Harris Theater Presents Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica Tonight

Due to the sudden death of guest vocalist Alexei Mochalov's wife, tonight's February 7 program of Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica at the Harris Theater has been changed. Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Concertino, Op. 42 and Benjamin Britten's Young Apollo, Op. 16 replaces the previously scheduled Antiformalist Rayok by Dmitri Shostakovich and Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op. 10. With the addition of Concertino, Op. 42, audience members will have the extraordinary opportunity to hear two works featuring violinist Gidon Kremer. Kremer also leads Kremerata Baltica in Weinberg's Symphony No.10 for strings, Op.98, appearing onstage in three of the evening's four works.

Additionally, Kremerata Baltica welcomes Grammy-nominated pianist Andrius Zlabys, performing Britten's Young Apollo. A frequent performer with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Rotterdam Symphony, and Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires, Zlabys has been described by the Chicago Tribune as "one of the most gifted young keyboard artists to emerge in years." The pianist makes a special guest appearance on Friday in place of Mochalov.

"Our thoughts are with Mr. Mochalov and his family right now," said Harris Theater President and Managing Director Michael Tiknis. "Despite the circumstances, the program remains one of artistic significance, including a rare opportunity for the audience to hear Mr. Kremer perform Weinberg's Concertino, Op. 42 and Shostakovich's Sonata for violin and piano, Op.134, as well as the addition of pianist Andrius Zlabys performing Britten's Young Apollo."

Weinberg composed more than 150 opuses during his lifetime. Composed in 1948, Weinberg's melancholy yet powerful Concertino, Op. 42 for violin and string orchestra draws on some of the virtuoso's signature sounds and structures, during a time when Soviet-era composers were being denounced as formalists. It's one of two pieces that features Kremer as solo violinist.

Young Apollo, considered one of Britten's least known orchestral pieces, is a radiant work for piano, string quartet, and string orchestra, taking inspiration from 19th-century English Romantic poet John Keats's unfinished poem Hyperion. Apollo premiered in Toronto in 1939, now known as one of the few works that Britten dedicated the piano as solo instrument. The evening also includes Weinberg's Symphony No. 10 for strings and Shostavokich's Sonata for violin and piano Op. 134 G major, also featuring Kremer as solo violinist.

The updated program for Friday's performance at the Harris is as follows:

Mieczyslaw Weinberg Concertino, Op. 42

I. Allegretto cantabile

II. Lento, Adagio

III. Allegro moderato poco rubato

Gidon Kremer, violin

Weinberg Symphony No.10 for strings, Op.98

I. Concerto grosso

II. Pastoral

III. Canzone

IV. Burlesque

V. Inversion

Dmitri Shostakovich Sonata for violin and piano, Op.134 G major

I. Andante

II. Allegretto

III. Largo - Andante

Gidon Kremer, violin

Benjamin Britten Young Apollo, Op. 16

Andrius Zlabys, piano

Tickets for the performance are $15 - $30, available at HarrisTheaterChicago.org, or by calling the Box Office at 312.334.7777.

About Kremerata Baltica: In 1997, Austria's legendary Lockenhaus chamber music festival witnessed a small revolution, when the violinist Gidon Kremer presented a new orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, comprised of 23 young players from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The orchestra captivated the audience, injecting new blood into the festival with their exuberance, energy, and joyful playing. Kremerata Baltica-an educational project with a long-term vision-was Kremer's 50th birthday present to himself, a way of passing on his wisdom to young colleagues from the Baltic states while making no compromises on artistic standards as he nurtured and inspired musical life in the region.

In a few years, the talented group of musicians developed into one of the best international chamber orchestras worldwide, cementing its international reputation in major concert venues around the world. Kremerata Baltica has played in more than 50 countries over the last 15 years, performing in 600 cities and given more than 1,000 concerts in the world, including Asia, Australia, the USA, Latin America, Russia and all over Europe. It has released more than 20 CDs and won a Grammy Award in 2002, the ECHO prize in 2002, and the Praemium Imperiale Grant for Young Artists in 2009.

The orchestra is supported by the governments of three baltic states, from where all orchestra musicians originate-Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Among the celebrated soloists with whom Kremerata Baltica has played are soprano Jessye Norman, pianists Mikhail Pletnev, Yevgeny Kissin, Oleg Maisenberg, violinists Thomas Zehetmair and Vadim Repin, and cellists Boris Pergamenshikov, Yo Yo Ma, and Mischa Maisky; conductors include Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Christoph Eschenbach, Kent Nagano, Heinz Holliger, and Vladimir Ashkenazy. Each of these musicians has contributed to shaping the chamber orchestra.

