Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival Presents the
“Viennese Oracle” for the First Time
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Osmo Vänskä
& the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra
Pre-concert Recitals:Beethoven’s Sonata No. 23 “Appassionata” (August 14, 7pm)
Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8 “Pathétique” (August 15, 7pm)
Tuesday, August 14 & Wednesday, August 15, 2012 at 8pm
Avery Fisher Hall | Lincoln Center | NYC
Tickets: $35-85 at 212.721.6500 or www.lincolncenter.org
Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder, whose interpretation of
Beethoven has been described as “channeling the music from some cosmic beyond”
(New York Times), will perform at
Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival for the first time in the festival’s
history at 8pm on Tuesday, August 14 and 8pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012 at
Avery Fisher Hall, in Beethoven’s Piano
Concerto No. 3 with Osmo Vänskä and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.
In addition, New York audiences will have the unusual opportunity to hear
Buchbinder in Beethoven’s Sonatas on
the same evening – he will give pre-concert recitals at 7pm on both evenings on
the stage of Avery Fisher Hall, featuring Beethoven’s Sonata No. 23 (“Appassionata”) on August 14 and Sonata No. 8 (“Pathétique”) on August
15. The concerts also include Mozart’s Symphony No. 32 and Schubert’s Symphony
in C Major (“Great”).
Coinciding with Buchbinder’s Mostly Mozart concerts, on
August 7 Sony Classical will release his recording of Beethoven’s 32 Piano
Sonatas in a 9-CD set entitled The Sonata Legacy. The Sonata Legacy is
Buchbinder’s second recording of Beethoven’s complete sonatas, and is a live
recording of his performance of the entire sonata cycle in seven concerts at
the Dresden Semperoper between September 2010 and March 2011. Now 65,
Buchbinder’s first recording of the complete sonatas was released thirty years
ago in 1982 on the Teldec label, when he was 35. The Sonata Legacy was released
in Europe in 2011 and sold out its first pressing, ranking on the Austrian Pop
Charts and in the Top 10 on the German Classical Charts.
Rudolf Buchbinder returns to the US on February 14-16,
2013 as soloist with the New York Philharmonic led by Alan Gilbert, and on
March 8-10, 2013 as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Christoph
von Dohnányi.
Buchbinder is enjoying a banner year in his lifelong
passion for the music of Beethoven. In January, his live performance (as
pianist and conductor) of all five of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos with the
Vienna Philharmonic was released in the US as a 2-DVD set by C Major/Unitel
Classica. The concerts were filmed live in May 2011 at the Goldener Saal der
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. In addition to the performances, the
DVDs include a conversation between Buchbinder and music journalist Joachim
Kaiser as bonus material.
In opposition to recent trends, Buchbinder has been making
live recordings instead of working in a studio for more than a dozen years. He
explained why in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal: “In the
studio, you can't be spontaneous. In a live concert (and thank God you don't
hear a lot of wrong notes when I play), you get the kind of emotion you can't
produce in an artificial setting. There is a chemistry that takes place, and I
don't care if there is also coughing and rustling.”
Rudolf Buchbinder’s concert calendar this year takes him
around the world. His signature offering – the complete cycle of all of
Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas (which he has performed in more than 40 cities
worldwide since 1979) – began in Milan on January 25, in Hannover on March 25,
and will begin in Beijing in October 2012 and in Berlin in December 2012. In
March 2012, he was the soloist on a European concert tour with Andris Nelsons
and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with performances in cities
including Coventry, Luxembourg, Vienna, Stuttgart and Frankfurt. Further
appearances on important international stages have included a concert with the
London Philharmonic and Vladimir Jurowski (Moscow, April 1), performances with
the Munich Philharmonic, with Buchbinder playing and conducting six Mozart Piano Concertos (May 25 to 28), as well
as upcoming concerts with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta (Tel Aviv on
July 11 and 12; Haifa on July 15; Salzburg Festival on July 25).
