21C Media Group’s 2019 Summer Highlights Preview
![](https://21cmediagroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/manhattan-1674404_1920-800x570.jpg)
Festivals (listed alphabetically)
Bard Music Festival
Korngold and His World
Aug 9-11: Weekend One; Aug 16-18: Weekend Two
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
The Bard Music Festival – dubbed “part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit” (New York Times) – celebrates its 30th anniversary season this summer with a two-week, in-depth exploration of “Korngold and His World.” In twelve themed concert programs, complemented by pre-concert lectures, a special film screening, panel discussions, and expert commentary, Bard examines the life and career of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957), the under-sung yet hugely influential composer whose lush Romanticism would come to define the quintessential Hollywood sound. Offering an immersion in the worlds he straddled, first as a classical prodigy in fin-de-siècle Vienna and then as a prime mover in the Golden Age of Hollywood, Weekend One addresses the composer’s early career in Korngold and Vienna (August 9-11), and Weekend Two considers his later years in Korngold in America (August 16-18). Enriched by a wealth of compositions from Korngold’s predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, all events take place in the stunning Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s idyllic Hudson River campus. There, as in previous seasons, the Bard Music Festival is set to provide creative inspiration for Bard SummerScape 2019 and prove itself once again “the summer’s most stimulating music festival” (Los Angeles Times).
To download high-res photos, click here.
* * *
Bard SummerScape
June 29–Aug 18
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
The 16th annual Bard SummerScape festival comprises more than seven weeks of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, centered around the 30th anniversary season of the Bard Music Festival, “Korngold and His World” (see above). To complement this intensive examination of the life and times of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, SummerScape presents a film series exploring “Korngold and the Poetry of Cinema,” and the long overdue American premiere of the composer’s operatic masterpiece, The Miracle of Heliane (“Das Wunder der Heliane”), in a fully staged new production by German director Christian Räth. Daniel Fish’s acclaimed staging of Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta provides an alternative look at Hollywood’s Golden Age, and Evidence, A Dance Company makes its festival debut with the world premiere of Grace and Mercy, a new SummerScape commission from choreographer and company founder Ronald K. Brown, featuring live music from Meshell Ndegeocello and others. Cabaret and jazz from John Cameron Mitchell and others highlight a generous program of events in Bard’s authentic and sensationally popular Belgian Spiegeltent. Held between June 29 and August 18 in the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center and other venues at Bard College in New York’s picturesque Hudson Valley campus, SummerScape 2019 once again makes for a full “seven weeks of cultural delight” (International Herald Tribune).
To download high-res photos, click here.
* * *
Britt Festival Orchestra
July 26–August 11
Rogue Valley, OR
The Britt Festival Orchestra’s 2019 summer season anchors Oregon’s Britt Music and Arts Festival with three weeks of exhilarating open-air programming in the scenic Rogue Valley, also home to the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Under the galvanizing leadership of Music Director Teddy Abrams, the 2019 season features a compelling combination of beloved staples of the repertoire and cutting-edge 21st-century compositions. The season-opening concert is highlighted by a new Britt co-commission from Christopher Cerrone with soloists Third Coast Percussion. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw will be in residence for the Composer/Conductor Fellowship, a program in which a noted American composer is brought to Oregon each summer to study conducting with Abrams and then write a commissioned work. Three solo concertos dispersed throughout the summer feature violinist Augustin Hadelich, cellist Oliver Herbert, and pianist George Li. An ecology-themed concert called “The Rising Seas,” highlighted by John Luther Adams’s prescient work Become Ocean, crowns a series of pieces and concerts celebrating nature, and the programming is punctuated with cornerstones of the orchestral literature from Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy and Sibelius. Finally, a new score for Sergei Eisenstein’s Soviet silent film classic Battleship Potemkin, drawing from some of the greatest moments in classical music, brings the season to a close.
To download high-res pictures, click here.
