and was a scholarship recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. As comfortable performing solo- as chamber music, he appears worldwide performing both and as a teacher. For eight years, he was professor of viola and chamber music at the Conservatoire de Lausanne and at the Kalaidos University for Applied Sciences in Lausanne. A founding member of the Huberman quartet (1996-2001), he performed as guest artist with the Jerusalem Quartet on tour with Menachem Pressler at the Concertgebouw and Paul Meyer clarinet in Paris. Gilad Karni is currently principal violist of the Tonhalle Orchestra (Zurich), a post to which he was appointed in 2004 by David Zinman. Prior to his tenure there, he served as principal viola at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Karni's vast orchestral experience ranges from being the youngest member of the New York Philharmonic, which he joined in 1992, to principal viola roles in the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra (1996-2002). Gilad Karni plays a viola made by Hiroshi Iizuka in 1982, an instrument previously owned by American violist and pedagogue Emmanuel Vardi.

 

Violinist Eugenia Karni moved to Belgium at the age of 7 together with her musician parents. Her first teacher was her father, Dmitry Ryabinin, a pupil of Yuri Bashmet, today principal violist of the Brussels National Orchestra. Her career took off at age 10 with her debut with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, in which she performed Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Her teachers include Valery Oistrakh (Brussels Conservatory), Zakhar Bron (Cologne University of Music), Augustin Dumay (Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel) and Prof. Barnabás Kelemen and she has been the recipient of multiple awards and prizes. With her strong predilection for symphonic repertoire, Ms. Karni was first concertmaster of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie from 2014 to 2019, after which she proceeded to preside as guest concertmaster with many other major orchestras. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician all over Europe, Canada, Mexico and Asia. Renowned as an interpreter of Belgian and French post-Romantic composers and a dedicated chamber musician, she frequently collaborates with her mother, pianist Nina Ardachirova. Eugenia Karni plays a Vincenzo Panormo violin (Paris, 1775). Together with pianist Dmitri Demiaschkin, Eugenia and Gilad Karni founded the Edge Ensemble in Zurich during the corona pandemic, maintaining that "all musicians live now on the Edge", the ensemble's name also incorporating the three artists' names - Eugenia, Dmitri and Gilad. 

 

Born in Israel in 1996, Gerald Karni started with the violin and was initially mentored by his father Gilad Karni. A violist and conductor, Gerald completed his bachelor’s degree at the Zurich University of the Arts, studying with Lawrence Power, and is currently taking a master’s degree in orchestral conducting at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano under Prof. Marc Kissozcy. He is the recipient of several awards and prizes, was chosen as a conducting fellow at the Verbier Festival, assisting Gianandrea Noseda, Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sir Simon Rattle and he has also played in- and toured with Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. As a conductor, Gerald Karni has appeared with orchestras in the United States, Switzerland, Hungary, Finland, and Bulgaria. Today, he makes his home in Berlin, where he is garnering experience and reputation as a conductor, interested in directing both orchestral music and opera, but also working as a violist. 

Gerald was initially mentored by his father Gilad 

 

On February 5th 2023, I spoke to Gilad Karni at his home in Zurich, Switzerland. Maestro Karni emphasized how meaningful the upcoming Israeli tour is for him and his family.

 

PH: Gilad Karni, what does this concert tour mean for you?

 

GK: This will be the first time Eugenia, Gerald and I will be performing on the same concert platform and it is most exciting that it will be taking place in Israel. In two concerts with the Raanana Symphonette (February 16th, 17th) we will be premiering "Vows", a work written by Maya Brenner in celebration of the recent marriage of Eugenia and myself. This concert will also include Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin & Viola in E Flat major K 364 and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A Major Op. 92.  So, we will get to solo together and play under Gerald, one of today's up-and-coming conductors. The tour will also include two chamber concerts Eugenia and I will be performing with pianist Assaf Zohar - one at Studio Annette (Tel Aviv) on February 18^th, the other at the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies (Mormon University) on February 19th. Here, we will be playing works of Mozart and Brahms. 

 

PH: Professor Karni, many thanks for your time. I am sure many of us here are looking forward to hearing the upcoming festive family concerts in Israel in the near future.

Born into a musical family in Israel, Gerald was initially mentored by his father Gilad

Gerald was initially mentored by his father Gilad K

musical family in Israel, Gerald was initially mentored by his father Gila