Essential to Kremerata Baltica's artistic personality is its creative approach to programming, which often looks beyond the mainstream and has given rise to numerous world premieres of works by composers such as Pärt, Kancheli, Vasks, Desyatnikov, and Raskatov. The orchestra's wide-ranging and carefully chosen repertoire is also showcased in its numerous and much-praised CD recordings, such as Eight Seasons, pairing Vivaldi's set of concertos with Piazzolla's Argentinian sequence, and Silencio, compositions by contemporary composers Pärt, Glass, and Martynov. After Mozart, a 21st-century take on the composer, won an internationally-coveted Grammy Award, while Mozart's Five Violin Concertos was recorded live at the Salzburg Festival in 2006 on the composer's 250th birthday anniversary. Another Mozart recording features pianist Evgeny Kissin, Mozart concertos No.20 & 27. Latest CDs from the record label Nonesuch are De Profundis and Hymns and Prayers with Gidon Kremer. The upcoming album release, The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould (recently released for Glenn Gould's 80th birthday), comprises 11 pieces and arrangements by contemporary composers, inspired by works, mostly by Bach, that Gould famously recorded during his career. The orchestra is prominently represented on a new ECM CD dedicated to Sofia Gubaidulina, The Canticle of the Sun, and Nonesuch's 7 CD project Gidon Kremer-All Piazzolla recordings, released in October, 2013. Kremerata Baltica has its own festival in Sigula, Latvia; next summer will be its 10th anniversary. This festival is one of the core values of Latvian classical music life today.

About Gidon Kremer - Soloist & Artistic Director: Of all the world's leading violinists, Gidon Kremer perhaps has the most unconventional career. Born in Riga, Latvia, he began studying at the age of four with his father and grandfather, who were both distinguished string players. At the age of seven, he entered Riga Music School. At 16 he was awarded the First Prize of the Latvian Republic and two years later he began his studies with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. He went on to win prestigious awards, including the 1967 Queen Elizabeth Competition and the First Prize in both Paganini and Tchaikovsky International Competitions.

This success launched Gidon Kremer's distinguished career, in the course of which he has established a worldwide reputation as one of the most original and compelling artists of his generation. He has appeared on virtually every major concert stage with the most celebrated orchestras of Europe and America. Also, he has collaborated with today's foremost conductors.

Kremer's repertoire is unusually extensive, encompassing all of the standard classical and romantic violin works, as well as music by 20th and 21st century masters such as Henze, Berg, and Stockhausen. He has also championed the works of living Russian and Eastern European composers and performed many important new compositions, several of them dedicated to him. He has become associated with such diverse composers as Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Luigi Nono, Aribert Reimann, Peteris Vasks, John Adams, Victor Kissine, Michael Nyman, Philipp Glass, Leonid Desyatnikov, and Astor Piazzolla, bringing their music to audiences in a way that respects tradition yet remains contemporary. It would be fair to say that no other soloist of his international stature has done as much for contemporary composers in the past 30 years.

An exceptionally prolific recording artist, Kremer has made more than 120 albums, many of which brought him prestigious international awards and prizes in recognition of his exceptional interpretative powers. These include the Grand prix du Disque, Deutscher Schallplattenpreis, the Ernst-von-Siemens Musikpreis, the Bundesverdienstkreuz, the Premio dell' Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the Triumph Prize (Moscow) in 2000 and 2001, the Unesco Prize in 2007, the Saeculum-Glashütte Original-Musikfestspielpreis (Dresden), the Rolf-Schock Prize (Stockholm) in 2008, and the Lifetime Achievement prize of the Istanbul Music festival in 2010. In 2011, he was awarded Una Vita Nella Musica-Artur Rubinstein Prize (Venice), which is considered by many to be the Nobel Prize of music.

In February 2002, Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica were awarded a Grammy for the Nonesuch recording After Mozart in the category Best Small Ensemble Performance. The same recording received an ECHO prize in Germany in the fall of 2012.

The EMI Classics CD The Berlin Recital with Martha Argerich and works by Schumann and Bartók has recently been released, as well as an album with all violin concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a live recording with the label Nonesuch, recorded with Kremerata Baltica at the Salzburg Festival in 2006. His latest CD De Profundis was published in September 2010 with Nonesuch. Gidon Kremer actively collaborates with the ECM label, which released his last recording of all J.S. Bach Sonatas and Partitas. Recent releases include a Piano trio album with Khatia Buniatishvili and Giedre Dirvanauskaite, and a CD set of Lockenhaus Live recordings celebrating 30 years of the festival, which Gidon Kremer relinquished in 2011.