* * *
Caramoor
June 15–July 28
Katonah, NY
Caramoor presents a variety of top-notch music this summer, with many concerts unique to the region, ranging from cutting-edge compositions to the finest in period-instrument early music, and from orchestral and chamber masterpieces to jazz, roots, and world music. Seven weeks of programming continue to build on longstanding traditions while increasingly embodying the full potential of Caramoor’s spectacular grounds, stellar performance venues, and notable history. Highlights of the summer include a spotlight on the music of Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw plus music from 14 other living composers, including regional premieres; a rare opportunity to hear peerless French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard perform Messiaen’s complete Catalogue d’oiseaux; and a recital by Russian superstar pianist Daniil Trifonov. Among the performers of Shaw’s pieces are Grammy-winning vocal group Roomful of Teeth, singer Davóne Tines, and pianist Jonathan Biss, who plays the New York premiere of Shaw’s new piano concerto, Watermark. Concerto performances by cellist Alisa Weilerstein and violinist Christian Tetzlaff with the resident Orchestra of St. Luke’s open and close the season. Also in this season’s vocal lineup: Celebrated mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux appears in concert with New York Baroque Incorporated; the Boston Early Music Festival presents French chamber operas; and Anthony Roth Costanzo and Paul Appleby perform with composer/pianist Matthew Aucoin. Chamber offerings include concerts featuring the Takács, Dover, Omer and Aizuri Quartets; and superlative mandolinist Avi Avital performs with the Venice Baroque Orchestra. Caramoor’s Jazz Festival, presented in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center, is headlined by the Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra; The Milk Carton Kids headline the American Roots Festival; world music artists are featured throughout the season; and an ongoing exhibition of sound artwork is dispersed throughout the grounds.
To download high-res pictures, click here.
* * *
Incontri in Terra di Siena
July 21-29
Tuscany, Italy
Italian pianist Alessio Bax curates his third season as Artistic Director of Italy’s Incontri in Terra di Siena festival this summer. Hailed as “one of the most enjoyable musical enterprises of the Tuscan summer” (Financial Times, UK), the festival hosts a starry roster of outstanding chamber musicians from around the world. The opening program features concerti by Mendelssohn, Mercadante and Weber performed by flutist Emmanuel Pahud, violinist Daishin Kashimoto, and clarinetist Paul Meyer, with Jonathan Webb leading the Camerata Strumentale Città di Prato. Superlative lieder interpreter Ian Bostridge joins Antonio Florio and the Cappella Neapolitana in a program of Italian music from the 17th and 18th centuries, in addition to performing Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings along with Croatian horn player Radovan Vlatković. Seldom-performed repertoire this summer includes the rarely-heard Octet by George Enescu, and a concert of little-known gems by Dutilleux, Jolivet, Saint-Saëns and Nino Rota along with Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat for clarinet, violin and piano. More Stravinsky is on tap with an arrangement of Petrouchka for piano duet, played by Bax and his wife and fellow pianist Lucille Chung, as well as genre-bending pianist Dan Tepfer’s jazzed-up take on the Pulcinella Suite featuring his trio. Other highlights include Bax and violinist Benjamin Beilman performing the wide-ranging Second Violin Sonata by Tuscan-born composer Ferruccio Busoni; and the Avery Fisher Prize-winning Calidore Quartet performing Wolf’s Italian Serenade, Ligeti’s ground-breaking First Quartet, Puccini’s much-loved song “Cristantemi,” and, joined by violist Lawrence Power, Dvořák’s Viola Quintet. Other familiar faces this summer are conductor Nabil Shehata, violinist Annabelle Meare, and cellist Antonio Lysy; new additions to the Incontri family include pianist Éric Le Sage and clarinetist Paul Meyer.
To download high-res photos, click here.
