The LA PHIL’s 2008/09 Colburn Celebrity Series Continues
THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 2009, AT 8 PM
The Series is Endowed By a Generous Grant from the Colburn Foundation
Media Sponsor: 89.3 KPCC
Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and German violinist Christian Tetzlaff bring their impressive musical skills to Walt Disney Concert Hall, Thursday, January 29, at 8 p.m. Appearing as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2008/09 Colburn Celebrity series, the frequently paired musicians, often referred to as “Chamber Music’s Dynamic Duo,” perform in a duo recital that includes works by Janácek, Brahms, Mozart and Schubert that showcase each artist’s unique talents. The appearance is part of a six-city tour that also includes stops in San Francisco, Vancouver, Boston, Princeton and New York.
The program opens with Janácek’s Sonata, an unusual work filled with gloom and grief and his only work in that genre that survived intact. The second piece, Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108, was the last and most serious of three violin sonatas that Brahms wrote for the great Hungarian violinist, conductor and composer Joseph Joachim. Following is Mozart’s Sonata in F major, K. 377, written when the composer was feeling free from the constraints of employment of Salzburg’s Archbishop and enjoying the more exciting environment of Vienna. The program closes with Schubert’s Rondo Brilliant in B minor, D. 895. The piece was written more than nine years after his previous work for piano and violin and was inspired by the Bohemian virtuoso Josef Flavik, who premiered it in 1827.
This season, the Colburn Celebrity series includes some of the leading pianists of our time as well as a masterful violinist. Future recitals feature Evgeny Kissin (March 16, 2009), and Krystian Zimerman (April 26, 2009).
LEIF OVE ANDSNES, an internationally acclaimed piano star for the last 15 years, was named “the most accomplished pianist of the new generation” by The New York Times, and has been called “an eminently sensual musician, an artist capable of grace and introspection” by the Financial Times. In addition to giving recitals and playing concertos each season in the world’s leading concert halls and with the all the foremost orchestras, Andsnes is an avid chamber musician who joins select colleagues each summer at Norway’s Risør Festival of Chamber Music, of which he is co-artistic director. Andsnes, who records exclusively for EMI Classics, opens his 2008/09 season with three concerts in Milan with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. After recitals in São Paolo and Blumenau, Brazil, he tours Asia, giving recitals and concerts in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand. A highlight is a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with Tokyo’s NHK Symphony under Gianandrea Noseda. Later engagements are in Norway, Portugal and Spain, and Andsnes returns to the U.S. in January for concerts with the National Symphony and Cleveland Orchestras. In early 2009, he and a favorite chamber music partner, violinist Christian Tetzlaff, tour North America. Andsnes’s repertoire this season features Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and the concerto composed for him by Marc-André Dalbavie. He plays the Rachmaninoff Third in Tokyo, Washington, Cleveland, Stockholm, Hamburg and London, where he records it with the London Symphony Orchestra under Antonio Pappano. Andsnes also presents the scintillating Dalbavie Concerto, which he premiered at the BBC Proms in 2006 to great acclaim, in Paris and Amsterdam. The Dalbavie is paired with Witold Lutoslawski’s Concerto on a new disc, recorded last season with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst, which is soon to be released by EMI Classics. Among the works Andsnes played frequently last season were the Grieg Ballade and Concerto; Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2; Rachmaninoff with the Royal Concertgebouw; and Mozart concertos that he conducted from the keyboard with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on tour in Germany and Austria. He gave a large-scale recital tour in the U.S. and performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony. Andsnes is a frequent guest at such leading summer festivals as Aspen, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Verbier, and New York’s Mostly Mozart, and he has performed at the celebrated Last Night of the Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall. New York’s Carnegie Hall presented Andsnes as a Perspectives artist in seven concerts during the 2004/05 season, making him the youngest performer to be so honored. He has been the subject of several television programs, including England’s “South Bank Show.” Andsnes has received Norway’s most distinguished honor, Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav. In 2007, he received the prestigious Peer Gynt Prize, awarded by members of parliament to honor prominent Norwegians for their achievements in politics, sports and culture. Andsnes has also received the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award, the Gilmore Artist Award, three Gramophone Awards – most recently for his Grieg and Schumann Piano Concertos with the Berlin Philharmonic and Mariss Jansons, and numerous Grammy nominations. Saluting his many achievements, Vanity Fair named Andsnes one of the “Best of the Best” in 2005. Andsnes currently lives in Copenhagen and Bergen, and is a professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF is internationally recognized as one of the most important violinists of his generation. From the outset of his career, Tetzlaff has performed and recorded a broad spectrum of the repertoire, ranging from Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas and partitas to 19th -century masterworks by Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Brahms; and from 20th-century concertos by Bartók, Berg and Shostakovich to world premieres of contemporary works. Also a dedicated chamber musician, he frequently collaborates with distinguished artists, including Leif Ove Andsnes, Lars Vogt, Alexander Lonquich and Tabea Zimmermann, and is the founder of the Tetzlaff Quartet, which he formed in 1994 with violinist Elisabeth Kufferath, violist Hanna Weinmeister and his sister, cellis Tanja Tetzlaff. Tetzlaff came to the United States during the 1985/86 academic year to work with Walter Levine at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and also spent two summers at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. Tetzlaff has been in demand as a soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, establishing close artistic partnerships that are renewed season after season. In North America, he has performed with the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Toronto, among many others. He has also performed with the major European ensembles, including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Vienna Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Tetzlaff’s 2008/09 North American season opened with a performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra led by James Levine at Carnegie Hall. The season continues with appearances with the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati and Houston symphonies, and the North American premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Violin Concerto “Mambo, Blues and Tarantell” with the Toronto Symphony. Turnage’s concerto, written for Tetzlaff, received its world premiere with the London Philharmonic in September of 2008. Tetzlaff also plays all-Bach recital in five U.S. cities, including Philadelphia, Detroit and Santa Barbara; duo recitals with Andsnes in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Boston, Princeton and New York; and performs with the Tetzlaff Quartet, making its North American debut, in Washington, DC, Atlanta and New York. Tetzlaff’s highly regarded recordings reflect the breadth of his musical interests. They include concertos ranging from Haydn to Bartók, an album of 20th-century sonatas by Janáček, Debussy, Ravel and Nielsen with pianist Andsnes, the complete works for violin and orchestra of Jean Sibelius with the Danish National Radio Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard, which won the prestigious Diapason d’or, and a Grammy-nominated album of Bartók’s Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 with Andsnes and the Bartók Sonata for Solo Violin, all on Virgin Classics; the Brahms Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Lars Vogt for EMI Classics; the Tchaikovsky violin Concerto with the Russian National Orchestra and Kent Nagano for PentaTone Classics; and the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Tonhalle Orchestra and David Zinman for Arte Nova. His most recent releases are the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin on the Musical Heritage and Haenssler labels and the Brahms and Joachim Violin Concertos with the Danish Radio Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard for Virgin Classics. Tetzlaff currently performs on a violin modeled after a Guarneri del Gesu made by the German violin maker, Peter Greiner.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, under Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, presents the finest in orchestral and chamber music, recitals, new music, jazz, world music and holiday concerts at two of the most remarkable places anywhere to experience music — Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. In addition to a 30-week winter subscription season at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the LA Phil presents a 12-week summer festival at the legendary Hollywood Bowl, summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and home of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. In fulfilling its commitment to the community, the Association’s involvement with Los Angeles extends to educational programs, community concerts and children's programming, ever seeking to provide inspiration and delight to the broadest possible audience.
EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:
THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 2009, at 8 PM
Walt Disney Concert Hall
111 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles
Colburn Celebrity Series
LEIF OVE ANDSNES, piano
CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF, violin
JANÁCEK Sonata
BRAHMS Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108
MOZART Sonata in F major, K. 377
SCHUBERT Rondo Brilliant in B minor, D. 895
This concert is generously sponsored by the Colburn Foundation.
Media Sponsor: 89.3 KPCC
Tickets ($17 - $92) are on sale now at the Walt Disney Concert Hall box office, online at LAPhil.com, or via credit card by phone at 323.850.2000. When available, choral bench seats ($17), will be released for sale to selected Philharmonic, Colburn Celebrity Recital, and Baroque Variations performances beginning at noon on the Tuesday of the second week prior to the concert. A limited number of $10 rush tickets for seniors and full time students may be available at the Walt Disney Concert Hall box office two hours prior to the performance. Valid identification is required; one ticket per person; cash only. Groups of 12 or more may be eligible for special discounts for selected concerts and seating areas. For information, please call 323.850.2000.
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Lisa White, lwhite@laphil.org, 213.972.3408; Photos: 213.972.3034