Evening’s artists:
Katrīna Paula Felsberga - soprano
Žustīne Ekō - piano
It is with great pleasure that we welcome one of Latvia’s brightest sopranos of her generation, Katrīna Paula Felsberga, to the Ola Foundation cultural space. Following the beautiful and audience-beloved concert programme Across the River. Ziedonis and Vācietis (2023), she returns to Ola together with French pianist Žustīne Ekō to present a new and special vocal chamber music programme.
In recent years, Katrīna Paula Felsberga has convincingly established herself in opera roles, chamber music and the interpretation of contemporary music. The singer stands out for her vocal virtuosity, musical intelligence and stage presence, which enable her to perform with equal conviction across different genres.
This time, she is joined by French pianist Žustīne Ekō (Justine Eckhaut) - an outstanding chamber musician and prizewinner of several international competitions. The duo Felsberga&Eckhaut won 1st place at the international competition Franz Schubert and Modern Music in Graz in 2025, establishing themselves as one of Europe’s most promising vocal chamber music ensembles of the new generation.
PILLOW TALK is a concert programme about intimacy, longing and the most fragile states of love. The title is borrowed from the English expression pillow talk - quiet conversations that take place at night between two people.
The artists say of the concert programme: “Pillow Talk is a musical story that takes us to that special state of consciousness in which a person no longer quite belongs to themselves. The moment when the other person is not yet by your side, or perhaps never will be, yet in the imagination their presence becomes almost tangible. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov called this borderland between longing and obsession limerence - the early stage of falling in love, in which euphoria and anxiety, hope and vulnerability exist simultaneously.
It is no coincidence that the genre of Lied, or art song, becomes the home for such a story. Vocal chamber music has always been an art of intimacy and subtle gestures. It is music that creates the illusion that the listener has accidentally become a witness to someone’s most intimate thoughts.
The concert programme Pillow Talk features songs by Franz Schubert, Claude Debussy and Alma Mahler, contemporary works by Kaija Saariaho and Christian Jost, as well as Nina Simone’s blues and the irony of German cabaret. Works from different eras, with different musical languages and aesthetics, touch upon the human inner world in its most intimate moments and address the question - what does a person do with love when the other is unreachable?
The concert begins at 19.00. Guests are invited from 18.15 for a glass of welcome wine and a visit to three current exhibitions.
The concert is in two parts.
Interval — 30 minutes.
We look forward to seeing you at Ola!
