Alisa Weilerstein’s blockbuster season: concerto premieres with LA, NY, & Czech Philharmonics; return to Berlin Philharmonic; debuts with Leipzig Gewandhaus & Royal Concertgebouw Orchestras; “FRAGMENTS” at Carnegie Hall & Spoleto; & more

(September 2024) — Alisa Weilerstein looks forward to a blockbuster season in 2024-25. As the
dedicatee of three major new concerto commissions, she gives the world and European premieres
of Thomas Larcher’s new concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Bavarian Radio
Symphony; premieres Richard Blackford’s with the Czech Philharmonic; and – before giving
its European premiere in Spain – gives the world, Colombian, and New York premieres of
Gabriela Ortiz’s new concerto on a tour with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles
Philharmonic that takes in New York’s Carnegie Hall. This marks the first of the MacArthur
award-winning cellist’s three appearances at the venue this season. Continuing her multi-season
solo cello project, “FRAGMENTS,” which combines the music of Bach with 27 new commissions,
she premieres FRAGMENTS 3 in San Diego’s Jacobs Music Center, returns to Carnegie Hall for
the New York premieres of FRAGMENTS 2 and 3, and gives her first account of the complete cycle
at Charleston’s Spoleto Festival USA. Other upcoming highlights include debuts with the Leipzig
Gewandhaus and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestras; a return to the Berlin Philharmonic;
season-opening concerts with the Kansas City and San Diego Symphonies; and the release of a
new Brahms sonatas album, recorded with pianist Inon Barnatan for the Pentatone label.

High-profile premieres of three new concerto commissions

A champion of contemporary music who is known for her “stylistic sensitivity, verve and
spontaneous delight in discovery” (The Guardian), Weilerstein has long demonstrated her
commitment to expanding the cello repertoire. She has already premiered important new
concertos written for her by three leading contemporary composers, proving herself “the perfect
guide” (Boston Globe) to Matthias Pintscher’s un despertar, showing Joan Tower’s A New Day to be
“tailor-made to Alisa Weilerstein’s many strengths as a soloist” (Cleveland Classical), and
giving Pascal Dusapin’s Outscape “the kind of debut most composers can only dream of”
(Chicago Tribune).

Over the coming season, she brings to life three more concertos of which she is the dedicatee. The
first of these is Dzonot (2024), a Los Angeles Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Orquesta Sinfónica
de Castilla y León, Philharmonia Orchestra, and São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra
co-commission from Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, whose honors include two Latin
Grammy nominations and a Guggenheim fellowship. The composer explains:

“Dzonot is a concerto for cello and orchestra inspired by the cenotes of the Yucatán peninsula,
which comprise an intricate, delicate system of subterranean rivers and caves that require careful
conservation. … Dzonot constitutes my way of calling for an end to our neglect of the challenge
presented by the urgent need to preserve these ecosystems within the context of the ongoing
climate crisis.”

With the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Music Director Gustavo Dudamel, Weilerstein gives the
world, New York, and Colombian premieres of Dzonot this fall at L.A.’s Walt Disney Hall (Oct
3 & 4), New York’s Carnegie Hall (Oct 9), and Bogotá’s Teatro Mayor (Oct 19). She then joins
Spain’s Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León and Music Director Thierry Fischer for the
concerto’s European premiere (Jan 23–26).

It is also early next year that Weilerstein gives the world premiere of Richard Blackford’s new
concerto in Prague, with Tomáš Netopil and the Czech Philharmonic (Feb 5–7), which
commissioned it. A British composer who has been recognized with an Ivor Award and an Emmy
nomination, Blackford writes:

“Underlying my cello concerto is the story about how people from the small town of Paradise,
California, came together to help those whose homes were destroyed by the wildfires known as
The Devil Winds of Santa Ana in 2018. … Their story of compassion and resilience motivates the
four movements.”

The cellist’s third new concerto is by Diapason d’Or-winning Austrian composer Thomas
Larcher, whose “extraordinary, arresting, communicative music is one of this century’s wonders”
(The Times of London). She and the composer have already worked together extensively; he is one
of the contributors to FRAGMENTS, and she has frequently performed his earlier concerto,
Ouraboros, which she recorded for ECM with the Munich Chamber Orchestra. This coming spring,
Weilerstein gives the world and European premieres of Larcher’s new concerto – a
co-commission of the New York Philharmonic and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra –
with the New York Philharmonic under Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider (April 3–5) and the Bavarian
Radio Symphony under Alan Gilbert (June 5 & 6), respectively. While in Munich, she also joins
members of the orchestra for an evening of chamber music titled: “Watch This Space: Alisa
Weilerstein & Friends” (June 4).

