Gil Shaham plays Stravinsky with SFS & Brahms with Philadelphia Orch
For Gil Shaham, late spring brings collaborations with three major American orchestras and the release of a new album. The Grammy and Avery Fisher Prize-winning violinist continues his celebrated exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s” with renditions of the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas (June 18–20) and Berg’s Violin Concerto with the Kansas City Symphony and Michael Stern (May 31–June 2), besides reprising the Brahms Violin Concerto – a signature work – with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin (May 23-25). Meanwhile, Nigunim: Hebrew Melodies, the violinist’s most recent recording for his own Canary Classics label that was originally scheduled for a May release, will now be in stores on June 25 and is already available for digital download.
“Violin Concertos of the 1930s” in San Francisco and Kansas City
Recognized as “one of the most imaginative programming concepts in years” (Musical America), Shaham’s long-term exploration of iconic “Violin Concertos of the 1930s” was conceived when he realized how many outstanding 20th-century violin concertos derived from that fateful decade. As the Boston Globe recently suggested, “It’s possible that the form of the violin concerto – pitting a single melodic voice against a mass of instruments – became a particularly apt conduit for the anxieties of the interwar years.” Now in its fourth season, the project has spawned collaborations with the world’s foremost orchestras in a wide range of concertos – seven in 2012-13 alone.
For his upcoming return to the San Francisco Symphony (June 18-20), Shaham turns to Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto of 1931, a prime example of the legendary Russian’s neoclassical writing, which Balanchine would later use as the score for two ballets. At the Los Angeles Symphony, the Los Angeles Times praised “Shaham’s verve, clarity, insouciant wit and sheer joy of performance of this notoriously difficult work.” The violinist’s association with Michael Tilson Thomas is a rich one, spanning more than two decades of collaboration that dates back to Shaham’s first big break, when, while still at school, he was invited to replace an ailing Itzhak Perlman as soloist with Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra. The violinist and conductor have continued to work together at every opportunity, and, with the San Francisco Symphony, have forged such an immeasurable rapport that the San Francisco Chronicle was moved to suggest: “Here’s a modest proposal: How about if Gil Shaham, Michael Tilson Thomas, and the San Francisco Symphony simply agreed to perform … together on a regular basis?”
Berg’s Violin Concerto (“To the Memory of an Angel”) was written shortly before the composer died in 1935, to commemorate the untimely death of Alma Mahler’s teenage daughter. Reviewing a performance by Shaham and the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Chronicle marveled:
“The remarkable blend of acerbity and tenderness … that is Berg’s stylistic fingerprint found expression in Shaham’s full-throated, assertive string tone and aggressive rhythmic edge. He leaped fearlessly into the concerto’s most dissonant writing, giving it a polished sheen that never detracted from its essential difficulty or the emotional urgency that it imparts.”
The violinist revisits Berg’s masterpiece with the Kansas City Symphony under its music director, Michael Stern, following the success of their previous performances together of other great 1930s concertos by Barber and Prokofiev (May 31–June 2).
Brahms with the Philadelphia Orchestra
Recognized as Musical America’s “Instrumentalist of the Year,” Shaham remains second to none in the masterworks of the violin literature, not least Brahms’s Violin Concerto, which he believes “could well be the greatest violin concerto ever written.” After his recent performances of the work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orange County Register’s Timothy Mangan declared:
“The Brahms was all his, easy to play it seemed, and so dashed off with a transfixing array of finesse and grit. This was probably the most rhythmically zesty account of the score that you’re ever likely to hear. … A delight.”
Now the violinist looks forward to taking the concerto to the Philadelphia Orchestra and music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. There it will form the centerpiece of a program with works by Schumann, Janácek, and Dvorák, whose Eastern European folk inspirations find resonance in the gypsy rhythms of Brahms’s finale (May 23-25).
Nigunim: Hebrew Melodies
Shaham returns to his own roots with Nigunim: Hebrew Melodies, an album of Jewish and Jewish-themed music for violin and piano that will be issued on Shaham’s own Canary Classics label. Recorded with his sister and frequent musical partner, Orli Shaham (hailed by the New York Times as a “brilliant pianist”), the new disc, originally scheduled for a May release, is now set to be in stores on June 25 and is already available for digital download. Alongside the world-premiere recording of the title track – which was written for the Shahams by Israeli composer Avner Dorman – Nigunim presents classics of the genre from Ernest Bloch, Joseph Achron, Josef Bonime, and Leo Zeitlin, as well as the suite from John Williams’s film score to Schindler’s List. The Shahams performed live selections from the Nigunim program at a special album launch event in New York’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WQXR, which streamed live as a video webcast on April 15, and is still available to viewers worldwide on here.
A list of Shaham’s upcoming engagements follows, and additional information is available at his recently launched new website, www.gilshaham.com.
Gil Shaham: upcoming engagements
May 23-25
Philadelphia, PA
Brahms: Violin Concerto
Philadelphia Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Verizon Hall – Kimmel Center
May 31; June 1-2
Kansas City, MO
Berg: Violin Concerto
Kansas City Symphony / Michael Stern
Helzberg Hall
June 18-20
San Francisco, CA
Stravinsky: Violin Concerto
San Francisco Symphony / Michael Tilson Thomas
Davies Symphony Hall
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© 21C Media Group, May 2013