Rachmaninoff: The Pianist
Sat, Nov 4, 2023, 7:30 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
Sergei Rachmaninoff was a leading exponent of the virtuoso pianist tradition, showcased in this program spanning nearly two centuries of keyboard mastery.
Rachmaninoff himself gets the last word, with his blockbuster Second Suite, a stunning composition of orchestral texture and operatic drama.
Program
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756–1791)Sonata in D major for Two Pianos, K. 448
(1781)Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840–1893)The Nutcracker Suite for Two Pianos
(arr. Economou) (1892, arr. 1988)Claude Debussy
(1862–1918)En Blanc et Noir for Two Pianos
(1915)William Bolcom
(b. 1938)“The Serpent’s Kiss” from The Garden of Eden Suite for Two Pianos
(1974)Sergei Rachmaninoff
(1873–1943)Suite No. 2 in C minor for Two Pianos, Op. 17
(1901)
Inon Barnatan
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Alessio Bax
Wu Han
“One of the most admired pianists of his generation” (New York Times), Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan is celebrated for his poetic sensibility, musical intelligence, and consummate artistry. He inaugurated his tenure as Music Director of California’s La Jolla Music Society Summerfest in 2019. He is the recipient of both a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center’s 2015 Martin E. Segal Award, served as the inaugural artist-in-association of the New York Philharmonic, and is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. His recent concerto collaborations include those with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, and the Cincinnati Symphony. Last season he played Mendelssohn, Gershwin, and Schubert for his solo recital debut at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. He reunited with his frequent recital partner, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, for tours on both sides of the Atlantic, including performances of Beethoven’s complete cello sonatas in San Francisco and other US cities. His latest album is Beethoven’s complete piano concertos, recorded with Alan Gilbert and London’s Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Other recent releases include a live recording of Messiaen’s 90-minute masterpiece Des canyons aux étoiles (From the Canyons to the Stars) at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Schubert’s late piano sonatas on the Avie label, winning praise from such publications as Gramophone and BBC Music.
Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career, with performances described as possessing “exquisite sensibilty, delivered with the most subtly varied, beautiful sound” (Seen and Heard Magazine). He has performed with the Cleveland, NHK Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras, and has collaborated with many renowned conductors including Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, Vasily Petrenko, Ludovic Morlot, Edward Gardner, and Louis Langrée.
Bavouzet’s recital schedule takes him across four continents in the 2025–26 season, with performances at major venues such as Sydney’s City Recital Hall, Kyoto Concert Hall, Beijing’s National Center for the Performing Arts, Seoul’s Kumho Arts Center, Stockholm’s Queen Silvia Concert Hall, the Glasshouse International Centre, Wiener Konzerthaus, and Lincoln Center. Orchestral collaborations include the Queensland, Trondheim, Aalborg, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras as well as Staatskapelle Weimar and others.
In recent seasons, he has appeared with the Philharmonia Orchestra (on an eight-concert tour of China, under Lan Shui), Philadelphia Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Shanghai, and the São Paulo, Adelaide, Sydney, Tokyo Metropolitan, and BBC Symphony Orchestras. He play-directed a three-concerto program with the Seattle Symphony and toured the Baltics with Manchester Camerata. He is a frequent guest at the Verbier and Bravo! Vail Music Festivals, and a regular recitalist at London’s Wigmore Hall.
Bavouzet’s recordings have garnered multiple Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, Diapason d’Or, and Choc de l’Année awards. Recording exclusively on the Chandos label, his most recent release, Ravel: Complete Works for Solo Piano, was praised by Gramophone for its “seasoned mastery, stylish perception and caring commitment to [the] repertoire.” He performs the complete works of Ravel in recital at over twenty venues in Ravel’s 150th-anniversary year. Other notable recordings include the complete Haydn Piano Sonatas series, which was hailed by Gramophone as “a modern benchmark”; Pierre Sancan: A Musical Tribute with the BBC Philharmonic under Yan Pascal Tortelier; The Beethoven Connection, which earned multiple accolades from publications including the New York Times (following his much-lauded complete Beethoven Sonatas, and play-conducting Beethoven’s Piano Concertos with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra); the complete Mozart Piano Concertos with the Manchester Camerata under Gábor Takács-Nagy; and Bartók’s and Prokofiev’s complete Piano Concertos with the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda, the latter winning in the Concerto category at the 2014 Gramophone Awards.
Bavouzet has worked closely with Sir Georg Solti, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Zoltan Kocsis, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Bruno Mantovani, and Jörg Widmann, and is also a champion of lesser-known French music, notably that of Gabriel Pierné and Albéric Magnard. In 2012 he was the ICMA Artist of the Year, and in 2008 was awarded Beijing’s first ever Elite Prize for his Beethoven Sonatas series.
He is the International Visiting Artist in Keyboard Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Alessio Bax catapulted to prominence with First Prize wins at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions. He has appeared with more than 150 orchestras, including the London, Royal, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestras, the Boston, Dallas, and Sydney Symphonies, and the NHK Symphony in Japan, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Marin Alsop, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Simon Rattle, Yuri Temirkanov, and Jaap van Zweden. He released his 11th Signum Classics album, Italian Inspirations, whose program was also the vehicle for his solo recital debut at New York’s 92nd Street Y as well as on tour. He and his regular piano duo partner, Lucille Chung, have given recitals at Lincoln Center and were featured with the St. Louis Symphony and Stéphane Denève. This season he makes his debut with the Milwaukee Symphony, and will return for the fourth time for two recitals at the historic Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Last summer he made return appearances at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival with the Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi conducting. At age 14, Bax graduated with top honors from the conservatory of Bari, his hometown in Italy, and after further studies in Europe, he moved to the United States in 1994. A Steinway artist, he lives in New York City with pianist Lucille Chung and their daughter, Mila. He is a former member of CMS’s Bowers Program and on the faculty at the New England Conservatory.
Pianist Wu Han, recipient of Musical America’s Musician of the Year Award, enjoys a multi-faceted musical life that encompasses artistic direction, performing, and recording at the highest levels. Co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2004 as well as Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Silicon Valley’s innovative chamber music festival Music@Menlo since 2002, she also serves as Artistic Advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns series and Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts, and as Artistic Director for La Musica in Sarasota, Florida. Her recent concert activities have taken her from New York’s Lincoln Center stages to the most important concert halls in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In addition to countless performances of virtually the entire chamber repertoire, her concerto performances include appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, and the Aspen Festival Orchestra. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of ArtistLed, classical music’s first artist-directed, internet-based recording label, which has released her performances of the staples of the cello-piano duo repertoire with cellist David Finckel. Her more than 80 releases on ArtistLed, CMS Live, and Music@Menlo LIVE include masterworks of the chamber repertoire with numerous distinguished musicians. Wu Han’s educational activities include overseeing CMS’s Bowers Program and the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. A recipient of the prestigious Andrew Wolf Award, she was mentored by some of the greatest pianists of our time, including Lilian Kallir, Rudolf Serkin, and Menahem Pressler. Married to cellist David Finckel since 1985, Wu Han divides her time between concert touring and residences in New York City and Westchester County.