“FRAGMENTS”: NY premieres at Carnegie Hall; world premieres in San Diego & Spoleto

The new concertos represent just three of the 30 new works – 15 world premieres among them –
with which Weilerstein revitalizes the cello repertoire this season. The others all feature in her
multi-season solo cello project, “FRAGMENTS,” which aims to reimagine the concert experience.
Comprising six programs, each an hour long, the series sees her weave together the 36
movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 newly commissioned works in an immersive,
multisensory production. Ranging in age from 26 to 83, the composers she commissioned – Andy
Akiho, Courtney Bryan, Chen Yi, Alan Fletcher, Gabriela Lena Frank, Osvaldo Golijov, Joseph
Hallman, Gabriel Kahane, Daniel Kidane, Thomas Larcher, Tania León, Allison Loggins-Hull,
Missy Mazzoli, Gerard McBurney, Jessie Montgomery, Reinaldo Moya, Jeffrey Mumford,
Matthias Pintscher, Gity Razaz, Gili Schwarzman, Caroline Shaw, Carlos Simon, Gabriella
Smith, Ana Sokolović, Joan Tower, Mathilde Wantenaar, and Paul Wiancko – are also diverse
with respect to race, gender, geography, compositional approach, musical style, and stage of
career. To all 27, Weilerstein gave the same compositional prompt, asking each to write ten
minutes of music in two or three standalone fragments. She then integrated the new works with
Bach’s music to create the six installments of FRAGMENTS, each of which traces a powerful and
wholly original emotional arc. To help audiences connect with the music, she collaborated with
artistic producer and advisor Hanako Yamaguchi, director Elkhanah Pulitzer, costume designer
Carlos J. Soto, and lighting and set designer Seth Reiser. “At its core, FRAGMENTS is about
connection,” the cellist explains. “I wanted to find new ways of connecting audience with
performer, the familiar with the new, and composers of varying generations and
backgrounds with one another.”

Since premiering FRAGMENTS 1 & 2 at Toronto’s Koerner Hall early last year, Weilerstein has
performed one or both programs at numerous prestigious North American venues, including
Carnegie Hall, where FRAGMENTS 1 showed her to be “a cellist of explosive emotional energy”
(New York Times), and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where she premiered
FRAGMENTS 4 this past April. This prompted the UK’s Financial Times to marvel:

“As Weilerstein skilfully and with her customary emotional intelligence started to relax into this
fiendishly hard music, the intensity did not let up. There was everything here; sonic colours and
textures that brought to my mind a fractal in multi-dimensions: history, future, the now. … A
project like this, humble yet bursting with human creativity and imagination, makes us … think:
all is not lost.”

Over the coming season, Weilerstein gives the world premiere of FRAGMENTS 3 at San Diego’s
Jacobs Music Center (April 8); returns to Carnegie’s Zankel Hall for the New York premieres
of FRAGMENTS 2 (Jan 21) and FRAGMENTS 3 (May 20); and gives her first rendition of the
complete cycle at 2025 Spoleto Festival USA. Having enjoyed a close relationship with the
Charleston festival for the past 15 years, she has chosen to give the world premiere
performances of FRAGMENTS 5 & 6 at Spoleto during a weeklong residency that sees her
perform all six programs of the series in succession for the first time (May 27–June 1).

Collaborations with great orchestras of Europe; opening-night concerts in U.S.

Weilerstein is one of today’s leading exponents of the orchestral cello repertoire, and the coming
season brings debuts with two of the world’s foremost ensembles. She plays Barber’s Cello
Concerto under Franz Welser-Möst for her first appearances with the Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestra (Oct 24 & 25) and revisits Matthias Pintscher’s un despertar (2017), one of the first
concertos written for her, for her debut with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra,
under the composer-conductor’s leadership (Nov 7–9). She also returns to a third great European
orchestra, performing Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante – of which she is “a profound champion”
(New York Times) – with the Berlin Philharmonic and Lahav Shani (Sep 19–21).

In the States, she headlines Opening Night concerts with two major ensembles this fall. She
plays Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations in a festive season-opening event with the San Diego
Symphony and her husband, Music Director Rafael Payare, to celebrate the reopening of the
orchestra’s newly modernized Jacobs Music Center (Sep 28), and performs Dvořák’s Cello
Concerto in season-opening concerts with the Kansas City Symphony (Sep 13–15). Following an
evening of chamber music with members of the orchestra (Sep 12), the Kansas City Symphony
concerts inaugurate the tenure of incoming Music Director Pintscher, who is not only the
composer of un despertar but also a contributor to FRAGMENTS.

Her other orchestral highlights include reprises of Dvořák’s concerto, with England’s City of
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and her brother, Joshua Weilerstein (March 12), and of
Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante, with Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and
Music Director Payare, in concerts that will be recorded for future release (Feb 12 & 13). To
complete her concert season, she reunites with Payare at the San Diego Symphony for a
performance of the Cello Concerto by South Korea’s Unsuk Chin (May 10).

Chamber music, live and on recording; solo recital

November 15 brings Pentatone’s physical and digital release of Weilerstein’s new recording
with her regular piano partner, Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan, with whom she shares “a dazzling
technique and a level of communication and expression so clear that they can practically
finish each other’s phrases” (Boston Classical Review). An all-Brahms collection, the new
album captures their accounts of the German composer’s two sonatas for cello, as well as their
own arrangement for cello of his First Violin Sonata.