* * *
Music Academy of the West
June 17–Aug 10
Santa Barbara, CA
The Music Academy of the West charts new territory at the 72nd annual Summer School and Festival. As part of its first transatlantic educational partnership, the Academy presents the historic festival debuts of the London Symphony Orchestra and LSO Conductor Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas. The Academy also presents the West Coast premiere of Cold Mountain, the award-winning first opera of composer-in-residence Jennifer Higdon, in an exclusive new production directed by Vocal Institute Creative Director James Darrah. The summer’s Academy Festival Orchestra concerts will be led by returning festival favorite Larry Rachleff; Matthias Pintscher, showcasing his own composition; Marin Alsop, making her festival debut; and Michael Tilson Thomas, leading the orchestra side-by-side with the LSO in the annual Community Concert, which marks his own festival debut and underscores the Academy’s ongoing commitment to community access. Other festival highlights include recitals by pianist Jeremy Denk, the Takács Quartet, and the 2019 Mosher Guest Artists: mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (’05), flutist Claire Chase, double bassist Edgar Meyer, and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. All told, 140 talented fellows and 77 outstanding faculty members take part in 170 concerts, recitals, and masterclasses on the Academy’s picturesque Miraflores campus and throughout scenic Santa Barbara, California. For more information, click here.
To download high-res photos, click here.
* * *
Rosendal Festival
Aug 8–11
Bergen, Norway
For the fourth annual Rosendal Chamber Music Festival, Founding Director Leif Ove Andsnes pays tribute to Dmitri Shostakovich, who went by the musical signature “DSCH.” Over four days (Aug 8-11), celebrated Norwegian pianist Andsnes and this year’s guest artists will perform a wide spectrum of the Russian composer’s works alongside music by his predecessors, contemporaries and successors. Through a series of talks and lectures, the festival will also consider the relationship between Shostakovich’s music and the politics of his time, and the way it impacts our listening today. Joining Andsnes on stage are fellow pianists Sasha Grynyuk, Marc-André Hamelin, Igor Levit and Marianna Shirinyan, as well as baritone Andrei Bondarenko, clarinetist Anthony McGill, violinist Veriko Tchumburidze, violist Tabea Zimmermann, cellist Clemens Hagen, and chamber groups Quatuor Danel and Ensemble Allegria. As in previous years, the festival also features young Norwegian artists, with the welcome return of violinist Sonoko Miriam Welde and the debuts of cellist Amalie Stalheim, percussionist Christian Krogvold Lundquist, and percussion duo PERCelleh.
To download high-res photos, click here.
* * *
Notable summer performances (listed alphabetically by artist)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
July 13, 14: French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard – “a brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary” (Wall Street Journal) – performs Olivier Messiaen’s complete Catalogue d’oiseaux as part of Caramoor Takes Wing!, which celebrates birdsong in music, and marks the first time he will perform the piece in the U.S. in its entirety. Aimard, whose Pentatone recording of the work was released to raves last year, studied with Messiaen and his wife, Yvonne Loriod (for whom the cycle was composed), and is one of the most passionate interpreters of the French composer’s work.
July 18, 20: Following the Caramoor performances, Aimard travels across the country to the Music Academy of the West, where he is one of four Mosher Guest Artists this summer. He gives a recital on July 18 with his regular duo partner, pianist Tamara Stefanovich, comprising Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen and works by Bartók, Ravel and Harrison Birtwistle. When the duo played the same program at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall last fall, New York magazine headlined its review “Two Pianos, 20 Fingers, Infinite Pleasure,” called the performance “miraculous,” and raved: “To hear them play Visions is like listening with superpowered ears, each detail magnified and limpid, and at the same time arranged into an expressive structure.” Two days later, on July 20, Aimard joins Michael Tilson Thomas and the Academy Chamber Orchestra for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, a work he has recorded to acclaim with Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra.
Aug 2, 3: Aimard winds up his U.S. engagements this summer at New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, joining conductor Gianandrea Noseda and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra for a performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. On the pianist’s 2003 historically-informed recording of the complete Beethoven concertos with the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Gramophone singled out his performance of the Fourth as a “quite exceptional achievement.”