In 1997, he founded the Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra to foster outstanding young musicians from the three Baltic States. Since then, Mr. Kremer has been touring extensively with the orchestra, appearing at the world's most prestigious festivals and concert halls. He has also recorded almost 25 CDs with the orchestra for Teldec, Nonesuch, DGG, and ECM. (From 2002-2006 Gidon Kremer was the artistic leader of the new festival Les Muséiques in Basel, Switzerland).

Gidon Kremer plays a Nicola Amati, dated from 1641. He is also the author of four books, published in German and translated into many languages, which reflect his artistic pursuits.

About Andrius Zlabys: Grammy-nominated pianist Andrius Zlabys has received international acclaim for his appearances with many of the world's leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Rotterdam Symphony, and Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires.

He is a featured soloist in "Between two Waves" by Victor Kissine for piano and string orchestra released on ECM in 2013 in collaboration with Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica.

Highlights of the 2013 season include a performance in Valery Gergiev's festival in Rotterdam.

In 2012 Zlabys made his concerto debut at the Salzburg Festival performing Mozart's Concerto K467 with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra conducted by Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla.

Zlabys-born in Lithuania and trained at the Curtis Institute of Music-was 18-years-old when the Chicago Tribune wrote: "Pianist-composer Andrius Zlabys is one of the most gifted young keyboard artists to emerge in years." Zlabys was also heralded by the New York Sun in a review titled "A Shining Hope of Pianists" after his recital at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Zlabys' artistry has received many other accolades from the press for his performances of "easy virtuosity" (The Strad), "generous and all-encompassing sound" (The Philadelphia Inquirer), "spell-binding interpretation" (The Plain Dealer), and his "wealth of musical perception" (Greenville News). This international acclaim has followed his uniquely honest approach to music, as described by the Philadelphia Inquirer: "The beloved C-major chord... rippled off Zlabys' hands with such open-hearted rightness that you couldn't escape the notion that the pianist was acting as Bach's ventriloquist..."

Zlabys' concerts have included appearances on many of the world's leading stages, such as Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall, Teatro Colón, Wigmore Hall, Vienna's Musikverein and Suntory Hall. He has also appeared at numerous festivals both in the U.S. and abroad, including the Menuhin, Salzburg, Lockenhaus and Caramoor music festivals, and made his Carnegie Hall debut at the Isaac Stern Auditorium with the New York Youth Symphony conducted by Misha Santora in 2001 in a performance of Beethoven's First Piano Concerto. He was also invited the following season as soloist with Kremerata Baltica to perform Benjamin Britten's Young Apollo at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall.

Zlabys has enjoyed collaborations with several esteemed musicians, including violist Yuri Bashmet, violinist Hilary Hahn, and an enduring collaboration with violinist Gidon Kremer with whom Zlabys has toured extensively in Europe, Japan, South America, and the U.S. In 2003, Zlabys received a Grammy nomination for his recording of Enescu's Piano Quintet with Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica. A multifaceted musician of wide-ranging repertoire, Zlabys holds a special reverence for J.S. Bach, while remaining a strong advocate for the contemporary stage with numerous works commissioned by and written for him.

Zlabys began piano studies at the age of six in his native Lithuania with Laima Jakniuniene at the Ciurlionis Art School, and continued his studies in the U.S. with Seymour Lipkin (Curtis Institute of Music), Sergei Babayan (Cleveland Institute of Music), and Claude Frank (Yale School of Music).

••• All programs, prices and dates are subject to change. •••

Harris Theater for Music and Dance: The Harris Theater's mission is to partner and collaborate with an array of Chicago's emerging and mid-sized performing arts organizations to help them build the resources and infrastructure necessary to achieve artistic growth and long-term organizational sustainability. Now in the midst of its 10th season, the Harris Theater for Music and Dance was the first multi-use performing arts venue to be built in the Chicago downtown area since 1929 and today the Theater continues to host the most diverse offerings of any venue in Chicago, featuring the city's world-renowned music and dance institutions and the Harris Theater Presents series of acclaimed national and international artists and ensembles.

The Harris Theater is proud to have the support of The Northern Trust Company as its 2013-2014 season sponsor. United Airlines is the Official Airline of the Harris Theater. Hyatt Regency Chicago is the Harris at 10 Hotel Sponsor. The Harris Theater is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. All performances are performed on the Elizabeth Morse Genius Stage. The Harris Theater gratefully acknowledges the Irving Harris Foundation for its leadership support of the Presenting Fund, established in 2006 to bring artists and ensembles of the highest caliber to Chicago in order to complement the works of the Theater's resident companies and build audiences.

To learn more about the Harris Theater, please visit HarrisTheaterChicago.org, call the Box Office at 312.334.7777 to request a brochure or additional information. The Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Chicago's state-of-the art 1,525 seat performance venue, can also be found on Facebook facebook.com/harristheater and Twitter twitter.com/harristheater.

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