Alisa Weilerstein is not just a rising star. She is a shooting star.

—Salt Lake Tribune

Program

SHOSTAKOVICH: 24 Preludes for Piano, Op. 34 (arranged for cello and piano by Lera Auerbach) AUERBACH: 24 Preludes for Violoncello and Piano, Op. 47

About This Performance

Alisa Weilerstein’s fiery technique and passionate performances have made her one of the world’s most sought-after soloists, and thrilled audiences when SFP presented her last season. Weilerstein is paired with dynamic Russian composer/pianist Lera Auerbach, one of the most widely performed composers of
the new generation and a virtuoso performer.

Links/Downloads

Artist Biography

American cellist Alisa Weilerstein has attracted widespread attention for playing that combines a natural virtuosic command and technical precision with impassioned musicianship.

At only 26 years old, she is already a veteran on the classical music scene having performed with the nation’s top orchestras, given recitals in music capitals throughout the U.S. and Europe, and having regularly appeared at prestigious festivals.  She is also a dedicated performer of chamber music, having grown up immersed in the classical music culture with a family of musicians with whom she collaborated from an early age.

The intensity and passion of her playing have regularly been lauded and even compared to that of a rock star. This past season the Toronto Star wrote “Weilerstein plays classical music, but with the depth of soul and raw emotional energy of a diehard rocker” and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote “The hallmarks of her phrasing were precision and intelligence…but her playing was far from academic, even tapping into some energetic, rock-inspired bowing in the finale [of the Haydn D Major Cello Concerto]."

During the 2008-09 season Alisa Weilerstein, who was recently awarded Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal award, will make her debuts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Hans Graf, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra led by Mark Elder. She will also perform with the National Symphony Orchestra under Itzhak Perlman, the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel, the Cleveland Orchestra under Ludovic Morlot, the Houston Symphony Orchestra under James Gaffigan, and the Pittsburgh Symphony under Manfred Honeck at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., among other orchestral engagements.

Following her New York premiere performance of Osvaldo Golijov’s Azul at the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2006, the New York Times called her playing ”staggering.”  This season she will again perform the work with the New World Symphony under Marin Alsop, The Cleveland Orchestra led by Ludovic Morlot, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Louis Langrée, the Colorado Symphony under Jeffrey Kahane, and in Switzerland with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra led by Paul Goodwin. Ms. Weilerstein will also give several recitals throughout the U.S., including Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in New York and San Francisco. Also in New York this season, she will perform chamber music with Gil Shaham and Friends at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall.  Abroad she will perform with the Hamburg Philharmonic, the Hallé Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, Slovenia Philharmonic, and will give several recital tours in Italy.

During the 2008 summer season Ms. Weilerstein will perform chamber music at Spoleto Festival USA, Golijov’s Azul at the Aspen Music Festival, and perform in the opening night gala concert, as well as in recital, at the Caramoor Festival in the U.S. Abroad she performs at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Verbier Festival and will perform the Elgar Cello Concerto on a month-long tour of Asia with the Asian Youth Orchestra, conducted by Richard Pontzious.

Last season Ms. Weilerstein performed with the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, and with the Detroit Symphony under Sir Andrew Davis, the Pittsburgh Symphony under Marek Janowski, the San Diego Symphony under Jahja Ling, the San Francisco Symphony under David Robertson, and the Toronto Symphony under Peter Oundjian. She gave several recitals throughout the U.S., including her debut with the Celebrity Series in Boston and at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.  Abroad she performed with the NDR Hamburg under Manfred Honeck and the Orchestre National de Lyon conducted by Jesus Lopez-Cobos.

Ms. Weilerstein has been continually engaged by orchestras across the U.S. and has performed as soloist with the Baltimore Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Saint Louis Symphony, the Seattle Symphony  the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, among others.  In Europe she has performed with the Barcelona Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony, Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, Leipziger Bachkollegium, NDR Hamburg, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre National de Lyon, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.  She makes regular appearances at festivals such as the Aspen Music Festival, Bad Kissingen, Blossom Music Festival, Caramoor, Green Music Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein, Spoleto USA, Vail, Vancouver Chamber Music Festival, and the Verbier Festival.

Ms. Weilerstein has given recitals in music centers across the U.S., including Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Portland, New York and San Francisco.  She performed at The Louvre in her Paris recital debut in September 1999.  Other notable engagements have included an eight-city tour of Japan, featuring a Suntory Hall performance in March 1999, a concert tour of Australia, and Florida tours with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 2000 and 2002.

In 2008 Alisa Weilerstein was awarded Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal prize for exceptional achievement. She was named the winner of the 2006 Leonard Bernstein Award, which she received at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, was the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2000 and was selected for two prestigious young artists programs in 2000-01, the ECHO (European Concert Hall Organization) “Rising Stars” recital series and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two.  As part of the ECHO series in 2000-01, Ms. Weilerstein gave recitals at seven celebrated concert halls in Europe (Symphony Hall in Birmingham, Wigmore Hall in London, Athens Concert Hall, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam) as well as at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall), which nominated her to be part of the series.  Ms. Weilerstein also released an acclaimed recording on EMI Classics’ “Debut” series in 2000 including works by Paganini, Dvorák, Ginastera, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Janácek, Saint-Saëns, Fauré and De Falla.

