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Acclaimed pianist Angela Hewitt joins the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra for Beethoven’s heroic ‘Emperor Concerto’

Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra with Angela Hewitt Sunday 28 Oct 2018, 7.30pm Usher Hall, Lothian Road, Edinburgh

Bernstein: Three Dance Episodes from On the Town Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 Sibelius: Symphony No. 5

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Sibelius’s visionary Fifth Symphony, plus the musical heroism of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto

Following the opening concert from the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, the second concert in the Sunday Classics 2018-19 season sees the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra bring an evening of wonderfully varied music to the Usher Hall.

Japanese conductor Yutaka Sado and his Orchestra open with musical heroes not often referenced in the Usher Hall: the three wide-eyed sailors on shore leave in

Bernstein’s foot-tapping musical On the Town. His feel-good Three Dance Episodes blend jazz, big band and classical to electrifying effect – and feature Bernstein’s hit tune ‘New York, New York’.

The remarkable Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt joins Orchestra and conductor for one of the most heroic piano concertos of them all. Beethoven’s noble Emperor Concerto was the composer’s last for the piano, and is cast on a grand scale, but its brilliant, breathtaking virtuosity melds effortlessly with tenderness and exquisite beauty.

The piece is an ideal match for Hewitt’s fresh, elegant, powerful playing. Born into a musical family, Hewitt started her piano education at the age of three and has gone on to win awards and fans across the world. In 2018 she was awarded Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award – the highest honour for an artist in Canada, an achievement that sits comfortably next to her 2006 OBE from Queen Elizabeth II.

‘Today I saw 16 swans. Lord God, what beauty!’ That’s how Sibelius himself described the inspiration for his visionary Fifth Symphony, a majestic hymn of praise to the natural wonders of his Finnish homeland. Teeming with life, surging with optimism, it propels the listener along to the unmatched orchestral grandeur of its ecstatic finale.

Sibelius’s Fifth forms the towering climax to a heroic programme from the superb Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra, one of Austria’s most pioneering ensembles, who are making an eagerly awaited return under Chief Conductor Yutaka Sado following adored recent concerts at the Usher Hall.

/ENDS

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Listings information: Sunday 28 Oct 2018, 7.30pm Usher Hall, Lothian Road, Edinburgh

Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra Yutaka Sado Conductor Angela Hewitt Piano

Bernstein: Three Dance Episodes from On the Town Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 Sibelius: Symphony No. 5

Tickets available at www.usherhall.co.uk

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Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra

With its residencies at the Musikverein Wien, Festspielhaus St. Pölten and in Grafenegg, the Tonkunstler Orchestra is one of Austria’s biggest and most important musical ambassadors. The focus of the orchestra’s artistic work is the traditional orchestral repertoire, ranging from the Classical to the Romantic periods through to the 20th century. Yutaka Sado, one of the most important Japanese conductors of our time, has been the orchestra’s Music Director since the 2015-16 season.

The Tonkunstler’s unique approach to programming is appreciated by musicians, audiences and press alike. The inclusion of genres such as jazz and world music as part of the Plugged- In series, which has entered its eleventh year, keeps the orchestra in touch with the pulse of modern life. Performances of works by contemporary composers make the Tonkunstler a key player on the current music scene. Each year, a composer in residence collaborates with the orchestra for the Grafenegg Festival. So far, these have included Brett Dean, HK Gruber, Krzysztof Penderecki, Jörg Widmann, Matthias Pintscher, Christian Jost and Brad Lubman. Composers including Arvo Pärt, Kurt Schwertsik, Friedrich Cerha and Bernd Richard Deutsch have written commissioned works for the orchestra.

The Tonkunstler are the only Austrian symphony orchestra to boast three residencies. Their traditional Sunday Afternoon concerts at the Wiener Musikverein go back nearly 70 years andre main their most successful concert cycle to date. The Festspielhaus St. Pölten was officially opened by the Tonkunstler Orchestra on 1 March 1997. Since then, as resident orchestra, its opera, dance and educational projects, as well as an extensive range of concerts, have formed an integral part of the overall cultural repertoire in the Lower Austrian state capital.

In Grafenegg, the Tonkunstler have two acoustically outstanding venues at their disposal in their capacity as festival orchestra: the Auditorium and the Wolkenturm. The latter was officially opened by the orchestra. Each year, the Midsummer Night’s Gala – broadcast on radio and TV in Austria as well as in several other European countries – opens the summer season in Grafenegg.

