Season 2024/25 Forthcoming Concerts

Tuesday 29 April 2025, 7:30pm
West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge CB3 9DP

CHRISTIAN GERHAHER, baritone • GEROLD HUBER, piano

Generously sponsored by Mr Julian Metherell
Schumann
Liederkreis [Song Cycle], Op. 24
Schumann
Aus dem Liederbuch eines Malers [From the Songbook of a Painter], Op. 36
Schumann
Romanzen und Balladen, Op. 45
INTERVAL
Schumann
Romanzen und Balladen [Romances and Ballads] Book II, Op. 49
Schumann
Dichterliebe [A Poet's Love], Op. 48

German-born baritone Christian Gerhaher is widely acknowledged as among the finest singers performing today. His exemplary song interpretations with Gerold Huber have set new standards for the German Lied and their recordings have repeatedly won prizes — among them The Gramophone Classical Music Award 2015, and one of Germany's most prestigious awards, the Opus Klassik Award for 2019 as 'Male Singer of the Year'. He can be heard on the stages of major international recital centres, among them Carnegie Halle New York, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and the Cologne and Berlin Philharmonie. He is a frequent guest in the Konzerthaus and the Musikverein in Vienna as well as in the Wigmore Hall in London; and a regular guest at the Edinburgh and Lucerne Festivals as well as the Salzburg Festival.

Besides his principal activity giving concerts and recitals, Christian Gerhaher is also a highly sought-after performer on the opera stage and has received numerous prizes for his work in music drama, among the Laurence Olivier Award and the theatre prize Der Faust. Under Riccardo Muti, he sang Papageno in a production of The Magic Flute at the Salzburg Festival, and his roles range from Don Giovanni to Alban Berg’s Wozzeck (for the Zurich Opera House). In June and July 2019, he will appear in the Royal Opera House's production of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. His partnerships with conductors include some of the most distinguished names of the last thirty years, among them Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sir Simon Rattle, Herbert Blomstedt, Mariss Jansons, Bernard Haitink and Christian Thielemann. He records exclusively for Sony Music.

Munich-born pianist Gerold Huber studied with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and has worked with Christian Gerhaher since their schooldays together. In the role of Lied pianist he regularly appears at festivals such as Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, Schwetzingen Festival and Rheingau Music Festival and major venues including Philharmonie Cologne, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Konzerthaus and Musikverein in Vienna, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall London, Großes Festspielhaus Salzburg, Lincoln Center and Armory or Carnegie hall in New York and Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Gerold Huber’s activities as a soloist focus on the works of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert, and in recent years he has given a series of highly acclaimed master classes, at Yale University, the Aldeburgh and Schwetzingen Festivals. Gerold Huber is also artistic director of the music festival, Pollinger Tage: Alter und Neuer Musik.

 

Saturday 31 May 2025, 7:30pm
West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge CB3 9DP

EMANUEL AX, piano

Generously sponsored by Mr Fred Shahrabani
Beethoven
Sonata quasi una fantasia in E-flat, Op. 27 No. 1
Corigliano
Fantasia on an ostinato (1985)
Beethoven
Sonata quasi una fantasia in C-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2, ‘Moonlight Sonata’
INTERVAL
Schumann
Arabesque in C, Op. 18
Schumann
Fantasie in C, Op. 17

Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax is one of the most revered of all pianists performing internationally today. He moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy and was early recognized as an artist of prodigious musical gifts. He made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. The following year he won the Michaels Award for Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize.

Recent performances have included concerts with the Colorado, Pacific, Cincinnati and Houston Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Minnesota, Los Angeles, New York Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras. His 2022/23 season included a tour with violinist Itzhak Perlman ‘and Friends’ and a continuation of the ‘Beethoven for Three’ touring and recording project he has with partners violinist Leonidas Kavakos and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Emanuel Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios he recorded with Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio, of which the first two discs have recently been released. He has received Grammy® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano Sonatas. He has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano.

Emanuel Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University.