Jeffrey Kahane To Do Solo Performance Of Mozart Piano Concertos At NY Philharmonic

Jeffrey Kahane will perform as soloist with the New York Philharmonic in Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 6, 24, and 25, conducting the Orchestra from the piano, Thursday, March 25, 2010, at 7:30 p.m., and Friday, and Saturday, March 26 and 27 at 8:00 p.m. Mr. Kahane has previously performed this dual role for Mozart piano concertos with the New York Philharmonic - in December 2003 (Piano Concerto No. 22), and in February 2006 (Nos.17 and 20), his most recent appearance with the Orchestra.

Related Events

• Pre-Concert Talk
Composer/conductor Victoria Bond will introduce the program one hour before each performance. Tickets are $5 in addition to the concert ticket. Attendance is limited to 90 people. Information: nyphil.org or (212) 875-5656

• New York Philharmonic Podcast
Mark Travis, a producer for the WFMT Radio Network since 1999 and the producer of the 52-week-per-year nationally syndicated radio series, The New York Philharmonic This Week will host this podcast. These award-winning previews of upcoming programs - through musical selections as well as interviews with guest artists, conductors, and Orchestra musicians - are available at nyphil.org/podcast or from iTunes.

• National Radio Broadcast
This concert will be broadcast the week of April 5, 2010,* on The New York Philharmonic This Week, a radio concert series syndicated nationally to more than 295 stations by the WFMT Radio Network. The 52-week series, hosted by the Emmy Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin, is generously underwritten by The Kaplen Foundation, the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Philharmonic's corporate partner, MetLife Foundation. The broadcast will be available on the Philharmonic's Website, nyphil.org. The program is broadcast locally in the New York metropolitan area on 105.9 FM WQXR on Thursdays at 9:00 p.m.
*Check local listings for broadcast and program information.

Artist
Equally at home at the keyboard or on the podium, Jeffrey Kahane has a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven to Gershwin, Osvaldo Golijov, and John Adams. Since making his Carnegie Hall debut in 1983, Mr. Kahane has given recitals in many of the nation's major music centers including New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. He regularly appears as soloist with leading orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and is also a popular figure at summer festivals. Mr. Kahane also collaborates regularly with artists such cellist Yo-Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, violinist Joshua Bell, and bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff in addition to appearing with leading chamber ensembles. Jeffrey Kahane made his conducting debut at the Oregon Bach Festival in 1988, and has since appeared on the podiums of numerous orchestras, such as the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin's in the Fields, Camerata Salzburg, and the Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Detroit, St. Louis, Houston, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Dallas, and New World symphony orchestras. Currently in his 13th season as music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and his fifth and final season as music director of the Colorado Symphony, Mr. Kahane was also music director of the Santa Rosa Symphony for 10 seasons. He has received much recognition for his innovative programming and commitment to education and community involvement with all three orchestras, and was the recipient of the 2007 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming for his work in both Los Angeles and Denver.

Highlights of Mr. Kahane's 2009-10 season include appearances at the Aspen, Mostly Mozart, and Oregon Bach festivals; a concerto performance with Houston Symphony Orchestra; and conducting Haydn's Creation with the Utah Symphony. His recordings include works of Gershwin and Bernstein with cellist Yo-Yo Ma (SONY); Paul Schoenfield's Four Parables with the New World Symphony conducted by John Nelson (Decca/Argo); R. Strauss's Burleske with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra led by Jesús López-Cobos (Telarc); and the complete Bach Brandenburg Concertos (playing harpsichord) with the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra under Helmuth Rilling (Haenssler). He has also recorded the complete works for violin and piano by Schubert with Joseph Swensen (RCA), and Bernstein's Age of Anxiety (Virgin Records), which was nominated by Gramophone for their "Record of the Year" award. A native of Los Angeles and a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Jeffrey Kahane's early piano studies were with Howard Weisel and Jakob Gimpel. He was the first prize winner at the 1983 Rubinstein Competition, a finalist at the 1981 Van Cliburn Competition, and the recipient of a 1983 Avery Fisher Career Grant. He received the first Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award in 1987.

Repertoire
In the voluminous output of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who produced masterworks in essentially every musical genre, his 27 piano concertos still hold a place of special distinction. Written for his own performance, they contain not just some of Mozart's most brilliant compositional inspirations and innovations, but also some of his most sublimely beautiful creations. The Piano Concerto No. 6 was composed in 1776 while Mozart was still in Salzburg, and its simple, straightforward character makes a marked contrast with the monumental and symphonic Piano Concerto No. 24 and Piano
Concerto No. 25, both composed in Vienna in 1786 and widely considered to be among Mozart's very finest achievements. The Piano Concerto No. 24 was first performed by the New York Philharmonic in October 1944, with Robert Casadesus as soloist and Artur Rodzinski conducting, and most recently in January 2002, with Yefim Bronfman as soloist and Christian Thielemann conducting. The Piano Concerto No. 25 was first performed by the Philharmonic in December 1944, with Artur Schnabel as soloist and George Szell conducting, and more recently in April 1999, with Imogen Cooper as soloist and Sir Colin Davis conducting. These will be the Philharmonic's first performances of the Piano Concerto No. 6.

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