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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 5, 2017 Contact: Katherine E. Johnson (212) 875-5700; [email protected] The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence LEONIDAS KAVAKOS To Perform RECITAL with Pianist YUJA WANG Presented by the New York Philharmonic in Association with Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Works by JANÁČEK, SCHUBERT, DEBUSSY, and BARTÓK February 8, 2017, at David Geffen Hall Leonidas Kavakos, the New York Philharmonic’s 2016–17 Mary and James G. Wallach Artist- in-Residence, will perform a recital with pianist Yuja Wang as part of his residency. The program will include Janáček’s Sonata for Violin and Piano; Schubert’s Fantasy in C major, D.934; Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano; and Bartók’s Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, BB 84. The recital, Wednesday, February 8, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. at David Geffen Hall, is presented by the New York Philharmonic in association with Lincoln Center’s Great Performers. The recital partially recreates a 1940 recital on which Bartók performed piano alongside violinist Joseph Szigeti in sonatas by Bartók and Debussy. “We built the program around Bartók’s Sonata No. 1, a piece that I love,” Leonidas Kavakos said. “There’s a famous recital by Bartók and Szigeti in which they played Bartók’s Second Sonata and the Debussy Sonata. The music goes so well together; these two composers’ way of writing is closer than one would think. The atmosphere is much more dramatic in the Janáček than the Schubert, but it is also very close to it in the way that the music projects this very specific melancholy. Yuja has one of the most beautiful sounds around; she’s an extremely sensitive player.” Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang will perform the same program in Paris; Ludwigshafen, Germany; Dusseldorf; Madrid; Stockholm; Munich; North Bethesda, Maryland; Seattle; La Jolla; and Santa Barbara. Mr. Kavakos and Ms. Wang previously performed together at the Verbier Festival in August 2013 and at Carnegie Hall in 2014. They released an album of Brahms’s Violin Sonatas in March 2014 on the Decca label. (more) Artist-in-Residence Leonidas Kavakos in Recital / 2 Leonidas Kavakos launched his New York Philharmonic residency in October 2016 with his Philharmonic conducting debut, leading and performing J.S. Bach’s Violin Concerto in D minor (reconstructed), BWV 1052 — which he also led and performed on a Young People’s Concert that week — and conducting Busoni’s Berceuse élégiaque and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. In March 2017 he will return for the World Premiere–Philharmonic Commission of Lera Auerbach’s Violin Concerto No. 4, and in May 2017 he will perform Brahms’s Violin Concerto, both led by Music Director Alan Gilbert. He will also be featured in “An Evening with Leonidas Kavakos,” the free Insights at the Atrium event, alongside Lera Auerbach on February 28, 2017. Artists The New York Philharmonic has named violinist and conductor Leonidas Kavakos The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence for the 2016–17 season. His residency features three solo appearances in repertoire ranging from the Baroque to the contemporary, his Philharmonic conducting debut, a recital with pianist Yuja Wang (presented in association with Lincoln Center’s Great Performers), and a Young People’s Concert. Also in the season he appears with The Philadelphia Orchestra; plays and conducts the Houston Symphony; embarks on a recital tour with Ms. Wang in both Europe and the U.S.; and undertakes a European tour with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and a tour to Switzerland with the Mariinsky Orchestra. Mr. Kavakos had already won three major competitions by age 21: the Sibelius (1985), the Paganini (1988), and the Naumburg (1988). This success led to his making the first recording in history of the original Sibelius Violin Concerto (1903–04), which won the 1991 Gramophone Concerto of the Year Award. He has since appeared regularly as soloist with the Vienna, Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles philharmonic orchestras; London, Boston, and Chicago symphony orchestras; and the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Philadelphia Orchestras. As a conductor Mr. Kavakos has worked with the Atlanta, Boston, London, and Vienna symphony orchestras; Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; Maggio Musicale Fiorentino; Chamber Orchestra of Europe; Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; and Budapest Festival Orchestra. This season he makes conducting debuts with the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. An exclusive Decca Classics recording artist, Mr. Kavakos’s first release on the label, of the complete Beethoven violin sonatas with pianist Enrico Pace (2013), earned him an ECHO Klassik Instrumentalist of the Year award. Later recordings include Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly; Brahms’s violin sonatas with Yuja Wang; and, his most recent recording, Virtuoso (released in April 2016). His earlier discography includes recordings for BIS, ECM, and