Season 2025/26 Forthcoming Concerts

MITSUKO UCHIDA, piano

Beethoven

Thirty-Two Variations in C minor, WoO. 80

Webern

Variations, Op. 27

Mozart

Fantasia in D minor, K. 397

INTERVAL

Schubert

Sonata in G, D. 894

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Legendary pianist Dame Mitsuko Uchida brings profound insight into all the music she plays through her own quest for truth and beauty. Renowned for her interpretations of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Beethoven, she has also illuminated the music of Berg, Schoenberg, Webern and Boulez for a new generation of listeners. She has a close association with Cambridge, performing for Camerata Musica in almost every season, and is an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse.

She has enjoyed close relationships over many years with the world’s most renowned orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and – in the US – the Chicago Symphony and The Cleveland Orchestra, with whom she recently celebrated her 100th performance at Severance Hall. Conductors with whom she has worked closely have included Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon Rattle, Riccardo Muti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vladimir Jurowski, Andris Nelsons, Gustavo Dudamel, and Mariss Jansons.

Since 2016, Mitsuko Uchida has been an Artistic Partner of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom she is currently engaged on a multi-season touring project in Europe, Japan and North America. She also appears regularly in recital in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, New York and Tokyo, and is a frequent guest at the Salzburg Mozartwoche and Salzburg Festival.

Mitsuko Uchida records exclusively for Decca, and her multi-award-winning discography includes the complete Mozart and Schubert Piano Sonatas. She is the recipient of two Grammy Awards – for Mozart Concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra, and for an album of Lieder with Dorothea Röschmann – and her recording of the Schoenberg Piano Concerto with Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra won the Gramophone Award for Best Concerto.

QUATUOR ÉBÈNE

Beethoven

Quartet in G, Op. 18 No. 2

Beethoven

Quartet in F, Op. 135

INTERVAL

Beethoven

Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131

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This concerts inaugurates a series dedicated to the complete Beethoven String Quartets, which will be offered jointly by the Quatuor Ébène and the Belcea Quartet, concluding in 2027 – the 200th Anniversary of Beethoven’s death in 1827.

Founded in Paris in 1999, Quatuor Ébène has established itself as one the most innovative and adventurous of all quartets performing in the major concert halls of the world. With their charismatic playing, their fresh approach to tradition and their open-mindedness with new forms, the musicians have won a string of major prizes and regularly receive five-star reviews for their concerts.

Quatuor Ébène's albums, with recordings of Bartók, Beethoven, Debussy, Haydn, Fauré and Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, have received numerous awards, including Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, and the Midem Classic Award. In 2015 and 2016 the musicians dedicated themselves to the theme ‘Lied’. They participated in the album Green (Mélodies françaises) by Philippe Jaroussky and released a Schubert album with Matthias Goerne (arrangements for String Quartet, baritone, and double bass, by Raphaël Merlin) and the Schubert String Quintet with Gautier Capuçon. Together with the violist Antoine Tamestit, Quatuor Ébène recorded the Mozart String Quintets K. 515 and K. 516, which were released in the spring of 2023. The album has received accolades such as Choc Classica, Diapason d'Or, and Gramophone Award.

EMANUEL AX, piano

The programme will include the following works (and please note the change in the programme announced earlier):

Schumann

Papillons, Op. 2

Schubert

Four Impromptus, D. 935

INTERVAL

Chopin

Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat, Op. 61

Chopin

Barcarolle in F-sharp, Op. 60

Chopin

Nocturnes, Op. 27

Chopin

Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31

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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, s 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.