(August 2023)— Known for her “stylistic sensitivity, verve and spontaneous delight in discovery” (The Guardian), MacArthur award-winning cellist Alisa Weilerstein opens her fall season with two Berlin performances of Grawemeyer Award winner Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto – at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and in the Berliner Philharmonie as part of Musikfest Berlin – under the baton of her husband, Rafael Payare (Sep 7 & 8). She also joins Payare with the San Diego Symphony in the fall, performing Dvorák’s Cello Concerto on a tour that culminates at Carnegie Hall (Oct 6–13), and she reunites with the Venezuelan conductor once more to perform Barber’s Cello Concerto with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic (Jan 31 & Feb 1). Other orchestral engagements include Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante in E minor under the baton of Ludovic Morlot for the opening of the Barcelona Symphony season (Sep 29–Oct 1); Elgar’s Cello Concerto for the opening of the Rochester Philharmonic’s centennial season under Music Director Andreas Delfs (Sep 21 & 23), and with the Detroit Symphony led by Music Director Jader Bignamini (Feb 24 & 25); Haydn’s Concerto in C with the Boston Symphony led by Karina Canellakis (Feb 8–10); Anna Clyne’s DANCE with Thomas Dausgaard and the Helsinki Philharmonic (Nov 22); and Lutoslawski’s Cello Concerto with the Seattle Symphony led by Shiyeon Sung (April 18–20). Weilerstein continues her acclaimed multisensory solo cello project “FRAGMENTS” this season, with performances at Boston’s Celebrity Series (Nov 5), the Maison symphonique de Montréal (Nov 10), the California Festival in Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles (Nov 15) and the La Jolla Music Society (Nov 16), followed by the world premiere of FRAGMENTS 4 at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater in Washington, DC (April 6). With pianist Inon Barnatan and violinist James Ehnes she gives all-Schubert performances in Richmond, Virginia (Oct 27) and Seattle (Oct 29); gives a solo performance of Bach, Kodály and Joan Tower at New York’s 92NY (April 3); and joins percussion ensemble Sandbox at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to play Tan Dun’s Elegy: Snow in June for Cello and Percussion Quartet (May 7).
Concerto highlights: Chin, Lutoslawski, Dvorák, Elgar, Barber and more
In 2019, the New York Times found Weilerstein’s performance of Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the New York Philharmonic “technically flawless and deeply expressive.” In the 2023-24 season, the cellist combines 20th- and 21st-century concertos by Lutoslawski, Unsuk Chin and Anna Clyne with standards of the repertoire by Dvorák, Prokofiev, Barber, Haydn and Elgar. Lutoslawski’s concerto, which Weilerstein performs with the Seattle Symphony led by celebrated Korean conductor Shiyeon Sung – the first Korean female to make the leap to the podiums of internationally renowned orchestras – was premiered in 1970 by its dedicatee Mstislav Rostropovich and called by The Guardian “one of the Polish composer’s greatest achievements.” With satisfying symmetry, Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto, which Weilerstein performs under Payare’s baton at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden and in the Berliner Philharmonie as part of Musikfest Berlin, was declared by The Guardian to be “arguably the most important concerto for that instrument to appear since Lutoslawski’s in 1970,” adding that it “pushes the cellist … to the limits of the possible.”
Weilerstein’s other concerto engagements this season also include performances with Payare, starting with Dvorák’s Cello Concerto with the San Diego Symphony, where the conductor is in his fifth season as Music Director. A short tour stopping at California’s Soka University, San Diego’s Rady Shell at Jacobs Park and Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University culminates at Carnegie Hall with a performance that marks the orchestra’s first return to that venue in a decade, as well as the first time Payare and Weilerstein will have performed together in New York City. The cellist performs the same work later in the season with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales led by Principal Conductor Ryan Bancroft. Weilerstein and Payare also collaborate this season on a performance of Samuel Barber’s Cello Concerto with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. When she played the same work with the Cleveland Orchestra, BachTrack reported, “The concerto, composed in 1945, is a technical tour de force, and seemed tailor-made for Weilerstein’s expansive – and expressive – cello sound.”
