Weilerstein and Auerbach proved a formidable duo, finding a joint rhythmic groove in the more extravagantly athletic preludes and collaborating in tender sympathy for the more lyrical moments.

—San Francisco Chronicle

Alisa weilerstein and Lera Auerbach perform
Auerbach’s Sonata for violoncello and piano: part 1

Program

AUERBACH: Last Letter for voice, cello and piano; Sonata for Cello and Piano;
24 Preludes for Piano

About This Performance

Lera Auerbach is one of the most widely performed composer/pianists of her generation. The lyrical inventiveness and intimacy of her craft are best heard in the poetic sensitivity of her chamber playing. She is joined by friends Alisa Weilerstein, whom the Philadelphia Inquirer called “a galvanizing cellist,” and soprano Lina Tetriani.

Special FREE Poetry reading by Lera Auerbach

Recognized across the globe for her brilliant compositions and librettos, it is a little known fact that Lera Auerbach has also published five volumes of poetry and prose. Join us for an intimate poetry reading, free of charge!

Poetry by Lera Auerbach
Sunday, March 11, 7pm
Hotel Rex in San Francisco

Please call to reserve tickets to this FREE event: 415.398.6449

Artist Biography

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, Auerbach continues the great tradition of pianist-composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her music is characterized by its stylistic freedom and juxtaposition of tonal and atonal musical language.

Auerbach was born in 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 Washington’s Kennedy Center, the Bolshoi Theater and Bolshoi Saal of Moscow Conservatory, New York’s Avery Fisher Hall and Carnegie Hall, 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.

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.

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.

American cellist Alisa Weilerstein has attracted widespread attention for playing that combines a natural virtuosic command and technical precision with impassioned musicianship. At 27 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 chamber musician.

The intensity and passion of her playing has regularly been lauded, as has the spontaneity and sensitivity of her interpretations. Following her Zankel Hall recital debut Justin Davidson of New York Magazine said: “Whatever she plays sounds custom-composed for her, as if she has a natural affinity with everything.”

In November 2009, Weilerstein was one of four artists selected to perform at a White House classical music event that included student workshops hosted by the First Lady, Michelle Obama, and performing in concert for guests including President Obama. In December she performed as soloist (Dvorak Cello Concerto) in Venezuela with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, led by Gustavo Dudamel and was immediately invited back to Venezuela in January for concerts conducted by her brother, Joshua Weilerstein. Another highlight of Ms. Weilerstein's 2009-10 season took place on May 1st, 2010 when she performed Elgar's Cello Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Daniel Barenboim in London for the orchestra’s 2010 European Concert, an annual event that marks the founding of the Berlin Philharmonic. The concert was televised live worldwide and released on DVD. During the season she performed the Elgar concerto with the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Orchestre de Paris and the Hamburg Philharmonic. Following her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June 2009, John von Rhein at the Chicago Tribune said of Weilerstein’s performance of the Dvořák Cello Concerto: “The 27-year-old cellist spanned the full emotional range from poignancy to ebullience, bringing out an abundance of sentiment while avoiding sentimentality.” During the 2009–10 season performed this concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Peter Oundjian, the Cleveland Orchestra and Jonathan Nott, the Slovenia Symphony Orchestra and Giordano Bellicampi, the Hallé Orchestra and Okko Kamu and the Israel Philharmonic and Pietari Inkinen.

Other highlights of Weilerstein's 2009–10 season included the Canadian premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's Azul with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and her debuts with the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and at the Cartagena International Music Festival. In November 2009 Ms. Weilerstein performed the first three of Bach's Six Cello Suites over three days at Columbia University in New York City. She concluded the cycle performing the final three suites in April 2010. In 2008 Ms. Weilerstein and composer/pianist Lera Auerbach performed the world premiere of Ms. Auerbach's 24 Preludes for Cello and Piano at the Caramoor International Music Festival and subsequently performed this work at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. They came together again to perform this work in a program that also includes Shostakovich's 24 Preludes, making 48 preludes in total, in San Francisco and Vancouver. Weilerstein will also join pianist Inon Barnatan for recitals in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Denver, Omaha, Ann Arbor and the Virgin Islands.

Weilerstein has been continually engaged by orchestras across the U.S. and has performed as soloist with the Baltimore Symphony, Boston Symphony, Chicago 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 and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, among others. In Europe she has performed with the Barcelona Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony, Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, Hallé Orchestra, Leipziger Bachkollegium, NDR Hamburg, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre National de Lyon, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.

Conductors Weilerstein has performed with include Marin Alsop, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Mark Elder, Christoph Eschenbach, Lawrence Foster, Hans Graf, Manfred Honeck, Paavo Jarvi, Jeffrey Kahane, Louis Langrée, Andrew Litton, Jesus Lopez-Cobos, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Ludovic Morlot, Peter Oundjian, Itzhak Perlman, Kirill Petrenko and David Robertson.

In addition to her performances as a soloist, Weilerstein performs regularly as a chamber musician. She is part of a core group of musicians that performs at the Spoleto Festival USA each year and she also performs 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.

Weilerstein began playing the cello at four years old after her grandmother assembled a makeshift instrument out of cereal boxes for her to play with while she was sick with the chicken pox. After convincing her parents to buy her a real cello, she showed a natural affinity for the instrument and performed her first public concert six months later. 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, and she has been appointed artist-in-residence at the Institute beginning August 2009 which will see her visit the campus two days each semester to work with cello students. In May 2004, she graduated from Columbia University in New York with a degree in Russian History.

In November 2008 Weilerstein, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was nine, was made a Celebrity Advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. She meets with members of the local chapters of JDRF when she tours with the aim of demonstrating to young people that living with and managing diabetes does not stop you from doing anything you want to do. In June 2009 she conveyed this message to delegates at the JDRF's Children's Congress in Washington as a member of a role model panel and she is an active member of the organization’s Juvenation social network.

Georgian-American soprano, Lina Tetriani, kicks off the 2010-11 Season with the role of Magda Sorel The Consul at Opera New Jersey, a role for which she was so highly acclaimed at Chautauqua Music Festival. Critic David Shengold wrote “…one sensational full-out scene and aria for the heroine, Magda Sorel, which won extended, deserved applause for lovely, sympathetically vulnerable Georgian soprano Lina Tetriani…Her strong lyric soprano, darkly shaded…Tetriani is an excellent artist, providing a winning dramatic fulcrum.”

Tetriani (formerly Tetruashvili) received her Bachelor’s of Music degree from the Juilliard School and her Master of Music in Opera degree from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Recent successes include her appearance as Violetta in La Traviata in her return to Sarasota Opera, Florida, and her highly acclaimed interpretation of the role of Lora in Wagner's rarely heard first opera, Die Feen, under the baton of Marc Minkowski at Theatre du Chatelet, Paris. She returned to the Chatelet for Cronenburg and Shore's world premiere of The Fly, and later, in the title role of Norma in a long-anticipated new production conducted by Jean-Christophe Spinosi, for which she was warmly received. Previous appearances include the role of Magda in La Rondine at Sarasota Opera, and Kupova in The Snow Maiden for Wexford Festival Opera. Other engagements during the season include her appearance with the prestigious Jupiter Symphony in New York where she will give Shostakovich's Seven Romances based on the poetry of Alexander Blok, and her solo recital for the United National Women’s Guild.

Links/Downloads

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