* * *
Matthew Aucoin
July 25: Composer and 2018 MacArthur Fellow Matthew Aucoin is one of the two artistic directors of The American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), a recently-formed collective of some of the most exciting artists of the rising generation. The company makes its Caramoor debut this summer, with a program titled “Veils for Desire” on which Aucoin as pianist is joined by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and tenor Paul Appleby. Two of Aucoin’s own compositions are on the program: This Earth, written for Costanzo on a passage from Dante’s Purgatorio that Aucoin translated himself, and Merrill Songs, written for Appleby and excerpted on the Caramoor program. Aucoin also accompanies both singers in a performance of Benjamin Britten’s dramatic canticle Abraham and Isaac, and for the world premiere of Harold Meltzer’s The Heaven of Animals.
* * *
Inon Barnatan
August 2-23: “One of the most admired pianists of his generation” (New York Times), Inon Barnatan takes up a new post as Artistic Director of California’s annual La Jolla Music Society SummerFest. Under his curation, the festival’s 34th season explores the theme of transformation, and in particular the organic process of evolution by which new artistic ideas can be achieved by building and expanding on older ones. Designed to reveal connections between different musical genres and artistic disciplines, Barnatan’s new “Synergy” concert series sees him collaborate with such luminaries as Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Cecile Mclorin Salvant, visionary director and visual artist Doug Fitch, and the Mark Morris Dance Group, which makes its festival debut with a program featuring the world premiere of a newly choreographed piece. The summer lineup also includes Composer-in-Residence David Lang, clarinetist and conductor Osmo Vänskä, the Brentano String Quartet, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and a host of other world-class artists.
* * *
Julia Bullock
June 15-29: American vocalist Julia Bullock – “a musician who delights in making her own rules” (New Yorker) – stars in Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’s world premiere production of Terence Blanchard and Kasi Lemmons’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. A coming-of-age story adapted from the memoir by celebrated writer and New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, the new jazz opera co-stars Davóne Tines, Chaz’men Williams-Ali, and Karen Slack in an original staging by James Robinson, with William Lang leading from the pit.
Aug 24, 25: Next, Bullock makes her debut at the Weimar Arts Festival, joining pianist Cédric Tiberghien for the German premiere of Zauberland (The Enchanted Country). The new work, which juxtaposes Schumann’s Dichterliebe with original songs by Bernard Foccroulle and Martin Crimp, represents a dramatic dialogue between “Fortress Europe” and its Eastern Mediterranean origins. Bullock stars in Katie Mitchell’s production, as at the recent world premiere performances in Paris.
* * *
Stephen Costello
July 17–Aug 17: Tucker Award-winner Stephen Costello – “the best American operatic tenor the world has right now” (Toronto Star) – makes his debut at Austria’s Bregenz Festival in Philipp Stölzl’s new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Giving nine performances as the Duke of Mantua, one of his most celebrated signature roles, Costello will be joined by Scott Hendricks as the titular court jester and Stacey Alleaume as Gilda, under the baton of Enrique Mazzola.
Aug 22–Sep 5: For his second festival debut of the summer, Costello headlines Franco Zeffirelli’s classic staging of La traviata at Italy’s Verona Opera Festival. Singing opposite Lana Kos with Daniel Oren on the podium, the tenor reprises his star turn as Verdi’s Alfredo. The role has already taken him to such eminent houses as New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Munich’s Bavarian State Opera, Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, and London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where Costello’s performance helped secure his standing “among the world’s best tenors” (Daily Express, UK).
* * *
Alan Gilbert
July 13: Alan Gilbert, who, during his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, made “an indelible mark on the orchestra’s history and that of the city itself” (New Yorker), takes up his new post as Chief Conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra this coming fall. On the way he stops in Munich, where he conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a performance featuring four-time Grammy winning soprano Renée Fleming. Also on the program is Tchaikovsky’s beloved Symphony No. 5 in E minor, which elicited high praise from the New York Times after Gilbert performed the work with the New York Philharmonic in 2014: “a piece that might have felt rescued from a deep closet and cursorily patted down for rumples felt bespoke and modeled with style.”