“FRAGMENTS” premiere and performances, chamber music
Last season, Weilerstein introduced her major new multisensory performance series, “FRAGMENTS,” in Toronto, Southern California, Carnegie Hall, Cleveland, and Tanglewood. The series weaves together the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 new commissions to make six unique programs, each an hour long, for solo cello. Tracing a powerful and wholly original emotional arc, each program embraces a wide variety of compositional voices, the composers being diverse with respect to age, race, gender, geography, compositional approach, musical style and stage of career (see below for complete list). All six programs are performed without pauses, applause or program details in a multisensory production by director Elkhanah Pulitzer and artistic producer and advisor Hanako Yamaguchi, with responsive lighting and architectural elements by Seth Reiser and original costumes by Carlos J Soto. Click here to watch a preview of “FRAGMENTS.”
This fall, the series continues with performances of FRAGMENTS 1 at Boston’s Celebrity Series; FRAGMENTS 1 & 2 at the Maison symphonique de Montréal; FRAGMENTS 2 at the California Festival in Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles and the La Jolla Music Society; and the world premiere of FRAGMENTS 4 at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater in Washington, DC, along with FRAGMENTS 2. Previewing last season’s Carnegie Hall performance, the New York Times observed: “It is hard to think of many soloists of a similar stature who would dare to bring anything like it to the stage.”
Recognized as one of the leading exponents of Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello, Weilerstein gave rapturously received live accounts of the complete set of suites on three continents prior to using them as part of the FRAGMENTS series. At New York’s 92NY in April she pairs Bach’s first and third suites with Kodály’s B-minor Sonata for solo cello and Joan Tower’s For Alisa. Tower composed the cello concerto A New Day for Weilerstein in 2021, and For Alisa is one of the new works featured in FRAGMENTS. Another set of chamber performances takes place this fall, when Weilerstein joins longtime recital partner Inon Barnatan and Canadian violinist James Ehnes, Artistic Director of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, for “Schubert’s Swan Song” performances in Richmond, Virginia and Seattle that highlight the brilliant compositions of the composer’s last years.
Next spring, Weilerstein also has her first collaboration with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, performing a movement from Clara Schumann’s G minor Piano Trio, Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto arranged for string orchestra by Wolfgang Birtel, and Brahms’s First Sextet in B-flat major. She also joins Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in May for Tan Dun’s Elegy: Snow in June for Cello and Percussion Quartet, a visceral remembrance of the Tiananmen Square conflict that is also a lament for victims everywhere. The image of “Snow in June” comes from a 13th-century Chinese drama by Kuan Han-Ching. In it a young woman, Dou Eh, is executed for crimes she did not commit, causing even nature to rebel: her blood does not fall to earth but flies upward, a heavy snow falls in June, and a drought descends for three years.
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“FRAGMENTS” for solo cello
Alisa Weilerstein, project creator & performer
Elkhanah Pulitzer, director
Hanako Yamaguchi, artistic producer & advisor
Seth Reiser, set & lighting design
Carlos J Soto, costume design
Featured composers:
Andy Akiho, J.S. Bach, Courtney Bryan, Chen Yi, Alan Fletcher, Gabriela Lena Frank, Osvaldo Golijov, Joseph Hallman, Gabriel Kahane, Daniel Kidane, Thomas Larcher, Tania León, Allison Loggins-Hull, Missy Mazzoli, Gerard McBurney, Jessie Montgomery, Reinaldo Moya, Jeffrey Mumford, Matthias Pintscher, Gity Razaz, Gili Schwarzman, Caroline Shaw, Carlos Simon, Gabriella Smith, Ana Sokolovic, Joan Tower, Mathilde Wantenaar, Paul Wiancko
Leadership support for “FRAGMENTS” is generously provided by Joan and Irwin Jacobs. Patron support for “FRAGMENTS” is provided by Judy and Tony Evnin, Clara Wu Tsai, and Paul Sekhri. “FRAGMENTS” has been made possible with commissioning support from the San Diego Symphony, UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures, Carnegie Hall, Celebrity Series of Boston, and the Royal Conservatory of Music for the 21C Festival. Special thanks to Martha Gilmer for her leadership and counsel, and to Celebrity Series of Boston and Aspen Music Festival and School for their in-kind contributions.