Rudolf Buchbinder was admitted to the Vienna Musik
Hochschule at age five, and remains the youngest student to gain entrance in
the school’s history. He made his debut at the age of ten at Vienna’s
Musikverein, performing Beethoven’s Piano
Concerto No. 1. The music of Beethoven has been a focal point of his career
ever since – not only does he continue to perform Beethoven’s works, but he
constantly re-examines his approach to it, as well as Beethoven’s scores. He
owns 35 different, complete editions of the scores for Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas, and has analyzed each,
tirelessly finding and correcting editorial errors. He attaches considerable
importance to the meticulous study of these musical sources, and has an
extensive collection of autograph scores, first editions, and original
documents – including the autograph scores and piano parts of both Brahms
concertos as copies.
Buchbinder says, “The stricter and the more exacting I am
in my approach, the more I learn about the freedom of making music. This merely
seems to be a paradox. Anyone who reads what composers really wrote acquires
the impetus for a freer kind of playing. Composers demand this freedom from
their interpreters by including far more differentiated instructions than the
regular printed notation can ever hope to reproduce.”
In spite of his heavy travel schedule, Buchbinder
maintains that he spends many weeks of the year at his home in Vienna, which he
shares with his wife. In addition to collecting musical scores, the pianist
spends considerable time on other, non-musical hobbies – art and architecture,
books, and movies. Buchbinder owns more than 4,000 DVDs of movies ranging from
Abbot and Costello to Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, including all of the
Oscar-winning films, and everything ever made by Charlie Chaplin and John
Wayne.
About Rudolf Buchbinder: Rudolf Buchbinder is firmly
established as one of the most important pianists on the international scene,
and he is a regular guest of such renowned orchestras as the Berlin
Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre National de
France, London Philharmonic, National Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
He has collaborated with the world's most distinguished conductors including
Abbado, Dohnányi, Dudamel, Frühbeck de Burgos, Giulini, Harnoncourt, Maazel,
Masur, Mehta, Saraste, Sawallisch and Thielemann and is a regular guest at the
Salzburger Festspiele and other major festivals around the world. Throughout
the 2010-2011 season Rudolf Buchbinder had a particularly close cooperation
with the Staatskapelle Dresden as its Artist in Residence in the first-ever
position of “Capell-Virtuoso.” Rudolf Buchbinder is also the founding artistic
director of the Grafenegg Music Festival, a major international music festival
near Vienna which launched in August 2007.
Of his appearance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and
Gustavo Dudamel, the Orange County Register raved, “You could hear the weight
of his fingers, it seemed, falling onto the keyboard, each note given a nudged
distinction. By avoiding both grandiloquent overstatement and dry objectivity,
he plumbed the core of the noble simplicity in this music."
Rudolf Buchbinder has over 100 recordings to his credit,
including the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas, the complete Beethoven
concertos, the complete Mozart piano concertos, all of Haydn's works for piano,
both Brahms concertos, and all of the rarely performed Diabelli Variations
collection written by 50 Austrian composers. The 18-disc set of Haydn's works
earned him the Grand Prix du Disque. His cycle of all of Mozart's piano
concertos with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, recorded live at the Vienna
Konzerthaus, was chosen by Joachim Kaiser as CD of the Year. Rudolf Buchbinder
has also recorded live the Brahms piano concertos with the Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and all five Beethoven piano concertos
with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra as soloist and conductor. In 2006, in
celebration of his 60th birthday, he performed twelve Mozart piano concertos
with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Vienna Festwochen, the live DVD recording
of which was released by EuroArts. In November 2010 a live recording of the
Brahms piano concertos with the Israel Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta
was released.
For more information, visit www.buchbinder.net.
--Christina
Jensen PR
The National
Philharmonic to Provide Groundbreaking Music Education Program to William E.
