Xenia Gogu from Moldova has won the 1st prize at the Göttinger Händelfestspiele (Göttingen Handel Competition) and the audience prize in a sonorous duet with her partner, the Spanish cellist Victor García.

The two artists call themselves “Duo Auxesis”. Xenia Gogu studies baroque violin and baroque viola at the HfK with Veronika Skuplik.

The duo played two pieces by Georg Friedrich Händel and “Sliyanie”, a composition by Xenia Gogu’s father, among others, in Göttingen. The repertoire includes Baroque pieces as well as rarely performed works from the early 19th century. “With our choice of music for the finale, we wanted to travel from the old to the modern and back to the old again,” Victor García is quoted as saying in the HNA.

With the Göttingen Händel Competition, the niedersächsische Festival-Institution für Alte Musik in Lower Saxony has been focusing since 2017 on promoting young artists who deal with Baroque music and develop their own ideas in the process. The 101st edition of the Händelfestspiele
in May 2022 had the motto New Horizons. These are now also opening up for the prize-winning duo “Auxesis”. They were delighted about a concert in Göttingen’s Albani Church. Another concert will take place in August as part of the “Felix!” original sound festival in Cologne.