Having begun playing the cello at age 4, Ms. Weilerstein performed her first public concert six months later. She often plays with her parents, Donald and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, as the Weilerstein Trio, which is the Trio-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory in Boston.  Her Cleveland Orchestra debut was in October 1995, at age 13, playing the Tchaikovsky “Rococo” Variations. She made her Carnegie Hall debut with the New York Youth Symphony in March 1997.  Ms. Weilerstein is a graduate of the Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Richard Weiss.  In May 2004, she graduated from Columbia University in New York with a degree in Russian History.

 

One of the most widely performed composers of the new generation, Lera Auerbach is the youngest composer on the roster of Hamburg’s prestigious international music publishing company Hans Sikorski, home to Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Gubaidulina and Kancheli. A virtuoso performer, Lera Auerbach continues the great tradition of pianist-composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Auerbach's music is characterized by its stylistic freedom and juxtaposition of tonal and atonal musical language.

Lera Auerbach was born in October, 1973 in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Urals bordering Siberia. Since 1991 she has made New York City her permanent residence, while Hamburg remains her European home. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in piano and music composition from The Juilliard School. She went on to study at and graduated from the prestigious piano soloist program of the Hannover Hochschule für Musik.

Lera Auerbach's work as a composer and pianist is regularly featured in the leading halls around the world including the Bolshoi Theater and Bolshoi Saal of Moscow Conservatory, New York’s Avery Fisher Hall and Carnegie Hall, Washington's Kennedy Center, Tokyo’s Opera City and NHK Hall, Munich's Herkulessaal, Oslo's Konzerthaus, Chicago’s Symphony Hall, Bonn’s Beethovenhalle, Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall and  Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Theatre, Paris’ Salle Pleyel, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Dresden’s Kulturpalast, Shanghai’s Oriental Art Center, Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Musica, Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw and Concertgebouw, Jerusalem’s Centre for the Performing Arts, Düsseldorf’s Tonhalle, Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle and Staatsoper, Hannover’s Landesfunkhaus, Prague’s Filharmonie Hradec Králové, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Edinburgh’s Queens Hall, amongst countless others. 

Auerbach's recently completed compositions include: Symphony No. 1 Chimera, which was commissioned and premiered by the Düsseldorf Symphony; Symphony No. 2 Requiem for a Poet, a work commissioned and premiered by Hannover's NDR Philharmonic and Choir; A Russian Requiem for mixed choir, large orchestra, boys’ choir, boy soprano, mezzo-soprano and bass, co-commissioned by Musikfest Bremen, Philharmonische Gesellschaft Bremen and Semana de Musica Religiosa Cuenca and premiered by the Bremen Philharmonic with the Latvian National Choir and the Estonian Opera Boys Choir. Her ballet Die Kleine Meerjungfrau, commissioned by the Royal Danish Ballet and the Hamburg State Ballet and choreographed by John Neumeier, will receive its American premiere in 2010 by the San Francisco Ballet. She is currently writing a full length opera based on her original play Gogol for Vienna’s historic Theater an der Wien for premiere in 2011. 

Lera Auerbach's commissions include ballets, operas, symphonies, concertos, string quartets and a number of other chamber and solo music works by organizations as varied as the SWR Radio Philharmonic, Hamburg State Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Cologne Philharmonie, Music Accord, Norddeutschen Rudfunk, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Bonn’s Beethoven International Competition (required composition for pianists), ARD International Music Competition (required composition for pianists), Verbier International Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Lucerne Music Festival, Lockenhaus Music Festival, Musikfest Bremen, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Les Muséiques Festival in Basel and the Aspen Music Festival.

Active performers of Lera Auerbach’s compositions include: the Tokyo String Quartet, Borromeo String Quartet, Aviv String Quartet, Petersen String Quartet, Artemis String Quartet, Parker String Quartet, Granados String Quartet; violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Vadim Gluzman, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Isabelle van Keulen and Philippe Quint; Cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Claudio Bohorquez, David Finckel, Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Ani Aznavoorian and Wendy Warner; conductors Andrey Boreyko, Andris Nelsons, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Eiji Oue, Tonu Kalujste, Markus Poschner, Klauspeter Seibel, Christopher Poppen, Jonathan Nott, Timothy Russel and Hiroyuki Iwaki. Also orchestras such as The New York Philharmonic, National Symphony, Bamberger Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonie, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, Xalapa Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, Louisiana Philharmonic, Bremen Philharmonic, Düsseldorf Symphony, Radio-Symphony Orchestra SWR Stuttgart, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra presented her work.

Ms. Auerbach has been Artist-in-Residence with Deutschelandfunk (German National Radio),  Composer-in-Residence at the Bremen Music Festival, Composer-in-Residence at the Pacific Music Festival (Japan), Composer-in-Residence at the Lockenhaus Music Festival in Austria, Composer-in-Residence at Les Muséiques Festival in Basel, Composer-in-Residence with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanasawa in Japan and Artist-in-Residence with the International Johannes Brahms Foundation in Baden-Baden. In 2011 she will be composer-in-residence with the world famous Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra and the Semper Opera of Dresden.

She was awarded the prestigious Hindemith Prize by the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany, Deutschelandfunk’s Förderpreis, selected as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and in 2007 she was selected as a member of the Young Global Leaders forum by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Auerbach’s acclaim is attributed not only to her musical activities but also to her writing. She was named Poet-of-the-Year by the International Pushkin Society. Her literary works include five published volumes of poetry and prose. Her poetry is taught in schools and universities in Russia as part of the required reading for modern literature courses. She has recently completed her first stage-play.