Doar Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Starting in the fall, the National Philharmonic will
partner with the William E. Doar Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing
Arts (WEDJ PCS) in Washington, D.C., to provide an exclusive, groundbreaking
music education program for WEDJ PCS students in kindergarten through 8th
grade.
The National Philharmonic will be in charge of all music
education at WEDJ PCS. Groundbreaking in its scope and approach to music
training, the program will provide intensive, daily music instruction from
highly skilled National Philharmonic musicians and music teachers. Included in
the program will be daily Suzuki-based violin instruction for all kindergarten
through second-grade students. Children in grades three through five will get
daily music instruction in a new piano lab as well as vocal training and
lessons on orchestral instruments of their choice. Students in grades six
through eight who select music as their concentration will spend nearly two
hours a day benefiting from a customized program for individual music projects.
In addition to music education, the school will offer
instruction in dance, theater and the visual arts from such partners as the
Shakespeare Theatre and the Kirov Academy of Ballet. All of these services will
be provided at no cost to WEDJ PCS families. “We are thrilled that WEDJ PCS
School has chosen the National Philharmonic to design and execute a music
education program for their students. The school’s mission of providing music
education to all is in keeping with the Philharmonic’s own mission in that the
arts be completely accessible to everyone,” says Piotr Gajewski, National
Philharmonic’s Music Director and Conductor.
"We are excited to partner with the National
Philharmonic to bring world-class music instruction from accomplished musicians
and teachers into our school,” says WEDJ PCS Acting Executive Director John
Goldman. “This collaboration means that our students, from diverse backgrounds,
attending a public charter school, will have unprecedented and unparalleled
access to musical excellence at no cost to their families. Our partnership with
the National Philharmonic represents an amazing opportunity for our
students."
WEDJ PCS blends rigorous academics with world-class arts
instruction provided by accomplished artists from renowned dance, musical,
theatrical and visual arts institutions. WEDJ PCS is the only public school in
Washington, D.C. to provide professional-caliber arts training for students in
preschool through eighth grade at no cost to families. The school serves
approximately 500 students. For more information about the school, visit
www.wedjschool.us.
About the National Philharmonic:
In addition to presenting more than 30 annual performances
at the Music Center at Strathmore under the direction of Music Director and
Conductor Piotr Gajewski, the National Philharmonic offers exceptional and
unique education programs. Each year, in partnership with Strathmore and
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), the Philharmonic performs for all MCPS
2nd and 5th grade students in concerts specifically designed for their age
groups. The concerts take place at Strathmore over six days, making it possible
for nearly 20,000 children to experience the thrill of hearing a live orchestra
each year. In addition, annual winners
of the Philharmonic’s high school concerto competition are given the exciting
opportunity to perform as guest soloists with the Philharmonic at the fall
concerts for MCPS second-grade students. Throughout the year, the Philharmonic
offers master classes in which talented young musicians perform for and are
mentored by acclaimed guest artists who appear in concert with the orchestra.
All National Philharmonic concerts at the Music Center at Strathmore are
preceded by free, pre-concert lectures.
Each summer, the National Philharmonic’s String Institutes
offer talented and aspiring middle school and high school musicians an
intensive week of mentoring, chamber music coaching, individual lessons and
ensemble rehearsals led by Maestro Gajewski, Associate Conductor Victoria Gau,
members of the Philharmonic and other distinguished faculty. Another summer
program invites talented high school singers for intensive vocal training,
master classes and rehearsals led by National Philharmonic Chorale Artistic
Director Stan Engebretson, Associate
Conductor Victoria Gau and Montgomery
College Choral Director Molly Donnelly.
Also, the Philharmonic encourages young families to attend
concerts by offering reasonably priced tickets and free admission to all young
people age 7-17 under the All Kids, All Free, All the Time program, assuring
its place as an accessible and enriching component in Montgomery County and the
greater Washington, DC area. For more information, visit www.nationalphilharmonic.org
.
--Deborah Birnbaum, National Philharmonic
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