Ohrid, 18 July 2024 (MIA) – The Ohrid Summer Festival is to host Thursday an Austrian evening featuring an art exhibition and a concert.

The exhibition will honor the women of Austria and North Macedonia, celebrating their contributions through art, followed by a performance of the Quartet Arpeggio from Vienna.

The Quartet Arpeggio is made up of Leonard Furda and Johanna Lacroix on violin, Anthony Gilbert on viola, and Mara Achleitner on cello. Tonight, they will be joined by harpist Tina Žerdin.

The violinist Leonard Furda is a member of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, born in 1986 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He started studying violin in the Music School of his birth town at the age of 7 and later graduated his Bachelors and Masters degrees in the Music Academy of the same city, under the guidance of Prof. Victoria Nicolae. Immediately after, in 2010 he moved to Vienna and perfectioned his technical and musical skills in the Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität (currently Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität), under the guidance of Prof. Thomas Christian. During his studies, Leonard Furda won the 1st prize in six Romanian national violin competitions and the 3rd prize in the International competition “Stefan Ruha”, in Satu-Mare (Romania). His big passion has always been the stage, where he had numerous chances to perform his favourite repertoire, such as the violin concerto by Brahms or the virtuoso masterpieces Zigeunerweisen and Carmen Fantasy by Sarasate, accompanied by several Romanian symphonic orchestras in concert halls such as Atheneum in Bucharest or Carl Orff Gasteig, Munich.

Johanna Lacroix lives as a freelance violinist in Vienna. In addition to her work as an orchestral musician (Vienna Chamber Orchestra) and in the field of early music (Bach Consort Vienna, Les Talens Lyriques, Orchestra Wiener Akademie, Orchestra 1756, Ensemble Matheus, Ensemble Claudiana), she is deeply dedicated to chamber music in various formations. During her studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz under Eszter Haffner, she focused intensively on both early and contemporary music, attending numerous courses and seminars with Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Recherche, Freiburger Barockorchester, Michi Gaigg, and many others. Since 2014, she has been a part of the concert series by Ambitus – Group for New Music and has participated in numerous interdisciplinary projects, both as a chamber musician and as a soloist. Since 2017, she has been the artistic director, alongside Chanda VanderHart, of Talespin – Musical Fairy Tales for Young and Old, and the co-author of the book with CD “The Monkey Who Looked for Trouble”. The book was presented in March 2019 at the sold-out Vienna Musikverein. In 2022, they followed up with “Morgiana and the Forty Thieves”

Anthony Gilbert is a violist from Memphis, Tennessee. Based in Vienna since 2020, he performs regularly with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. From 2016 to 2020, he was Assistant Principal Viola of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. As a chamber musician, Anthony played with the PRIZM Ensemble of Memphis and taught at the PRIZM International Summer Music Festival. From 2007 to 2011, he served as Executive Director of the Eroica Ensemble. Anthony studied music at Oberlin College (B.A., 2001) and Chicago College of Performing Arts (M.M.,2003).

Mara Achleitner was born in Palo Alto, California, and has lived in Vienna, Austria since 2003. After performing for three seasons with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mara became the cellist of ensemble LUX, a Vienna-based string quartet dedicated to the performance of modern and contemporary quartet literature. As principal cellist, Mara toured extensively with the Vienna Opera Ball Orchestra in Japan and throughout Europe. Mara frequently performs with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble Kontrapunkte in the Wiener Musikverein and the Wiener Konzerthaus. She is the principal cellist of the Big Island Orchestra, which specializes in film and multimedia recordings.

The Slovenian harpist Tina Žerdin completed her concert harp studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna with outstanding success. Currently, she is the principal harpist with the Orchestra Wiener Akademie, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Austrian-Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic, and the Synchron Stage Orchestra. Additionally, she frequently performs as a guest musician with the Vienna State Opera, the Volksoper, and other Viennese orchestras. As a soloist and chamber musician, Tina Žerdin is active primarily in Austria and Slovenia, but also in many other countries across Europe and Asia. As a performer of contemporary music, she collaborates with ensembles such as Klangforum, Reconsil, Phace, and Kontrapunkte, in addition to being a member of the quartet airborne extended since 2017. She is a prominent interpreter of Slovenian contemporary music and has participated in numerous radio and CDrecordings. Since 2024, she has been the manager of the Slovenian Cultural Center Korotan in Vienna.

The concert is to be held at the St. Sophia Church, starting at 9 pm.

'Calliope Austria and North Macedonia' - Women in Society, Culture and the Sciences exhibition will open at 7:30 pm at the Grigor Prlichev Cultural Center.

Women have far too often been forgotten, overlooked and marginalised in Austria’s official historiography — a fact that lends all the more importance to this exhibition’s attempt to survey the past 200 years in light of the biographies of important Austrian women. Austrian women, whose talents, will-power and determined courage have helped shape and enrich their country. Their lives and their works, which account for at least half of Austria’s intellectual identity, are to be recognised here in the form of prominent examples — in full knowledge of the inevitable gaps, some of them scandalous, that such a form of portrayal entails.

This exhibition surveys the life stories of aristocrats, artists, salon women, scientists, women’s rights activists, politicians, actresses, musicians, physicians and stage directors in chronological form. The arc thus drawn extends from the early 19th century to the present. A common theme evident throughout is women’s struggle for emancipation, with all its attendant triumphs and setbacks. From Biedermeier-period desires for freedom to our 21st century, much has been accomplished.

In the history of art, women are portrayed as passive muses, their creativity and talent overshadowed by their male colleagues. However, this passive presence as object in the works of art created by males will change when brave women take the stance and actively participate in the creation of art. This will give art a female perspective and this change of paradigm is visible even in the period when the first Macedonian academic artists such as Katja Eftimova, Keraca Nikolova, Lena Stefanova i Borka Avramova stand at the forefront of this transformative movement.

Photo: Ohrid Summer Festival