Peter Breiner & priatelia

When the curtain rises on the Arena Theater on September 2nd, there will be the man who has conducted the Royal Philharmonic in London, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and dozens of other world bodies. The man who recorded more than 260 albums and sold more than two million records worldwide. The man whom the prestigious British magazine Gramophone praised with the words "splendid disc... conducted with passion and sympathetic understanding" and the Chicago Tribune ranked his recording among the ten best classical albums of the year. And a man who is — through the line of his teacher Alexander Moyzes — the musical great-grandson of Antonín Dvořák himself.

Peter Breiner.

Peter has been a constant of Shalom Chaveri since the very beginning — and not by chance. Every year comes with a new line-up, a new arrangement, a new surprise. You never know what exactly awaits you. You just know it's going to be special.

This time he aptly named his project: Peter Breiner and Friends. And the friends have names and instruments: Stano Palúch takes up the violin, Boris Lenko the accordion, Marian Friedl the clarinet, Juraj Griglák the double bass, Michal Cálik the trumpet and Marcel Comendant the dulcimer. Six voices, six instruments, one manuscript.

The program will be something that has never sounded like this before in the Arena — a mixture of classical, klezmer and Israeli compositions, interwoven with Breiner's characteristic handwriting, in which the genres do not overlap, but tell the same story in different languages.

The Arena Theater is not just a space — it is a stage with a soul, a place where architecture and atmosphere work for the music as much as they do themselves interpreters. The opening concert of the third year of the festival deserved this place.