The political and social events and upheavals of the 20th century have left their mark on the orchestra’s history. The first concert by the Wiener Tonkünstler-Orchester took place in the Wiener Musikverein in October 1907, with 83 musicians performing. The impressive trio of conductors that night were Oskar Nedbal, a student of Dvor ák, Bernhard Stavenhagen, a student of Franz Liszt, and Hans Pfitzner. The Tonkunstler gave the first performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder under the direction of Franz Schreker in 1913. Wilhelm Furtwängler was Principal Conductor from 1919 to 1923. In the years that followed, the orchestra worked with such renowned conductors as Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Felix Weingartner, Hans Knappertsbusch and Hermann Abendroth.

Angela Hewitt

One of the world’s leading pianists, Angela Hewitt appears in recital and with major orchestras throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia. Her interpretations of Bach have established her as one of the composer’s foremost interpreters of our time.

Angela’s award-winning cycle for Hyperion Records of all the major keyboard works of Bach has been described as “one of the record glories of our age” (The Sunday Times). Her second recording of the Goldberg Variations appeared in 2016 and was immediately a best seller, as was her 2014 recording of The Art of Fugue. Her discography also includes albums of Couperin, Rameau, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Fauré, Debussy, Chabrier, Ravel and Granados. Her second disc of Scarlatti Sonatas and her seventh volume of Beethoven Sonatas (including “The Tempest”) were released in October 2017 and June 2018 respectively, both hitting the Billboard charts in the USA. In 2015 Angela was inducted into Gramophone Magazine’s “Hall of Fame” thanks to her popularity with music lovers around the world.

In September 2016, Angela began her ‘Bach Odyssey’, performing the complete keyboard works of Bach in a series of twelve recitals, finishing in June 2020. In 2018 she performs the complete Well-Tempered Clavier in London, , Ottawa, New York, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Vancouver/Victoria, and Stratford (Ontario). Other recitals will take her to Lisbon, Prague, Rotterdam, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Girona, Minneapolis, Ferrara, Bari, Perugia, Portland (Oregon), Cleveland, Bern and Newcastle.

Other highlights include her recent BBC Proms appearance with Messiaen’s Turangalîla (BBC Symphony Orchestra/Oramo), a UK tour with the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich (Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto), her debut in Vienna’s Musikverein conducting Bach Concertos with the same Orchestra, the Cartagena Festival in Colombia, a residency at Harvard University, and performances in Chicago (‘Music of the Baroque’ with Jane Glover) and with the Xi’an Symphony in China.

Born into a musical family, Angela began her piano studies aged three, performing in public at four and a year later winning her first scholarship. She studied with Jean-Paul Sévilla at the University of Ottawa and won the 1985 Toronto International Bach Piano Competition which launched her career. In 2018 Angela received the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award – the highest honour for an artist in Canada. In 2015 she was promoted to a Companion of the Order of Canada, and in 2006 was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, has seven honorary doctorates, and is a Visiting Fellow of Peterhouse College in Cambridge. She lives in London but also has homes in Ottawa and Umbria, Italy where she is Artistic Director of the Trasimeno Music Festival.

Yutaka Sado

Born in , Music Director of the Tonkunstler Orchestra since the start of the 2015-16 season, Yutaka Sado is considered one of the most important Japanese conductors of our time. To mark the opening of the 10th Grafenegg Festival in August 2016, his contract with the Tonkunstler was extended until summer 2022.

After many years assisting and , Yutaka Sado started winning important conducting prizes such as the Grand Prix of the 39th Concours international des jeunes chefs d’orchestre in 1989 in Besançon, , and the Grand Prix of the Leonard Bernstein Jerusalem International Music Competition in 1995. His close ties with his mentor led to his appointment as Conductor in Residence at the in , which was founded by Bernstein. In December 1990, at the Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, Yutaka Sado conducted alongside other Bernstein protégés.

Since 2005, Yutaka Sado has been Artistic Director of the Hyogo Performing Arts Center (PAC) and of the PAC Orchestra. This concert house and theatre has become one of ’s leading artistic venues with some 60,000 subscribers annually. Yutaka Sado’s fame in Japan is enormous, thanks in no small part to a weekly TV programme that he presented from 2008 to 2015 in which he brought the world of classical music closer to Japanese music enthusiasts. For almost 20 years he has been directing the annual performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, featuring 10,000 choral singers, that is held in a stadium in Osaka. The event, whose name loosely translated is 10,000 Times Joy, is held under the aegis of the Mainichi Broadcasting System (MBS), a major Japanese radio and TV network, and is hugely popular in Japan. Yutaka Sado leads regular tours with his Super Kids Orchestra, founded in 2003 in Hyogo to support the most talented primary- and middle-school pupils from all over Japan as part of an exemplary music education programme. Since 2003 he has also been principal conductor of the Siena Wind Orchestra, one of the world’s few professional wind orchestras, founded in 1990 and highly popular in Japan. Yutaka Sado will also tour Japan with the Siena Wind Orchestra in December 2017.

