All material found in the Press Releases section is provided by parties entirely independent of Musical America, which is not responsible for content.
Press Releases
InterHarmony Festival Announces Artists in Outstanding Summer Series
While preparing for New Years fireworks celebrations, InterHarmony® International Music Festival announces the lights and highlights of its first lineup of guest artists for the 2020 concert season.
The Outstanding Guest Artist and Master Class Series has become an exciting tradition for festival participants to work, listen to and just spend time with the most acclaimed soloists and conductors of today’s world stage. InterHarmony is pleased to announce the participation of Daniel Stewart (conductor), Boris Kuschnir (violin), and Antonio Di Cristofano (piano) in Session I, Guy Braunstein (conductor and violin), Saleem Ashkar (piano), and Gili Schwarzman (flute) in Session II, and Oliver Weder (conductor) in Session III.
IIMF, directed by cellist Misha Quint, has three sessions in two locations, two in Italy in Acqui Terme, Piedmont, Italy in July and one in Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Bavaria, Germany in August. InterHarmony plans to make further artist and concert announcements in the coming months.
Guy Braunstein, conductor & violin
After a sensational appearance at InterHarmony as a violinist, virtuoso Guy Braunstein will appear as a conductor of the InterHarmony Festival Orchestra, bringing a fresh enthusiasm to one of the top events in a sea of highlights of the intensive concertizing life at IIMF. Additionally, Braunstein will perform Brahms and Shostakovich trios with Saleem Ashkar (piano) and Misha Quint (cello), and the Dvorak Terzetto, featuring Gili Schwarzman (flute) on July 23.
It’s not often young violinists have a chance not only to hear the former Berlin Philharmonic concertmaster perform, but also to participate in his Violin Master Class.
Braunstein started performing as an international soloist and a chamber musician at a young age and was the youngest concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic. He has performed with the Israel Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zurich, Bamberg Symphony, Copenhagen Radio and Frankfurt Radio Orchestras, as well as the Filarmonica della Scala, Berlin Philharmonic, among others. He has collaborated with musicians such as Isaac Stern, András Schiff, Zubin Mehta, Maurizio Pollini, Yefim Bronfman, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Lang Lang, Emmanuel Ax, and Semyon Bychkov to name a few.
In 19/20, Guy will be Artist in Residence with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and will return to the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and Symphoniker Hamburg as both soloist, conductor and in play-direct capacities. Other highlights include debuts with the Vancouver Symphony and Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra’s as well as concerts with the Dresdner Philharmonie, Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, Orquestra Sinfonica de Barcelona, Lapland Chamber Orchestra and Queensland Symphony Orchestra and extensive touring with the Israel Netanya Kibbutz Orchestra.
After a tremendous performance with the InterHarmony Festival Orchestra last year, Saleem Ashkar will enter the chamber music scene during Session II in Italy. He will join Guy Braunstein (violin) and Misha Quint (cello) for Brahms and Shostakovich trios on July 23. Ashkar will give a Piano Master Class as a part Outstanding Masterclass Series.
Based in Berlin, the Israeli-Palestinian pianist has become one of the most in-demand soloists of our time. Saleem Ashkar performs regularly with such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph Eschenbach, Riccardo Muti and Daniel Barenboim, and with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Filarmonica della Scala, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Leipziger Gewandhaus, the NDR Hamburg, the DSO and the Konzerthausorchester in Berlin.
After the very successful development of InterHarmony’s woodwind program, flutist Gili Schwarzman will be the first woodwind edition to the Outstanding Guest Artist Serious. Schwarzman with perform the Dvorak Terzetto with Guy Braunstein (violin) and Misha Quint (cello) on July 23 and give a Flute Master Class.
Gili Schwarzman has performed around the globe as a soloist with orchestras such as the Jerusalem Symphony, the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, the Berliner Camerata, the Valencia Symphony, the Potsdam Chamber Orchestra, The Hulencourt Soloists in Brussles, North Netherlands Orchestra, Trier Philharmonic and Sofia Philharmonic among many others. Apart from touring as a soloist Gili Schwarzman is also an avid chamber musician.
Rising star conductor Daniel Stewart, joining InterHarmony for its opening session, is hailed by The Boston Musical Intelligencer as a "fascinatingly vibrant conductor”, setting another exciting expectation for Session I on July 11. Daniel Stewart's interest and desire to conduct young musicians will give students attending the festival a real feel of working in a professional orchestra.
