The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra has been a welcome visitor at Symphony Center five times since 1996. On Sunday, the orchestra, celebrated as Israel’s foremost cultural ambassador, will bring a program to Chicago that includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica,” Ravel’s La Valse and a work by contemporary Israeli composer Josef Bardanashvili. Zubin Mehta, the orchestra’s music director for life, will lead the program at Symphony Center on November 15 at 7:00 p.m.
Zubin Mehta, the Indian Maestro who was chosen as the conductor for the illustrious Vienna New Year’s Concert, hopes that this year's concert music will bring harmony into the world.
American violinist David Radzynski, 28, has been announced as the new concertmaster of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Radzynski is from Columbus, Ohio, and was selected following an audition that ended Dec. 19 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Radzynski will assume his position in March 2015. Thirty violinists were invited to compete for the position through a pre-screening process by the orchestra. He was one of the four finalists and earned the appointment after performing Johannes Brahms’s “Violin Concerto” alongside the Israel Philharmonic and maestro Zubin Mehta. After only five minutes of deliberation, the jury voted him the unanimous winner. “I am still trying to digest all that is happening. It is such an incredible honor,” said Radzynski, a graduate student who was pursuing an artist diploma in violin performance at Park University’s International Center for Music.
Israeli violinist Itamar Zorman, winner of the 2011 Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition, has been furthering his stellar young career with new recordings, prestigious bookings, and recognition, having received a 2014 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and a 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant. As he prepares for his "Distinctive Debut" concert at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall on November 5, he took some time to speak with us about his background and career.
The Vienna Philharmonic recently announced that Zubin Mehta will conduct the next New Year's Concert in 2015.
Suffice it to say that Q4 of 2013 hasn't been too kind to, quote, "one of the greatest global living Indians." For starters, Zubin Mehta made a mess of things with Bavaria in Kashmir. (Why there wasn't more of an outcry from the Bayerisches Staatsorchester back in Munich, at least feigning diplomatic disgust, is beyond me.) And now, there's another Teuton, Maestro Franz Welser-Möst, caught in the middle of Mehta's latest in Salzburg.
Sony Classical will issue a recording of the 2014 New Year's Day concert from the Vienna Philharmonic--conducted this year by Daniel Barenboim. Gramophone reports that Sony plans the release for January 13, 2014.
Expecting a Classicalite's Five Best? It's Chanukah! And even though there's a shocking paucity of decent music for this particular Jewish festival, 8 is indeed the number...
The JSO has worked out a fascinating way to present a Richard Wagner symposium without actually playing any of his music.
Maestra Sonia Marie De León de Vega takes the stage. She's greeted with enthusiastic applause from an audience of families with young children, teenagers and young adults. About 80 percent of the audience members are Latino. The unusual demographics of this concert, presented by the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Los Angeles last season, are the result De León de Vega's tireless effort and advocacy.
This whole mess remind us of a line from another "Kashmir"..."with no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear."
In the hours before the concert, security forces deployed in the city as part of a major operation by the army, paramilitary forces and police to protect the event shot and wounded a motorist who they said failed to obey orders to stop. Meanwhile, in south Kashmir, security forces said they shot four men to thwart an attack on a paramilitary base.
Zubin Mehta's concert with the Bavarian State Orchestra will go ahead in the Indian-occupied area of Kashmir, despite reported threats from guerrilla organizations.
Here, then, is today's news.
Making both his Tanglewood and BSO debut (and putting an end, finally, to all the who-will-take-the-cursed-podium speculation), this Italian protégé of one Zubin Mehta is set to lead this Saturday's performance of Verdi's 'Requiem' at the Koussevitzky Music Shed.