Alisa Weilerstein: 2023–2024 engagements
Sep 7
Berlin, Germany
Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Rafael Payare, Conductor
Unsuk CHIN: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
Sep 8
Berlin, Germany
Staatskapelle Berlin
Rafael Payare, Conductor
Unsuk CHIN: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
Sep 21, 23
Rochester, NY
Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra / Andreas Delfs
ELGAR: Cello Concerto
Sep 29, 30; Oct 1
Barcelona, Spain
Barcelona Symphony Orchestra / Ludovic Morlot
PROKOFIEV: Sinfonia concertante in E minor
Oct 6
Aliso Viejo, CA
Soka University
San Diego Symphony / Rafael Payare
DVORÁK: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
Oct 7
San Diego, CA
Rady Shell at Jacobs Park
San Diego Symphony / Rafael Payare
DVORÁK: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
Oct 12
Bethlehem, PA
Lehigh University
San Diego Symphony / Rafael Payare
DVORÁK: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
Oct 13
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall
San Diego Symphony / Rafael Payare
DVORÁK: Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104
Oct 27
Richmond, VA
University of Richmond – Camp Concert Hall
SCHUBERT: Trio No. 2 in E-flat, D. 929 (with Inon Barnatan, piano; James Ehnes, violin)
Oct 29
Seattle, WA
Seattle Chamber Music Society
SCHUBERT: Trio No. 2 in E-flat, D. 929 (with Inon Barnatan, piano; James Ehnes, violin)
Nov 5
Boston, MA
Celebrity Series of Boston
Sanders Theater
FRAGMENTS 1
Nov 10
Montreal, QC
Maison symphonique de Montréal
FRAGMENTS 1 & 2
Nov 15
Los Angeles, CA
California Festival
Walt Disney Concert Hall
FRAGMENTS 2
Nov 16
La Jolla, CA
La Jolla Music Society
The Conrad
FRAGMENTS 2
Nov 22
Helsinki, Finland
Helsinki Philharmonic / Thomas Dausgaard
Anna CLYNE: DANCE for cello and orchestra
Jan 31 & Feb 1
Stockholm, Sweden
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra / Rafael Payare
BARBER: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 22
Feb 8, 9, 10
Boston, MA
Boston Symphony Orchestra / Karina Canellakis
HAYDN: Cello Concerto in C
Feb 24, 25
Detroit, MI
Detroit Symphony Orchestra / Jader Bignamini
ELGAR: Cello Concerto in E minor
April 3
New York, NY
92NY
BACH: Suite No. 3 in C, BWV 1009
KODÁLY: Sonata in B minor for solo cello
Joan TOWER: For Alisa
BACH: Suite No. 1 in G, BWV 1007
April 6
Washington, DC
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater
FRAGMENTS 4 (world premiere) & 2
April 18, 19, 20
Seattle, WA
Seattle Symphony / Shiyeon Sung
LUTOSLAWSKI: Cello Concerto
April 23
Zurich, Switzerland
Zurich Chamber Orchestra
Daria Zappa Matesic, violin; Yulia Miloslavskaya, piano
Clara SCHUMANN: Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17, I. Allegro moderato
Robert SCHUMANN: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129 (arr. for cello and string orchestra by Wolfgang Birtel)
BRAHMS: String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat, Op. 18
May 7
New York, NY
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Tan DUN: Elegy: Snow in June for Cello and Percussion Quartet
June 6
Cardiff, UK
BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Ryan Bancroft
DVORÁK: Cello Concerto
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