Music Director of the Santa Cruz Symphony and newly appointed director of San Fransisco Youth Symphony, Maestro Stewart performs with many leading orchestras and opera houses around the world, such as Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Saint-Louis Symphony, Hessischer Rundfunk Orchester, Frankfurt Opern Orchestra, and the Boston Ballet.
Stewart has also concertized frequently as a viola soloist, and served as principal violist of numerous ensembles, including the New World Symphony (while also studying conducting with Michael Tilson Thomas), Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, and for six years with the Verbier Festival and Chamber Orchestras. He has performed as a violist with the San Francisco Symphony, recorded for EMI with Maxim Vengerov, and toured extensively in over 40 countries.
Participation of leading German conductor Oliver Weder at InterHarmony’s original location in Sulzbach-Rosenberg will add an intensive grand finale to the 2020 edition of InterHarmony. Maestro Weder, who will conduct the final concert of the summer on August 8, has an extensive experience conducting the best European orchestras. He will give students a taste of detailed orchestral work in a real professional setting so famous to Germany.
Maestro Weder has been the Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Thueringen Symphony Orchestra and at the opera in Ruolstadt, Germany. During his tenure at the helm of this long-established ensemble (founded in 1635), the Symphony performs more than 100 concerts and music-theatre performances per season.
As an internationally demanded guest-conductor, Oliver Weder has worked with over 40 orchestras and opera-theatres in Germany and abroad, including the Hamurg Symphony Orchestra, the German National Theatre Weimar, the San José Chamber Orchestra (USA), the Slovenian Philharmonic Lubljana, the Mainz State Theatre and the Southwest German Philharmonic Orchestra Konstanz. Additional guest appearances with the Rheinsberg Chamber Opera Festival, the Ludwigsburg Court-Festval, the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra and the Wuerttemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn have been met with critical acclaim.
InterHarmony’s Violin Master Class with Boris Kuschnir, one of the world's foremost violin pedagogues, has become a tradition and one of most riveting events of the festival. A student of David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory, Kuschnir has been described as a modern-day Leopold Auer. His students include Nikolai Znaider, Julian Rachlin, and Sergey Dogadin, along with more than 40 other laureates of national and international competitions.
Kuschnir has given master classes and served as a jury member at competitions across the globe, including the Tchaikovsky in Moscow, the Queen Elisabeth in Brussels, the Nicolò Paganini in Genoa, the Jacques Thibaud in Paris, the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, the Seoul International Music Competition and Eurovision. His own career as a soloist and chamber musician (as co-founder of the Moscow and now the Kopelman Quartet) has been equally illustrious. He performs on the "La Rouse-Boughton" Stradivarius (1703). His masterclass will take place during IIMF’s Session I on July 3.
IIMF welcomes pianist Antonio Di Cristofano to its 2020 Outstanding Guest Artist Series. After the most successful collaboration with InterHarmony and participation at the InterHarmony Concert Series at Carnegie Hall in New York, the appearance of Antonio Di Cristofano for Session I is will be highly anticipated event. Di Cristofano will perform Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Chopin on August 9 and give a Piano Master Class.
Di Cristofano has performed as a soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Florence, the Radio Orchestra of Bucharest, Orquesta Sinfonica de l’Estado de Mexico, Istanbul Chamber Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Toronto Sinfonia, Jerusalem Symphony, Sinfonica di Sao Paulo, Thuringen Orchestra and many others. His Carnegie Hall debut took place in 2006, at the Golden Mall Musikverein in Vienna in 2007. He has appeared as a guest at dozens of music festivals on five continents. He is often invited as a judge in international piano competitions from Louisiania to Moscow to Hong Kong and has taught at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the Valencia Conservatory, the Sofia Conservatory, the Orpheus Academy in Wien and in numerous American universities. He has recently been appointed Guest Professor at the Xiamen Conservatory in China.
Russian-born cellist Misha Quint, Misha Quint has appeared with such celebrated orchestras as the New York Chamber Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, Leningrad State Orchestra, National Irish Symphony, the Orquestra Sinfônica do Teatro Nacional do Brasilia among others. He has worked with an equally illustrious group of conductors including Maxim Shostakovich, Paul Lustig Dunkel, Colman Pearce, Sidney Harth, Ravil Martinov, Yakov Bergman, and Ira Levin.
Upcoming engagements include a solo recital on January 24, 2020 at Carnegie Hall, Variations on a Theme, and performances in Italy and Germany in the summer of 2020.
FEATURED JOBS
RENT A PHOTO
