Daniel Hope Begins 2023-24 U.S. Season in November in His Role as Music Director of New Century Chamber Orchestra

(October 2023)— Violinist Daniel Hope, lauded by San Francisco Classical Voice as a “master violinist and ‘musical activist’ in perpetual motion,” begins his U.S. season in 2023-24 with the New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO), which he has led as Music Director and Concertmaster since 2018. He and the ensemble kick off the season with four Bay Area concerts at the inaugural “California Festival: A Celebration of New Music.” Featuring mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and an eight-voice chorus, their candlelit “Visitations” program features the world premiere of a new NCCO commission from Nicolás Lell Benavides, along with works by Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Dukas, Villa-Lobos, and others (Nov 2–5). Next, the NCCO’s mostly Baroque “Christmas Ornaments” program features trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary and English hornist Jesse Barrett in music of Bach, Corelli, Neruda and Copland (Dec 15–17). In the spring, Hope and the orchestra are joined by American cellist Sterling Elliott for March performances of Haydn’s First Cello Concerto, on a program with Stravinsky’s neoclassical ballet suite Pulcinella (March 8–10); and their final set of concerts in May features pianist Awadagin Pratt and music of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, David Diamond, Florence Price and Leonard Bernstein (May 2–4). Also in the spring, Hope revisits music from his 2020 album Belle Époque, recorded with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips. He reunites with the pianist in St. Paul, Minnesota’s Schubert Club International Artist Series (April 25 & 26) and at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, where their program also includes the U.S. premiere of Fantasy Suite 1803 by Jake Heggie (April 30).

Hope also serves as Music Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra (ZCO), after succeeding Roger Norrington in 2016. Their fall began with a six-city German tour along with Polish violist Ryszard Groblewski that featured David Bruce’s new violin concerto, Lully Loops, a tribute to the great 17th-century composer and violinist at the court of Louis XIV in Versailles. Hope and the orchestra reunite in the holiday season for a three-city German tour of works by Mendelssohn, Elgar and Walton along with traditional Christmas music (Dec 7–9). In February, the violinist inaugurates a new program with ZCO on a twelve-city German tour that traces the history of dance from the Renaissance and Baroque to the waltz, foxtrot and tango (Feb 8–23). A recording of the program will be released on Deutsche Grammophon that same month. Finally, Hope gives solo performances charting the changing reputation of the violin over the centuries. Titled “Of Heaven and Hell,” the program comprises works by Biber, Schnittke, Penderecki, von Westhoff and others (Oct 13 & 14).

The tireless violinist also continues work on his series of “Hope on the Road” documentaries for the French/German television network ARTE this season. In January, he starts shooting a new documentary focusing on South Africa and South African music, timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the country’s independence. Previous releases in the series were Celtic Dreams: Daniel Hope’s Hidden Irish History, and a documentary that charted the story of the Hollywood Exile composers who escaped Nazi Germany and helped to create the Hollywood Sound.

U.S. engagements with NCCO and others

Appointed in 2018 as Music Director and Concertmaster of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO), one of the world’s few conductorless ensembles, Hope begins his U.S. season leading the ensemble in four Bay Area concerts at the first “California Festival: A Celebration of New Music.” Mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and an eight-voice chorus are featured in the candlelit “Visitations” program, which examines connections with the afterlife from many cultural angles. Featured on the program is the world premiere of composer Nicolás Lell Benavides’s Doña Sebastiana, a summoning of the spirit of the “Lady Death” of the American Southwest commissioned by NCCO. Paul Dukas’s playful tone poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Argentinian composer Ariel Ramírez’s Misa Criolla, Carlos Simon’s Elegy: A Cry from the Grave, and Schubert’s “Erlkönig,” along with otherworldy music from Rachmaninoff, Villa-Lobos, Lieberson, Pärt and contemporary Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir round out the program.

Hope’s second set of concerts with NCCO this season is in December, when they present their “Christmas Ornaments” program. Joined by young and versatile French trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary – who has already made a reputation as both a classical and jazz artist – as well as English hornist Jesse Barrett, Hope and the orchestra present a program comprising Bach’s third Brandenburg Concerto, Corelli’s “Christmas” Concerto grosso in G minor, eighteenth-century Bohemian composer Johann Baptist Georg Neruda’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat, Copland’s Quiet City, and traditional Christmas music arranged by frequent Hope collaborator Paul Bateman.

