Maxim Vengerov, Violin
Polina Osetinskaya, Piano
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Performers
Maxim Vengerov, Violin
Polina Osetinskaya, Piano
Program
MOZART Violin Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 454
SCHUBERT Fantasy in C Major, D. 934
R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18
RAVEL Tzigane
Encores:
BRAHMS Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G Minor (trans. Joseph Joachim)
KREISLER “Liebesleid” from Old Viennese Melodies
KREISLER "Liebesfreud" from Old Viennese Melodies
MASSENET Meditation from Thaïs
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.In honor of the centenary of his birth, Carnegie Hall’s 2019–2020 season is dedicated to the memory of Isaac Stern in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to Carnegie Hall, arts advocacy, and the field of music.
At a Glance
MOZART Violin Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 454
Most of Mozart’s some three dozen sonatas for violin and piano were designed to showcase his virtuosity at the keyboard and cast the violin in a decidedly subservient role. But in 1784, Mozart met his match in the brilliant Italian violinist Regina Strinasacchi, who had recently arrived in Vienna; it was her exceptional artistry that inspired him to write the B-flat–Major Sonata.
SCHUBERT Fantasy in C Major, D. 934
Schubert’s richly melodious Fantasy is recognized as a masterpiece today, but it received mixed reviews at its premiere in 1828. One newspaper tartly observed that the lengthy piece “occupied rather too much of the time a Viennese is prepared to devote to pleasures of the mind.”
R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18
Written in 1887, when Strauss was just 23 years old, the Sonata in E-flat Major contains the seeds of the musical genius that would soon bear fruit in his pathbreaking symphonic tone poems and operas. Op. 18 was his last piece of abstract chamber music; virtually all of his later instrumental works would be inspired by literary or philosophical programs.
RAVEL Tzigane
Ravel was drawn to the colorful, improvisatory idiom of Hungarian gypsy violinists like Belá Radics, whose playing Debussy described as expressing “the melancholy confidence of a heart that suffers, or laughs, almost in the same instant.” Ravel’s own evocation of the style hongrois (“Hungarian style”) cast a similar spell when Jelly d’Arányi premiered his rhapsody Tzigane in London in 1924.
Bios
Maxim Vengerov
Universally hailed as one of the world’s finest musicians, Grammy Award winner Maxim Vengerov enjoys international acclaim as a conductor and in-demand soloist. Born in 1974, he began his career as a solo violinist at the age of five, won the International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition and Carl Flesch International Violin Competition at ages 10 and 15, respectively, and has gone on to record extensively for high-profile labels that include Melodiya, Teldec, and EMI. He is also the recipient of Gramophone’s Artist of the Year award.
Mr. Vengerov turned his attention to conducting in 2007, following in the footsteps of his mentor, Mstislav Rostropovich. Mr. Vengerov graduated in 2014 with a diploma of excellence from Moscow’s Ippolitov-Ivanov Institute, where he studied with Yuri Simonov, and has since completed a two-year program in opera conducting.
Highlights of the 2018–2019 season included opening the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala’s season with Riccardo Chailly, as well as residencies with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and Paris’s Philharmonie. During the 2019–2020 season, Mr. Vengerov celebrates 40 years on stage with a gala performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall on June 12, for which he is joined by Mischa Maisky, Martha Argerich, and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director Marios Papadopoulos, as well as students from London’s Royal College of Music. Mr. Vengerov also tours extensively around the world this season in recital.
Since September 2016, Mr. Vengerov has been the Polonsky Visiting Professor of Violin at the Royal College of Music. He is also the Stephan and Viktoria Schmidheiny Stiftungsprofessor at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. In 2012, Mr. Vengerov was awarded an honorary visiting fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, and in 2019, he received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Music and was named Chevalier of the Order of Cultural Merit of Monaco. Beginning this year, his new recordings will be released on the classical music streaming service IDAGIO, including Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Myung-Whun Chung, and Live from Carnegie Hall. Mr. Vengerov plays the ex-Kreutzer Stradivari violin from 1727. For additional information, visit nfbm.com.
Polina Osetinskaya
Internationally acclaimed pianist Polina Osetinskaya began her career at the age of five and was soon acclaimed as a wunderkind in the former Soviet Union at the same time as Maxim Vengerov. She gave her first concert at the age of six and entered the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory at the age of seven. Ms. Osetinskaya continued her studies at the Leningrad Conservatory with Marina Wolf and later at the Moscow Conservatory with Vera Gornostaeva.
Ms. Osetinskaya’s onstage chamber partners have included Mr. Vengerov and Julian Milkis, among others. She has worked with conductors who include Teodor Currentzis, Andrey Boreyko, Tugan Sokhiev, Laurent Petitgirard, Yan Pascal Tortelier, and Alexander Sladkovsky. Ms. Osetinskaya has appeared with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariinsky Orchestra, and musicAeterna, among others.
Ms. Osetinskaya has performed at London’s Barbican Centre, Vienna’s Musikverein, the Grand Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia, and the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, as well as in Rome, Milan, Brussels, and Tokyo, and across the United States. She also appears at festivals in Europe, Russia, Mexico, and the United States. Ms. Osetinskaya has released recordings with the Quartz, Naxos, Sony Music, Bel-Aire, and Melodiya labels.
In recital, Ms. Osetinskaya is known for her unusual solo programs that include works by contemporary composers juxtaposed with classical repertoire. She is also at home with works by post–avant-garde composers such as Valentin Silvestrov, Leonid Desyatnikov, and Arvo Pärt. This season, she performs at Vienna’s Musikverein and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie; in Tel Aviv, Milan, and Turin; and on tour in the US with the State Symphony Capella of Russia. Her autobiography Farewell, Sadness—an account of her wunderkind years—is a bestseller.