* * *
Susan Graham
June 5, 6; July 6: Grammy Award-winning mezzo Susan Graham – one of today’s foremost exponents of French vocal music – marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Hector Berlioz with several high-profile performances this summer. First she joins the Vancouver Symphony and Music Director Otto Tausk for a season finale program titled “A Little Night Music: Mozart & Berlioz,” performing one of her signature pieces, Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été (June 5, 6). In July she returns to Canada, this time with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre Métropolitain at Montreal’s Lanaudiere Festival, for a performance of Berlioz’s La mort de Cléopâtre (July 6).
June 10, Aug 7: In recital this summer, Graham partners with two outstanding pianists. She is joined by Malcolm Martineau for a SongFest recital at Los Angeles’s Colburn School of Music on June 10, and on August 7, along with pianist Jon Kimura Parker, she performs Mahler’s Rückert Lieder and the piano version of Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
July 18, 19: In the midst of these engagements, Graham takes time out for a trip Down Under, where she joins David Robertson and the Sydney Symphony for another French staple, Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne. The mezzo has been recognized with the French government’s prestigious honorific “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur” for her enthusiastic championing of the country’s musical legacy, while Time Out New York considers her “unbeatable in French repertoire.”
* * *
MCO (Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras with John Eliot Gardiner)
July 3: The Monteverdi Choir, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, and their Founder and Artistic Director, John Eliot Gardiner, perform Verdi’s Requiem at the closing concert of France’s Festival of Saint-Denis, where they will be joined by a stellar line-up of international soloists: soprano Corinne Winters, mezzo-soprano Marianna Pizzolato, tenor Charles Castronovo, and bass Ashley Riches. When Gardiner and his ensembles toured the same work last year, their interpretation was hailed as “perhaps as perfect a demonstration of the power of music as I have ever experienced” (Daily Express, UK).
Aug 29–Sep 8: This year marks both the 30th anniversary of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the 150th anniversary of Hector Berlioz’s death. To honor these twin milestones, the Monteverdi Choir, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, and John Eliot Gardiner give staged concerts of the French composer’s first opera, Benvenuto Cellini, on a tour that takes them to the annual Festival Berlioz in La Côte-St.-André (Aug 29), the Berliner Festspiele (Aug 31), London’s BBC Proms (Sep 2), and the Palace of Versailles (Sep 8). Featuring tenor Michael Spyres in the title role, and representing the opera’s first modern performances on period instruments, the European tour provides a fitting sequel to the ensembles’ transatlantic “Berlioz Series 2018” tour, which prompted the Financial Times to conclude: “Berlioz has no idea what he missed.”
* * *
Anna Netrebko
June 4: Soprano Anna Netrebko launches her summer with a crowd-pleasing gala concert of classical arias and popular tunes in Moscow’s six-thousand-seat State Kremlin Palace, joined by tenors Andrea Bocelli and Yusif Eyvazov and soprano Olga Peretyatko.
June 11, 15, 20: Further concerts with Eyvazov this summer include an all-Russian program at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie with conductor Pavel Klinichev leading the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen (June 11); a performance of Italian arias and duets at the Musikkens Hus in Aalborg, Denmark (June 15); and an all-Verdi program at the Chorégies D’Orange festival in southern France, with Marco Armiliato leading the Orchestre National de Lyon (June 20).
June 29; July 4, 7: The soprano also makes her house debut at the first-century Arena Di Verona Roman amphitheater this summer, singing her signature role of Leonora in the Zefirelli production of Verdi’s Il trovatore. When she performed the role in a Metropolitan Opera production in 2015, conducted by Armiliato, Bachtrack praised her “lush and beautiful” voice in a “stunning” performance that was “committed and thrilling.”
