Two years after her triumph at the “La Maestra” conducting competition, Bar Avni returns to the podium at the Philharmonie de Paris. For today’s concert, she teams up with the Orchestre de Paris and Swedish violinist Ava Bahari, described by The Strad as “a notable emerging talent.”
An Artist in Residence with the Gothenburg Symphony, Bahari is a highly accomplished violinist and has a refreshing appetite for unique repertoire. Bahari takes the spotlight in Ravel’s exuberant Tzigane, with the programme also featuring Milhaud’s Le Bœuf sur le toit, Ernest Chausson’s Poème, Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 2, and the Carmen Suite by Georges Bizet.
Bar Avni conducts Ravel, Milhaud and Bizet
“La Maestra” Triumph
Bar Avni
Co-founded in 2019 by the Philharmonie de Paris and the Paris Mozart Orchestra, “La Maestra” is the International Competition for Women Conductors. It pursues three central objectives: to champion the professional ambitions of women conductors, to unite the international musical community behind a strong commitment to gender equality on the podium, and to provide emerging conductors with the support they did not always receive during their training.
Conductor Bar Avni won first prize at the 2024 competition in Paris, awarded by an illustrious jury chaired by Nathalie Stutzmann. Bar Avni swept all the competition’s awards, also winning the Orchestra Prize, the ARTE Prize, the Echo Prize, and the Prize of French Concert Halls and Orchestras.
Avni grew up in Israel and began playing the drums at the age of eight, initially training as a classical percussionist. Once she turned towards classical music, she began studying orchestral conducting at Tel Aviv University. Moving to Europe, she continued her studies in Graz and Hamburg.
Bar Avni is currently the Principal Conductor of the Bayer Philharmoniker, a position she has held since 2021. She is the first woman to hold this position in the orchestra’s 120-year history, and she has worked closely with the Bayer team to design several music education projects.
In Search of Beauty
Ava Bahari (photo by Sylvain Barrès)
Violinist Ava Bahari was born in Gothenburg in 1996. She started playing the violin when she was three years old and gave her first solo concert at the age of eight at Gothenburg Concert Hall. As a thirteen-year-old, she gained attention for her role as a musical prodigy in the television series “Molanders.”
Bahari studied at the Oslo Academy of Music, and she made her soloist debut with the Gothenburg Symphony in Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto in January 2023. She continued her studies in Berlin under Kolja Blacher and also earned a degree from the Accademia Stauffer in Cremona, Italy.
Over the years, Bahari has received several awards. As an Artist in Residence at the Gothenburg Symphony, she invites audiences to look at violins from different angles through performances of chamber music, traditional solo concerts, and jazz improvisation. Above all, Bahari searches for beauty. As she expresses on her website, “I am convinced that there are as many definitions of beauty as there are people on earth. As a musician, I constantly strive for beauty. What qualities does something beautiful have?”
Between Folklore and Artifice
Orchestre de Paris (photo by Marco Borggreve)
Bar Avni and Ava Bahari collaborate in the highlight selection for this ARTE concert featuring Ravel’s Tzigane. Ravel privately called the work a “showpiece à la hongroise.” With a work so deeply embedded in Hungarian Gypsy folklore and music, observers, aware of Ravel’s fondness for musical satire, have frequently wondered if the work might not have been a parody.
However, Ravel scholars assure us that the composer was sincere. Ravel went straight to the source of all good music, drawing on traditional tunes and the feelings of people who cared nothing for artifice and convention. Although Ravel never played the violin himself, the score is idiomatically correct and was soon orchestrated for piano and orchestra.
Together, Avni and Bahari bring Ravel’s dazzling Tzigane to life, searching for colour, freedom, and expressive individuality.
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