Next spring, Hope and the NCCO reunite for San Francisco and Stanford performances of Haydn’s First Cello Concerto with American cellist Sterling Elliott – a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and the winner of the Senior Division of the 2019 National Sphinx Competition – who made his German debut playing chamber music with Hope in May of 2022. Also on the program are Stravinsky’s neoclassical ballet suite Pulcinella, and works by Gluck and Bloch.

Hope and NCCO perform their final set of concerts for the season in May, joined by pianist Awadagin Pratt. Pratt, who as a student became the first in the history of the Peabody Conservatory to receive diplomas in three performance areas – piano, violin and conducting –also became, in 1992, the first African American pianist to win the Naumburg International Piano Competition. He joins Hope and NCCO for a program of 20th-century American works for strings that speak to collective human emotions. The first half of the program is about coping with the senselessness of war: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson confronted his concerns about the Korean War through his work Grass, and David Diamond wrote his exuberant Rounds to dispel the gloomy wartime mood of the 1940s. The program continues at the other end of the emotional spectrum with Florence Price’s Adoration for violin and strings, arranged by Paul Bateman, and closes with Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium), an epic work for solo violin, strings and percussion inspired by the ancient Greek debate over love in its many forms.

Combining popular music and classical rarities from Europe before World War I, Hope’s 2020 release Belle Époque was hailed as “an ingenious, gorgeous concept album” (Telegraph, UK). Next spring, the violinist reunites with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips, his partner on the recording, for a recital of similar repertoire in St. Paul, Minnesota’s Schubert Club International Artist Series, where Hope is the featured artist for 2023-24. Repertoire includes works of Enescu, Kreisler, Ravel, Schoenberg, Fauré and Franck. A few days later they reprise the Franck and Ravel sonatas and Enescu’s Impromptu Concertant at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, where their program also includes the U.S. premiere of Fantasy Suite 1803 by Jake Heggie, inspired by Beethoven’s 1803 residency at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien.

Zurich Chamber Orchestra

Now in his eighth season as Music Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra (ZCO), Hope’s musical friendship with the Swiss ensemble goes back much further: he experienced the orchestra as a small child when it was ensemble-in-residence for years at the chamber music festival in Gstaad, led by Hope’s sponsor and mentor, Yehudi Menuhin. Hope – whose “thriving solo career [is] built on inventive programming and a probing interpretive style” (New York Times) – joins the ZCO for three sets of European concerts in September, December and February this season.

Their first set of performances, now completed, featured a new violin concerto by British composer David Bruce that was commissioned by the orchestra in honor of Hope’s 50th birthday. They performed the program in six cities around Germany in September, pairing Bruce’s concerto with Mozart’s 41st “Jupiter” Symphony and Sinfonia Concertante, with Hope and Polish violist Ryszard Groblewski as soloists. Two of the performances were under the auspices of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the largest classical music festival in the country, of which Hope – again to celebrate his 50th – is the Featured Artist in 2023. Over the course of the year he has programmed 50 concerts, the first time in the festival’s history that a residency has taken place not only during the festival period in July and August but for the entire 2023 calendar year, from January to December.

Hope concludes his multifaceted year-long portrait at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival performing three festive Christmas concerts with the ZCO. Repertoire includes an early string symphony by Felix Mendelssohn, music for Advent by Edward Elgar and William Walton, and newly orchestrated international Christmas classics like “The Christmas Song,” “A Child is Born,” “Maybe This Christmas” and Irving Berlin‘s “White Christmas.”

For his final set of concerts with ZCO this season, Hope turns to a themed program about the history of dance on a tour to twelve German cities that includes two performances at Hamburg’s storied Elbphilharmonie. A recording of the program will also be released on Deutsche Grammophon in February 2024. The program spans over 500 years of dance music, with composers ranging from Monteverdi and Boccherini to Dvořák, Offenbach, Johann Strauss Jr., Ravel, Stravinsky and Piazzolla.

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Daniel Hope: 2023-24 engagements
Oct 3
Zürich, Switzerland
Tonhalle Zürich
Mozart

Oct 13
Tönning, Germany
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
St. Laurentiuskirche
“Of Heaven and Hell”
Works by Biber, Schnittke, Penderecki, von Westhoff and others

Oct 14
Hasselburg, Germany
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
Herrenhaus
“Of Heaven and Hell”
Works by Biber, Schnittke, Penderecki, von Westhoff and others