July 28, 31; Aug 3: Later in the summer, Netrebko – who in 2017 was named “Kammersängerin,” Austria’s highest honor for opera singers – joins Armiliato once again at the Salzburg Festival for a concert performance in the title role of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur. The New York Times, reviewing her performance in the role at the Met this past season, found her “magnificent.”
July 14, 17: In between operatic engagements, Netrebko joins accompanist Malcolm Martineau for two recitals, at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper during the Munich Opera Festival. Their all-Russian program features works by Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky.
* * *
Daniil Trifonov
July 4–16; July 26: As Artist-in-Residence of Germany’s Rheingau Music Festival (July 4-16), Grammy Award-winning Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov – “without question the most astounding young pianist of our age” (The Times of London) – gives the German premiere of his own Piano Concerto with the Bamberg Symphony; plays Schumann’s Concerto with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen; joins cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan for a duo recital of Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, and Arvo Pärt; collaborates with soprano Christiane Karg, violinist Renaud Capuçon, and cellist Clemens Hagen on chamber music by Debussy, Tchaikovsky, and Amy Beach; and performs a solo recital program of Beethoven, Schumann, and Prokofiev that also takes him to New York’s Caramoor festival (July 26). The German residency follows on the heels of the similarly multi-faceted, season-long artistic residencies that the pianist is currently completing at the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Musikverein, and London Symphony Orchestra, where he is the subject of an “Artist Portrait” series.
July 19–21; July 31: Trifonov returns to Switzerland’s Verbier Festival (July 19-21) to perform double keyboard concertos by Bach and Mozart with his former teacher and frequent collaborator, pianist Sergei Babayan; reunites with cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan for duo sonatas by Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff; and gives a solo recital of works by Berg, Prokofiev, Copland, Messiaen, Ligeti, Stockhausen, John Adams, and John Corigliano. This same 20th-century solo recital program is also the vehicle for Trifonov’s sole appearance at this year’s Aspen Music Festival (July 31).
* * *
Alisa Weilerstein
June 15: Cellist Alisa Weilerstein has long been a part of the Caramoor family, having participated in the Evnin Rising Star program in 1999, served as the festival’s inaugural Artist-in-Residence in 2014, and even gotten married in Caramoor’s Sunken Garden. On opening night this season she joins conductor Peter Oundjian and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s for Dvořák’s Cello Concerto. Her 2014 Decca recording of the piece with the late Jirí Belohlávek and the Czech Philharmonic was distinguished by a “take-no-prisoners emotional investment that is evident in every bar” (New York Times).
June 19-23: Having begun just a few seasons ago to publicly perform the entire set of Bach’s six unaccompanied cello suites, the cellist has since made the monumental undertaking a regular feature of her schedule. This summer she plays this pinnacle of the Baroque cello repertoire spread out over two concerts at the Aldeburgh Festival (June 19 & 21), before joining conductor Edward Gardner and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Thomas Larcher’s Ouroboros for cello and orchestra (June 23).
July 4: Weilerstein turns once again to Bach’s cello masterpiece in July, this time playing the suites complete in a single performance, at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Hamburg, at the acoustically and architecturally spectacular Elbphilharmonie.
July 25, 28: Weilerstein has had a season-long engagement with Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, joining Norway’s Trondheim Soloists for the string orchestra version of the piece on last fall’s Pentatone release Transfigured Night, and subsequently touring a piano trio version with her frequent collaborator, pianist Inon Barnatan, and Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan. They perform the piece at the Aspen Music Festival this summer (July 25), along with Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio and an arrangement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 for piano trio and percussion, joined by Scottish percussionist Colin Currie. For her second concert in Aspen (July 28), Weilerstein joins Robert Spano and the Aspen Festival Orchestra for Barber’s Cello Concerto; a recent traversal of the work with Neeme Järvi leading the Chicago Symphony was praised by the Chicago Tribune for the “pinpoint intonation and…huge, caramel sound” of her “terrific performance.”
# # #
© 21C Media Group, April 2019