Gil Shaham: Summer 2009
Gil Shaham’s summer season begins high in the Colorado Rockies, with a series of concerts and a master class at the Aspen Music Festival and School. His first Aspen concert is on June 28 with a performance of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the festival’s music director, David Zinman. Shaham and Zinman are frequent collaborators, having performed Elgar’s Violin Concerto earlier this season with the Berlin Philharmonic as well as on a bestselling recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Shaham’s own Canary Classics label. Other Aspen highlights include Bach’s first three Brandenburg Concertos led by Nicholas McGegan (July 14), and a chamber music recital with violinist Adele Anthony, featuring Martinu’s Sextet and Beethoven’s Septet (July 18). Shaham will also give a master class at Aspen’s Harris Concert Hall on July 7.
Shaham will perform twice this summer with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Charles Dutoit. In Vail, Colorado, Shaham and the orchestra will play Beethoven’s Violin Concerto on July 11, and, at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Upstate New York, on August 15 they will perform a program of music from the time of the great French painter Edgar Degas (1834-1917). Shaham’s contribution to the latter program will include two works by legendary Spanish violinist/composer Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908): a Concert Fantasy on themes from Gounod’s Faust and the famous Carmen Fantasy. Shaham paid tribute to Sarasate on the centenary of the composer’s death this past fall, with a program of his music that was broadcast on public television’s “Live From Lincoln Center.” An all-Sarasate program that Shaham recorded soon after will be issued this fall, on the violinist’s Canary Classics label.
Shaham will play Beethoven’s Violin Concerto for a second time this summer when he teams up with conductor Marin Alsop and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl on July 30. A few weeks later, he performs Mendelssohn’s beloved Violin Concerto in E minor with Kurt Masur and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (August 22).
However, before his tour of summer festivals, Shaham will first give four concerts (June 10–13) with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas. As part of the orchestra’s Schubert/Berg Festival, Shaham will perform Berg’s powerful and transcendent Violin Concerto. The work, famously dedicated “To the memory of angel,” was inspired by the death of the young Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius. Written in 1935, it is one of a remarkably long list of important concertos composed in the same decade. Shaham, who won the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize earlier this season, will continue to explore the great concertos of the 1930s, through the 2009-10 season and beyond, with a series of concert performances and recordings. Next season alone, Shaham will perform the Berg Concerto, both with Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra and with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with the Singapore Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, and Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra – the latter with conductor David Robertson; Barber’s Violin Concerto, with the Kansas City Symphony and New York Philharmonic, also with Robertson; and Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, both with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony and with Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Details of Shaham’s “Violin Concertos of the 1930s” project will be featured soon in a special news release.
Additional information on Shaham’s concerts and recordings is available at www.canaryclassics.com
A chronological list of Shaham’s summer 2009 concerts follows.
Gil Shaham: Summer 2009
June 28: Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 2 with Aspen Festival Orchestra / Zinman (Aspen, CO)
July 7 Master class at Harris Concert Hall (Aspen, CO)
July 11: Beethoven: Violin Concerto with Philadelphia Orchestra / Dutoit (Vail, CO)
July 14: Bach: Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1–3 with McGegan (Aspen, CO)
July 18: Chamber music recital with violinist Adele Anthony – Martinu: Sextet and Beethoven: Septet (Aspen, CO)
July 30: Beethoven: Violin Concerto with Los Angeles Philharmonic / Alsop at Hollywood Bowl (Los Angeles, CA)
August 15: Saratoga Performing Arts Center: “An Evening With Degas” – Massenet: “Méditation” from Thaïs; Sarasate: Concert Fantasies on themes from Gounod’s Faust and Bizet’s Carmen with Philadelphia Orchestra / Dutoit (Saratoga, NY)
August 22: Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto with Boston Symphony Orchestra / Masur at Tanglewood (Lenox, MA)
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© 21C Media Group, June 2009