CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS

Performance Tuesday, November 8, 2011 | 7:30 PM

Leonidas Kavakos
Enrico Pace

Zankel Hall Seating Chart
Leonidas Kavakos, “astonishingly virtuosic and blazingly insightful” (Guardian) and Enrico Pace, winner of the International Liszt Piano Competition, appear onstage as “a study in contrast, like the Odd Couple, but together these two opposites make magic” (The Buffalo News). They’ve been bringing down houses together since 2006, and this season they come to Carnegie Hall in a recital that is bound to astound.

Performers

  • Leonidas Kavakos, Violin
  • Enrico Pace, Piano

Program

  • PROKOFIEV Violin Sonata No. 1
  • LERA AUERBACH Selections from Preludes for Violin and Piano, Op. 46
    No. 1 in C Major: Adagio
    No. 18 in F Minor: Agitato
    No. 19 in E-flat Major: Moderato
    No. 20 in C Minor: Tragico
    No. 12 in G-sharp Minor: Adagio
    No. 14 in E-flat Minor: Presto
    No. 15 in C-sharp Major: Adagio sognando
    No. 16 in B-flat Minor: Misterioso
    No. 23 in F Major: Andante
    No. 24 in D Minor: Presto
  • BEETHOVEN Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47, "Kreutzer"

    • Encore:
  • STRAVINSKY Danse Russe from Pétrouchka (trans. Dushkin)

Bios

  • Leonidas Kavakos


    Leonidas Kavakos has established himself as a violinist and artist of rare quality, known for his virtuosity, superb musicianship, and integrity of playing. He has worked with the world's major orchestras and conductors, forming close ties with conductors Riccardo Chailly, Valery Gergiev, Iván Fischer, and Alan Gilbert; as well as with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, La Scala Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and The Philadelphia Orchestra.

    Mr. Kavakos is a committed chamber musician and recitalist, and is a favored artist at the Verbier, Montreux, Edinburgh, and Salzburg festivals. He embarks on a Beethoven sonata cycle this season at Wigmore Hall with pianist Emanuel Ax; they will take this cycle to Vienna's Musikverein in the 2012-2013 season. Mr. Kavakos will also perform the cycle with Enrico Pace in Athens, Milan, Amsterdam, and Florence. Mr. Kavakos's many distinguished chamber music partners include Gautier and Renaud Capuçon, Natalia Gutman, Hélène Grimaud, Nicholas Angelich, Nikolai Lugansky, and Elisabeth Leonskaja.

    Mr. Kavakos is increasingly recognized as a conductor of considerable gift and musicianship. He was artistic director of the Camerata Salzburg from 2007 to 2009, and has since appeared with numerous orchestras, including the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, La Scala Philharmonic, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Houston Symphony. In the current season, he will conduct and perform with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Göteborgs Symfoniker, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and Boston Symphony Orchestra.

    Mr. Kavakos has a distinguished discography, including several award-winning recordings: His recording with Enrico Pace and Patrick Demenga of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor and two of the composer's piano trios on Sony Classical was named ECHO Klassik's Concerto Recording of the Year (19th century). Also on the Sony label, he recorded Mozart's Symphony No. 39 and five violin concertos with the Camerata Salzburg. In 1991, shortly after winning the Sibelius Competition, Mr. Kavakos won the Gramophone Award for the first recording of the original version of Sibelius's Violin Concerto. For ECM, he has released recordings of Enescu and Ravel sonatas with pianist Péter Nagy, as well as a recording of works by Bach and Stravinsky. Mr. Kavakos plays the "Abergavenny" Stradivarius of 1724.

    More Info

  • Enrico Pace


    Hailing from Rimini, Italy, Enrico Pace studied piano with Franco Scala at the Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini" in Pesaro and at the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale "Incontri col Maestro" in Imola.

    As a soloist, Mr. Pace appears with major orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Münchner Philharmoniker, BBC Philharmonic, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, Camerata Salzburg, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Residentie Orkest, and Amsterdam Sinfonietta.

    Highlights of the 2011-2012 season include engagements with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Residentie Orkest; two orchestral concerts and two chamber music concerts as part of his summer residency at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; duo recitals in New York, Philadelphia, Frankfurt, and Bamberg; and solo recitals at the Concertgebouw and the Herkulessaal in Munich.

    As an avid chamber musician, Mr. Pace has worked with the Shostakovich String Quartet, Keller Quartet, RTE Vanbrugh Quartet, Quartetto Prometeo, and horn player Marie Luise Neunecker. His long-time collaborators include violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann, Leonidas Kavakos, and cellist Patrick Demenga. Mr. Pace regularly participates in the Delft Chamber Music Festival; Risør Chamber Music Festival; and chamber music festivals in Finland, Italy, Ireland, Lebanon, and Germany.

    More Info

Audio

Beethoven Violin Sonata No. 9 In A "Kreutzer", Op. 47: I. (Adagio Sostenuto - Presto)
Fritz Kreisler, Violin; Franz Rupp, Piano
EMI Classics

At a Glance

SERGEI PROKOFIEV  Violin Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80


Like much of the music Prokofiev wrote after his return to the Soviet Union in 1936, this dark sonata demonstrates the composer’s earnest attempt to mediate his aggressively modernist style and the “Socialist Realism” music that Soviet artists were expected to produce. The virtuosic brilliance of the violin part reflects the influence of David Oistrakh, to whom the sonata is dedicated.


LERA AUERBACH  Selections from Twenty-Four Preludes for Violin and Piano, Op. 46


Lera Auerbach’s star has been in ascendance ever since she arrived in the US from Russia two decades ago. The young composer-pianist’s dramatic and richly textured music is familiar to audiences at Carnegie Hall, where she made her debut in 2002. Like Bach did with his canonic preludes and fugues, Auerbach presents a set of pieces in all the major and minor keys.


LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN  Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47, “Kreutzer”


The bracingly virtuosic “Kreutzer” is the last of nine sonatas for violin and piano that Beethoven composed between 1797 and 1803. (Another nine years would elapse before he wrote his 10th and final violin sonata.) By rights, it should be called the “Bridgetower” Sonata, since Beethoven wrote it for celebrated English violinist George Bridgetower. After the two men had a falling out, the composer switched the dedication to French virtuoso Rodolphe Kreutzer, who—ironically—never played it in public.

Program Notes

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