CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS

Performance Tuesday, April 9, 2013 | 7:30 PM

Isabel Leonard
Vlad Iftinca

Zankel Hall
Isabel Leonard radiates star power. She was “fresh, effervescent, and lovely” (The New York Times) as Zerlina in Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera, charmed Santa Fe audiences in Vivaldi’s Griselda, and is coming off rave reviews for her performance as Rosina in The Barber of Seville at the Met. On this program, she’s joined by pianist Vlad Iftinca in Zankel Hall.

The contemporary works on this program are part of My Time, My Music.

Performers

  • Isabel Leonard, Mezzo-Soprano
  • Vlad Iftinca, Piano

Program

  • DE FALLA " El pan de Ronda que sabe a verdad"
  • VALVERDE SANJUÁN "Clavelitos"
  • GARCÍA LORCA "Los Pelegrinitos"
  • DE FALLA "Preludios: Madres, todas las noches"
  • GARCÍA LORCA "Nana de Sevilla"
  • GRANADOS "Gracia mía"
  • DE FALLA "Oración de las madres que tienen a sus hijos en brazos"
  • MOMPOU "Sólo las flores sobre ti"
  • DE FALLA "Olas gigantes"
  • MONTSALVATGE Canciónes negras
    ·· Cuba dentro de un piano
    ·· Punto de Habañera
    ·· Chévere
    ·· Canción de cuña para dormir a un negrito
    ·· Canto negro
  • JENNIFER HIGDON "Hop & Toe Dance" (NY Premiere)
  • WILLIAM SCHUMAN "God's World"
  • GLEN ROVEN "Wild Nights" (World Premiere)
  • CHARLES "When I have sung my songs"
  • IVES "Two Little Flowers"
  • CARPENTER "The sleep that flits on baby's eyes"
  • IVES "When stars are in the quiet skies"
  • GUETTEL "How can I lose you?"
  • RICHARD HAGEMAN "Do not go, my love"
  • ROREM "What if some little pain"
  • PORTER Where, oh where"
  • BEN MOORE "I want to go with the one I love" (World Premiere)

    • Encores:
  • ROSSINI Canzonetta spagnuola
  • OFFENBACH Air de la Lettre ("O mon cher amant") from La Périchole
  • BERNSTEIN "Somewhere" from West Side Story

Bios

  • Isabel Leonard


    Isabel Leonard continues to make waves in the world of classical music both at home in the US and abroad. In the 2012-2013 season, Metropolitan Opera audiences hear Ms. Leonard in two role debuts: as Miranda in Thomas Adès's The Tempest and as Blanche in Poulenc's Les dialogues des Carmélites. She also dazzled New York audiences with her Rosina in the English version of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia. This season also marked Ms. Leonard's house and role debut with the Canadian Opera Company as Sesto in Christopher Alden's production of Mozart's La clemenza di Tito. 

    Ms. Leonard is featured in a North American recital tour this season, beginning with the University of Notre Dame, and followed by performances at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, San Francisco Performances series, and Atlanta's Spivey Hall.

    On the concert stage, Ms. Leonard will be the featured soloist in Mahler's Symphony No. 4 and Berlioz's Les nuits d'été with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. She will close the season with Metropolitan Opera concerts in New York City parks, and with performances at the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto in Japan, where she will star in the title role in L'enfant et les sortilèges and as Concepcion in Ravel's L'heure espagnol with Seiji Ozawa conducting.

    Ms. Leonard is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Beverly Sills Artist Award (2011), The Richard F. Gold Career Grant of The Shoshana Foundation (2007), Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation Award (2006), the William Schuman Prize of The Juilliard School (2006), Makiko Narumi Memorial Fund prize of The Juilliard School (2005), Marilyn Horne Foundation Award of the Music Academy of the West (2005), and the first prize of the Giulio Gari Foundation Competition (2005).

    More Info

  • Vlad Iftinca


    Vlad Iftinca is currently part of the 2012-2013 Metropolitan Opera music staff roster and is also the staff music coach for the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. He also serves on the collaborative piano faculty at the Mannes College The New School For Music in New York City, and on the staff of the Renatto Scotto Opera Academy in Westchester. Born in Romania, he received his primary education at Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía. Mr. Iftinca has collaborated with distinguished singers such as Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Deborah Voigt, Hei-Kyung Hong, Thomas Hampson, Luca Pisaroni, and Shenyang. Recital performances include appearances at the 2011 Beijing International Music Festival, Alice Tully Hall, Los Angeles Opera, Seoul Performing Arts Center, Hong Kong Arts Festival, The University of Utah's Virtuoso Series, the Ravinia Festival's Rising Stars recital series, and the Regina Resnik Presents   series in San Francisco and New York. At the Metropolitan Opera, he has worked under prestigious conductors such as James Levine, Joseph Colaneri, Maurizio Benini, Sir Andrew Davis, Valery Gergiev, David Robertson, and Marco Armiliato.

    Recent engagements include performances on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's concert series with baritone Thomas Hampson and his conducting debut with The Juilliard School's productions of Rossini's La cambiale di matrimonio and La scala di seta. Upcoming engagements include the Opera on the Avalon festival in Canada; Samling Foundation Master Classes in the United Kingdom; workshops in Mexico City; and recitals in Atlanta, Boston, and New York with Isabel Leonard.

    More Info

At a Glance

We begin in Spain for the first half of tonight's program and then return home to America for the second. The first set of Spanish songs focuses on folk wisdom and popular styles, including songs by sophisticated modernist Manuel de Falla, music by a composer of zarzuelas (Spanish musical theater with spoken dialogue and songs), as well as folk songs set to music by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. Children and love are the connecting threads.

The second set, featuring songs by Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla, and Frederic Mompou, tells of both erotic and maternal love, and of despair.

The first half of the program ends with a song cycle embodying antillanismo—a musical marriage of Spanish and Cuban music by Xavier Montsalvatge, one of Catalonia's foremost composers of the 20th century.

In the second half, three premieres are interwoven among both older and more recent American songs. Once again, love (for a lover, the world, nature, and children) carries us from new songs by Jennifer Higdon and Glen Roven to older gems by William Schuman, Ernest Charles, Charles Ives, and John Alden Carpenter.

The final group takes us from the 10th song in Adam Guettel's Myths and Hymns to songs by Ned Rorem, Richard Hageman, and Cole Porter, along with another premiere—-this time, of a song on a poem by Bertolt Brecht composed by New York's own Ben Moore.
Program Notes
This concert and the Pure Voice series are sponsored by the Jean and Jula Goldwurm Memorial Foundation in memory of Jula Goldwurm.

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