Past Concerts 2011 to the present (click the year, below right, to navigate back from the most recent)

CHRISTIAN GERHAHER, baritone • GEROLD HUBER, piano

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.

VÍKINGUR ÓLAFSSON, piano

Víkingur Ólafssen has requested a further change in the programme for this concert. The new programme will last approximately 90 minutes and will be performed without an interval.

Bach

Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

Hailed by The Economist in 2020 as the pianistic superstar who 'is revitalising Classical music', Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has made a profound impact with his remarkable combination of musicianship at the highest level and visionary programmes. His recordings for Deutsche Grammophon – Philip Glass Piano Works (2017), Johann Sebastian Bach (2018), Debussy Rameau (2020), Mozart & Contemporaries (2021) From Afar (2022), and J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (2023) – captured the public and critical imagination and have led to streams of over 600 million.

Ólafsson dedicated his entire 2023-24 season to a Goldberg Variations world tour, performing the work across six continents throughout the year, and bringing Bach’s masterpiece to major concert halls including London’s Southbank Centre, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Wiener Konzerthaus, Philharmonie de Paris, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Harpa Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Hall, Sala São Paulo, Shanghai Symphony Hall, Tonhalle Zurich, Philharmonie Berlin, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and the Alte Oper Frankfurt, to name but a few.

Now one of the most sought-after artists of today, Ólafsson’s multiple awards include CoScan’s International Nordic Person of the Year (2023), the Rolf Schock Prize for Music (2022), Gramophone magazine’s Artist of the Year (2019), Opus Klassik Solo Recording Instrumental (twice), Album of the Year at the BBC Music Magazine Awards (2019), and most recently, Ólafsson was presented with the Opus Klassik Instrumentalist of the Year award at the annual ceremony in Berlin. A captivating communicator both on and off stage, Ólafsson’s significant talent extends to broadcast, having presented several of his own series for television and radio. He was Artist in Residence for three months on BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts programme, Front Row, and broadcast live during lockdown from an empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavík, reaching millions of listeners around the world.

QUATUOR VAN KUIJK

Nicolas Van Kuijk, violin

Sylvain Favre-Bulle, violin

Emmanuel François, viola

Anthony Kondo, cello

Haydn

Quartet in G minor, Op. 74 No. 3, 'The Rider'

Mendelssohn

Quartet in F minor, Op. 80

INTERVAL

Beethoven

Quartet in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2, ‘Rasumovsky’

The Quatuor Van Kuijk burst upon the international scene a decade ago when they made a clean sweep of the top prizes at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, winning the First Prize as well as the prizes for the best Beethoven and Haydn interpretations. Similar success followed at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition, where they won the Audience Prize as well as the First Prize. They went on to become laureates of the Aix-en-Provence Festival Academy, BBC New Generation Artists of 2015-2017, and ECHO Rising Stars for the 2017/18 season, one of the most prestigious of the German chamber-music awards.

Since then, the Quatuor Van Kuijk has become an established presence at major international venues including the Philharmonie de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and Salle Gaveau, Paris; the Tonhalle, Zurich; Wiener Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Vienna; Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; the Philharmonie in Berlin; and Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, among many others. Upcoming tours will see the quartet make highly anticipated debuts at the Carnegie Hall in New York City, Sydney Opera House, and Shanghai Symphony Hall.

The Quatuor Van Kuijk records exclusively for Alpha Classics. Their debut recording of Mozart was released to outstanding critical acclaim, winning the Choc de Classica, Diapason d’or découverte awards of the two leading French Classical music reviews. Following celebrated discs of Debussy, Ravel, and Schubert, they return their exploration of Mozart with two further releases this season. The first features the Quartets K. 421 and K. 387, and the second presents the Quintets K. 515 and K. 516 with violist Adrien La Marca. The Van Kuijk Quartet is supported by Pirastro and Spedidam, and is grateful to Anima Music Foundation and Mécénat Musical Société Générale for their sponsorships.

MITSUKO UCHIDA, piano

Beethoven

Sonata in E minor, Op. 90

Schoenberg

Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11

INTERVAL

Kurtág

Márta ligatúrája [Martha's ligature] (2020)

Schubert

Sonata in B-flat, D. 960

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 is a former Visiting Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and her February 2023 recital is her seventh for Camerata Musica Cambridge.

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 five-year touring project in Europe 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.

NAREK HAKHNAZARYAN, cello • GEORGY TCHAIDZE, piano

Chopin

Introduction et Polonaise brillante, Op. 3

Beethoven

Sonata in A, Op. 69

INTERVAL

Rachmaninov

Sonata in G minor, Op. 19

Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as ‘nothing short of magnificent’ and by the Los Angeles Times as a cellist ‘whose command of the instrument is extraordinary’, Armenian-born Narek Hakhnazaryan is one of the most exceptional musical talents to have emerged in recent decades. Since shooting to international fame on winning the Cello First Prize and Gold Medal at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011, he has established himself as a true virtuoso with an innate musicality and an exceptional talent for connecting with his audience.

Mentored earlier by the legendary Mstislav Rostropovich, Hakhnazaryan has enjoyed a truly global career since his triumph in the Tchaikovsky Competition and has played with orchestras such as the Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio, Berlin Konzerthaus, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Finnish Radio, Helsinki Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and worked with conductors of the stature of Marin Alsop, Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Jurowski, Tom Koopman, Tugan Sokhiev, Manfred Honeck, and Gianandrea Noseda among others. He made a sensational debut at the BBC Proms in 2016 and the following year was invited by the Vienna Konzerthaus to be a ‘Great Talent’ in residence. Since then, he performed there regularly in recital, chamber music and with orchestra, most notably with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Jakub Hrůša (the Music Director-elect of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden).

Recent recital tours have included concerts in New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s and Jordan Hall, as well as regular appearances at the Vienna Konzerthaus. He has recently released two albums of chamber music for Deutsche Grammophon. Narek Hakhnazaryan is a Larsen Strings Artist. He can be heard in the YouTube film, below, in Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations, with the Orchestre National du Capitole du Toulouse, conducted by Tugan Sokhiev.

‘Fine sensibility and perfectly honed technique’ wrote the Telegraph’s critic of Georgy Tchaidze’s London debut. Since winning the First Prize in 2009 at the triennial Honens International Piano Competition, one of North America’s most prestigious competitions, Tchaidze has performed throughout Europe, North America, and Asia to great acclaim, including debuts at Berlin’s Konzerthaus, the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and at Carnegie Hall in New York. In 2015, Georgy Tchaidze was awarded First Prize at the Top of the World International Piano Competition in Tromsø, Norway, and received further international notice when he was asked to stand in for the indisposed Sir Andras Schiff. Since 2016, he has been Artist in Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, a centre for outstanding young musicians based in Waterloo, Belgium, under the direction of Louis Lortie.

As a chamber musician, Tchaidze has performed with the Brentano, Cecilia, and Borodin Quartets and with fellow pianists Piotr Anderszewski, Stephen Kovacevich, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Marc-André Hamelin, Nikolai Lugansky, among others.

Born in 1988 in St Petersburg, Georgy Tchaidze was educated at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory and at the Berlin University of the Arts. He records for the Honens label.