Yutaka Sado’s career outside Japan started in France, where he was principal conductor of the Orchestre Lamoureux in Paris between 1993 and 2010. For years, the charismatic orchestral leader has also been one of the favourite guest directors of the Orchestre de Paris. In Turin in 2010 he made his Italian operatic debut with Benjamin Britten’s «Peter Grimes» in a production by Willy Decker. He has been returning regularly to the Teatro Regio ever since. In 2015 he took on artistic direction of the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which was produced by Italian director Elena Barbalich as a sensuous rococo spectacle.

In the 2017-18 season, in addition to his extensive concert obligations with the Tonkunstler Orchestra and the PAC Orchestra in Hyogo, Yutaka Sado has accepted invitations to return to the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (as part of its 70th anniversary season) and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. He will also return to the Konzerthausorchester Berlin and the Orchestre National de France. In summer 2017 he directed a new production of «The Marriage of Figaro» in Hyogo, where he will also conduct

Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz in 2018. In September 2017 he performed Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony with the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra in Japan. In October 2017 he gave eight concerts in his home country with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne.

Yutaka Sado will debut with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington in January 2018. Over his career so far, Yutaka Sado has stood in front of many outstanding European orchestras. He has guested with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Deutsches Symphonie- Orchester, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in Munich and the symphony orchestras of the BR, NDR, SWR and WDR broadcasters in . Yutaka Sado has conducted the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Dresden, Hamburg and Bamberg Philharmonic Orchestras, the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne and the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich. He has also stood in front of the Orchestre de la Suisse-Romande, the London Symphony and the London Philharmonic Orchestras, the BBC Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. In Italy he has conducted the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia Rom, the RAI Torino, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi and the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

Yutaka Sado’s many-facetted musical achievements have been documented in numerous CD recordings. For the label Avex he recorded the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO) with the Japanese pianist in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. In 2014 Yutaka Sado and the DSO recorded Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth and Franz Schubert’s Seventh Symphonies. In the same year his recording with the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra of the «Trilogia Romana» by Ottorino Respighi was released. With the Siena Wind Orchestra he has recorded pieces including the first wind-orchestraversion of the «Symphonic Dances» from «West Side Story» for Avex as well as the overture to

Candide and other works by Leonard Bernstein. With the Orchestre Lamoureux he has recorded works by for Naxos and works by , Eric Satie and for Erato/Warner Classics.

He has also recorded three CDs with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, includingthe Chichester Psalms and the Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, by Leonard Bernstein. The Tonkunstler Orchestra’s own label, established in 2016, releases up to four CDs conducted by Yutaka Sado per year as in-house studio productions and live recordings from the Wiener Musikverein.

USHER HALL

The Usher Hall is Scotland's only five-star concert hall hosting a range of concerts from rock, pop, classical, jazz, world and folk music. The venue has hosted concerts and events since it opened way back in 1914! A beautiful Edwardian building with a modern twist, which is well loved by performers and audiences all over the world due to its magnificent acoustics.

It is said that Andrew Usher sparked the idea of a ‘concert hall for Edinburgh’ whilst chatting away over the counter of his jewellers in Rose Street. His ‘desire and intention’ was that this Hall ‘should become and remain a centre and attraction to musical artistes and performers and to the citizens of Edinburgh and others who may desire to hear good music...’

On 23 June 1896 it was formally announced that Andrew Usher had gifted £100,000 to The City of Edinburgh. The purpose of the money was to provide a City Hall, to be used for concerts, recitals, or other entertainments or performances of a musical nature, and for civic functions, or such other performances as the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Council saw fit. Above all it was to be about the music. Edinburgh was very much lacking a hall for such musical and civic purposes, as stated in the Scotsman the following day; ‘The necessity for a great hall in Edinburgh under city management has been pressed upon the attention of the public for many years.’ Sadly Andrew Usher died before his dream was realised.

Today

Today, the much praised acoustics make it one of the best concert halls in Europe with many of the world's finest musicians performing here. The Usher Hall is the city's key venue for visiting national and international orchestras and has been the main venue for the Edinburgh International Festival since 1947, hosting legendary artists such as composers Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich, contralto singer Kathleen Ferrier and cellist Jacqueline Du Pre to name but a few.

The venue is a centre of excellence embracing the widest range of music and events, including rock, pop, jazz, world and blues. It is Edinburgh’s go-to venue for today’s mid-large scale rock and pop acts, with the likes of Queens of the Stone Age, The National, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, George Ezra and Echo & the Bunnymen having performed on its stage. Usher Hall also hosts a broad spectrum of comedy, talks, school concerts, conferences, sponsorship events, ceremonies, lectures and recording sessions.