On the heels of the new release, Weilerstein rejoins Barnatan for live duo recitals of Brahms and
Shostakovich at Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall (Nov 20) and in Boston’s Celebrity
Series (Nov 24). A dedicated chamber artist, she also partners the Ariel Quartet for programs
juxtaposing Schubert’s String Quintet in C with original folk-themed works and transcriptions, in
concerts presented by the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (Dec 12) and the Philadelphia
Chamber Music Society (Dec 15).

Weilerstein completes her season with a solo recital at Switzerland’s Zauberklang Festival,
where her program features Kodály’s Sonata for Solo Cello and Osvaldo Golijov’s Omaramor
(March 16). Both are signature works heard on her 2015 recording Solo, which offers an
“uncompromising and pertinent portrait of the cello repertoire of our time” (ResMusica,
France).

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Alisa Weilerstein: 2024–25 engagements

Sep 12
Kansas City, MO
“On Stage with Alisa Weilerstein”
Chamber concert

Sep 13–15
Kansas City, MO
Kansas City Symphony / Matthias Pintscher
Opening Night
DVOŘÁK: Cello Concerto

Sep 19–21
Berlin, Germany
Berlin Philharmonic / Lahav Shani
PROKOFIEV: Sinfonia concertante

Sep 28
San Diego, CA
San Diego Symphony / Rafael Payare
“WELCOME HOME!!” Jacobs Music Center Opening Night
TCHAIKOVSKY: Variations on a Rococo Theme [Fitzenhagen version]

Oct 3–19: concerts and tour with Los Angeles Philharmonic / Gustavo Dudamel
Oct 3 & 4: Los Angeles, CA (Walt Disney Concert Hall)
Oct 9: New York, NY (Carnegie Hall)
Oct 19: Bogóta, Colombia (Teatro Mayor)
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot (world, New York, & Colombian premieres of L.A. Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall,
Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Philharmonia Orchestra, and São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra
co-commission)

Oct 24 & 25
Leipzig, Germany
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst (debut)
BARBER: Cello Concerto

Nov 7–9
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Matthias Pintscher (debut)
Matthias PINTSCHER: un despertar (cello concerto)

Nov 20 & 24: Duos with Inon Barnatan, piano
Nov 20: Stanford, CA
Nov 24: Boston, MA (Celebrity Series)
BRAHMS: Sonata for Cello and Piano in D (arr. from Violin Sonata by Weilerstein & Barnatan)
SHOSTAKOVICH: Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor
BRAHMS: Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 in E minor
SHOSTAKOVICH: Sonata for Viola and Piano (transc. for cello by Daniil Shafran)

Dec 12 & 15: “Folklore” with Ariel Quartet
Dec 12: Ann Arbor, MI
Dec 15: Philadelphia, PA (Philadelphia Chamber Music Society)
Original works and transcriptions (arr. Ariel Quartet & Alisa Weilerstein)
SCHUBERT: Cello Quintet in C

Jan 21
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall)
“FRAGMENTS 2” (New York premiere)

Jan 23–26
Valladolid, Spain
Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León / Thierry Fischer
Gabriela ORTIZ: Dzonot (European premiere of L.A. Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Orquesta Sinfónica de
Castilla y León, Philharmonia Orchestra, and São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra co-commission)

Feb 5–7
Prague, Czech Republic
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Tomas Netopil
Richard BLACKFORD: Cello Concerto (world premiere of Czech Philharmonic commission)

Feb 12 & 13
Montreal, QC
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal / Rafael Payare
PROKOFIEV: Sinfonia concertante

March 12
Birmingham, UK
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Joshua Weilerstein
DVOŘÁK: Cello Concerto

March 16
Bürglen, Switzerland
Zauberklang Festival
Solo recital:
BRITTEN: Tema “Sacher”
GOLIJOV: Omaramor
BACH: Cello Suite No. 3
KODÁLY: Sonata for Solo Cello

April 3–5
New York, NY
New York Philharmonic / Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider
Thomas LARCHER: Concerto (world premiere of New York Philharmonic & Bavarian Radio Symphony
Orchestra co-commission)

April 8
San Diego, CA
Jacobs Music Center
“FRAGMENTS 3” (world premiere)

May 10
San Diego, CA
San Diego Symphony / Rafael Payare
Unsuk CHIN: Cello Concerto

May 20
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall)
“FRAGMENTS 3” (New York premiere)

May 27–June 1
Charleston, SC
Spoleto Festival USA
“FRAGMENTS 1–6” (featuring world premieres of Nos. 5 & 6)

June 4
Munich, Germany
“Watch This Space: Alisa Weilerstein & Friends”
With members of Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Chamber concert

June 5 & 6
Munich, Germany
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra / Alan Gilbert
Thomas LARCHER: Concerto (European premiere of New York Philharmonic & Bavarian Radio Symphony
Orchestra co-commission)

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