Macedonia: Ohrid Festival Wraps Up
Text by Sinisa Jakov Marusic for Balkan Insight*
The organisers said they were happy with the programme that this year focused on retrospection, including performances by many artists who in the past have contributed towards building the festival.
“We have worked hard on this edition and we managed to accomplish 100 per cent of the envisaged programme”, the head of the festival’s executive board, Zoran Veljanovski, told a press conference on Thursday.
The Ohrid Summer Festival was traditionally staged in locations all over the south-western lake town of Ohrid.
Settings included the ancient Amphitheatre, only discovered in 1984, and the St. Clement’s church of St. Panteleimon, which both overlook the lake.
The Festival kicked off on July 12 with a performance by acclaimed Russian pianist and conductor Mikhail Pletnev.
Some of this year’s highlights were the Japanese-American violinst Midori Goto who, in 2007, was selected as a UN messenger for peace, and the Russian virtuoso pianist Boris Vadimovich Berezovsky.
The festival was first held in 1961 and artists from all over the world have since played there.
The performances included ballet, theatre, classical music and art exhibitions.
This article is courtesy of Balkan Insight, the online publication of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, which contains analytical reports, in-depth analyses and investigations and news items from throughout the region covering major challenges of the political, social and economic transition in the Balkans.
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