Sony Classical. Mr. Kavakos was named Gramophone Artist of the Year 2014. Leonidas Kavakos plays the “Abergavenny” Stradivarius violin of 1724. He made his New York Philharmonic debut playing Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy as part of a July 2002 Concerts in the Parks performance, led by Bramwell Tovey; most recently, in October 2016, he made his Philharmonic conducting debut leading and performing J.S. Bach’s Violin Concerto in D minor (reconstructed), BWV 1052, and conducting Busoni’s Berceuse élégiaque and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. (more) Artist-in-Residence Leonidas Kavakos in Recital / 3 Pianist Yuja Wang is ready to register fresh achievements during 2016–17 when she returns to China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts as artist-in-residence, connecting her with new audiences in Beijing and beyond. There, in addition to performing six concerts, Ms. Wang will lead master classes and participate in outreach projects. Ms. Wang’s forthcoming schedule embraces a broad range of repertoire, from Chopin and Shostakovich to Ravel and Schubert. Bartók’s three piano concertos stand as focal points throughout her 2016–17 season, programmed individually for performances in Cleveland, Dallas, Guangzhou, Stockholm, Taiwan, and Toronto, and as a group for concerts in May and June with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by Gustavo Dudamel. Other highlights include appearances at the 2016 Salzburg, Tanglewood, and Verbier festivals, a return to the Hollywood Bowl, season-opening performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick-Nézet-Séguin, and major tours of Asia and Europe with the San Francisco Symphony and the Orchestra della Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, respectively. She is also set to tour with percussionist Martin Grubinger and violinist Leonidas Kavakos, and will undertake a 13-concert European recital tour next March and April. Yuja Wang was born into a musical family in Beijing. After childhood piano studies in China, she received advanced training in Canada and at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music under Gary Graffman. Her international breakthrough came in 2007 when she replaced Martha Argerich as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Two years later she signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon and has since established her place among the world’s leading artists with a succession of critically acclaimed performances and recordings. Yuja Wang has been named Musical America’s 2017 Artist of the Year. She made her Philharmonic debut performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, led by Bramwell Tovey, in July 2006 at Bravo! Vail in Colorado. She most recently joined the Orchestra and The Marie- Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence Esa-Pekka Salonen as part of Messiaen’s Turangalîla- symphonie in March 2016. Repertoire Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) wrote his Sonata for Violin and Piano in the summer of 1914, at a point in his career in which he found himself interested in exploring chamber music. The sonata reflects the way he was processing the tumultuous world around him, which was reeling from the start of World War I. Janáček recalled: “In the 1914 Sonata for violin and piano I could just about hear the sound of the steel clashing in my troubled head.” Indeed, the piece includes folk-inspired themes — a hallmark of Janáček’s style — that tangle with bursts of more violent-sounding material, perhaps directly reflecting violence going on in his country at the time. The sonata was not printed until 1922, and received its premiere that same year by violinist František Kudláček and pianist Jaroslav Kvapil during a concert of new Moravian music in Brno. In December 1827, not long after putting the finishing touches on his masterpiece for voice and piano Winterreise, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) composed his Fantasy in C major, D.934, for violin and piano. The duo is a long and elaborate work that was likely composed to showcase the virtuosity of violinist Josef Slavik, who premiered it with pianist Karl Maria Bocklet in January 1828. Its sections alternate between contrasting moods, and at its core lies an extended theme and variations on Schubert’s popular 1821 song “Sei mir gegrüsst” (“I greet you”), based on a (more) Artist-in-Residence Leonidas Kavakos in Recital / 4 Friedrich Rückert poem, a blissful confession of love. The Fantasy’s initial reception was lukewarm, possibly because of its length; as one critic at the premiere wrote, “The Fantasy occupied rather too much of the time a Viennese is prepared to devote to pleasures of the mind.” But the work ultimately found success. Late in his career, beginning in 1915, Claude Debussy (1862–1918) embarked on a cycle of six sonatas for different instruments. He lived to complete only three of them, one of which was the Sonata for Violin and Piano, his last completed major work. It was composed when he was facing his losing battle with cancer, as well as in the midst of World War I, which was increasingly distressing the composer and had plunged him into a deep depression.