Nov 2–5
“Visitations”
New Century Chamber Orchestra
Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano
RACHMANINOFF: “Bogoroditse devo” (Rejoice, O Virgin) from All-Night Vigil
Hildur GUÐNADÓTTIR: Fólk fær andlit (“People get Faces”)
VILLA-LOBOS: “Ária” (Cantilena) from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5
LIEBERSON: “Amor mío, si muero y tú no mueres” (“My love, if I die and you don’t”) from Neruda Songs
SCHUBERT: “Erlkönig” (“The Elf King”), Op. 1, D.328
Nicolás Lell BENAVIDES: Doña Sebastiana (“Lady Death”) [world premiere; commissioned by New Century Chamber Orchestra)
DUKAS: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Carlos SIMON: Elegy: A Cry from the Grave
Arvo PÄRT: Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten
RAMIREZ: Misa Criolla (arr. Paul Bateman)

Nov 2: Berkeley, CA (First Congregational Church)

Nov 3 & 4: San Francisco, CA (Cowell Theater, Fort Mason)

Nov 5: Tiburon, CA (St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church)

Dec 7
Itzehoe, Germany
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
St. Laurentii Kirche
Zurich Chamber Orchestra
Advent music by Mendelssohn and Elgar
International Christmas classics arranged for violin and orchestra

Dec 8
Rendsburg, Germany
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
Christkirche
Zurich Chamber Orchestra
Advent music by Mendelssohn and Elgar
International Christmas classics arranged for violin and orchestra

Dec 9
Lübeck, Germany
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
Musik-und Kongresshalle
Zurich Chamber Orchestra
Advent music by Mendelssohn and Elgar
International Christmas classics arranged for violin and orchestra

Dec 15–17
“Christmas Ornaments”
New Century Chamber Orchestra
Lucienne Renaudin Vary, trumpet
Jesse Barrett, English horn
BACH: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G, BWV 1048
CORELLI: Concerto grosso in G minor, Op. 6, no. 8, “Christmas”
NERUDA: Trumpet Concerto in E-flat
COPLAND: Quiet City
TRADITIONAL: Festive Christmas Medley (arr. Paul Bateman)

Dec 15: Berkeley, CA (First Congregational Church)

Dec 16: Tiburon, CA (St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church)

Dec 17: San Francisco, CA (St. Mark’s Lutheran Church)

Feb 8–23
Zurich Chamber Orchestra
“Dance!” program

Feb 8: Stuttgart (Liederhalle)

Feb 9: Freiburg (Konzerthaus)

Feb 11: Frankfurt (Alte Oper)

Feb 12: Hannover (NDR Sendesaal)

Feb 13; Berlin (Konzerthaus)

Feb 15; Düsseldorf (Tonhalle)

Feb 16: Köln (Philharmonie)

Feb 17: Munich (Prinzregententheater)

Feb 19: Nürnberg (Meistersingerhalle)

Feb 20: Hamburg (Elbphilharmonie)

Feb 21; Hamburg (Elbphilharmonie)

Feb 22; Wiesbaden (Kurhaus)

Feb 23; Friedrichshafen (Graf-Zeppelin-Haus)

March 8–10
“Playing With Structure”
New Century Chamber Orchestra
Sterling Elliott, cello
GLUCK: “Dance of the Furies” from Orfeo ed Euridice
BLOCH: “Prayer” from Jewish Life, No. 1
HAYDN: Cello Concerto No. 1 in C
STRAVINSKY: Pulcinella Suite

March 8 & 9: San Francisco, CA (Presidio Theatre)

March 10: Palo Alto, CA (Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University)

April 25 & 26
St. Paul, MN
Schubert Club
Simon Crawford-Phillips, piano
“La Belle Époque”
ENESCU: Impromptu Concertant
KREISLER: Liebesleid
RAVEL: Sonata Op. Posthume
SCHOENBERG: Piece for Violin and Piano in D minor
FAURÉ: Andante
FRANCK: Sonata for Violin and Piano in A

April 30
San Francisco, CA
Chamber Music SF
Herbst Theatre
Simon Crawford-Phillips, piano
ENESCU: Impromptu Concertant
RAVEL: Sonata Op. Posthume
Jake HEGGIE: Fantasy Suite 1803 (U.S. premiere)
FRANCK: Sonata for Violin and Piano in A

May 2–4
“Love and War”
New Century Chamber Orchestra
Awadagin Pratt, piano
PERKINSON: Grass, Poem for Piano, Strings & Percussion
DIAMOND: Rounds, for strings
PRICE: Adoration for violin and strings (arr. Paul Bateman)
BERNSTEIN: Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)

May 2: Berkeley, CA (First Congregational Church)

May 3: Rohnert Park, CA (Green Music Center, Sonoma State University)

May 4: San Francisco, CA (Presidio Theatre)

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