FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 10, 2016
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
603.646.3991
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and pianist Jeremy Denk premiere new work October 14
Photos (from top): The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, photo Ash & James Photography; Jeremy Denk, photo by Michael Wilson; George Tsontakis, photo courtesy of the artist.
HANOVER, NH—Pianist Jeremy Denk and the The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra—both world-renowned for their gleaming artistry and ability to reach new listeners—team on Friday, October 14, 8 pm, in Spaulding Auditorium for a concert of Mozart, Schubert and the world premiere of Hop-commissioned work by an outstanding American composer.
Titled O Mikros, O Megas (“The small world, The huge world”), the work to be premiered is by the vibrant, prolific, award-winning American composer George Tsontakis (an “enormously skillful, creatively communicative, profoundly humane composer”—Gramophone Magazine).
With a title inspired by the opening lines of Axion Esti, by the great contemporary Greek poet, Odysseas Elytis, O Mikros, O Megas is, in part “a reflection on recent world circumstances including the tumbling world, loss of friends and my own personal advancement into the foothills of an ageless maturity,” Tsontakis wrote in notes for the concert program. The work is built primarily of “textures of long, quietly flowing tensions...All movements end quietly and the last, with my most preferred ending, a ‘dot dot dot’ figure. In fact, in the score, the performers are given the option of repeating the final phrase for as long as desired, until the ‘end’ of the work is felt.”
The SPCO will play Tsontakis’ work and Schubert’s warm, youthful Symphony No. 2 in B-flat on its own, and will be joined by Denk for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major (K. 488), one of the composer’s richest works, emotionally, exemplifying his concerto style at its most mature and refined.
This mixed program of established repertoire and work by living composers is in keeping with the SPCO’s mission. Renowned for its artistic excellence, remarkable versatility of musical styles and adventurous programming, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, now in its 58th season, is widely regarded as one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world, with a commitment to championing new music. It has built a unique musical culture in its home city, based on world-class musicianship and strong outreach to the community, especially educational and family programming. The SPCO also reaches the wider world through its online Listening Library, public radio programs (which reach 1.2 million listeners each week on 289 stations) and tours that have taken it through Europe, Asia and South America as well as across the United States.
The SPCO is the only full-time professional chamber orchestra in the US, performing nationally and internationally. The SPCO has earned 17 ASCAP awards for adventurous programming and is regularly heard by 1.5 million listeners weekly on public radio’s Performance Today. Primarily an unconducted ensemble, the SPCO works in close collaboration with a diverse series of artistic partners—some of the world’s most sought-after soloists, including Denk. These partnerships are long-term relationships in which the soloists help shape SPCO programming and work in-depth with SPCO musicians and the broader community.
One of America's most multi-faceted and compelling artists, Denk mesmerized a Hop audience in 2011 with his masterful, inquisitive interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, played entirely from memory. Wrote The New York Times, “Mr. Denk, clearly, is a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs, in whatever combination—both for his penetrating intellectual engagement with the music and for the generosity of his playing.” The Washington Post praised Denk’s playing as being marked by “spontaneity and sense of discovery…impish charm…Each note sounded fresh and alive, as if thought through anew, with Denk rarely missing the chance to tease out or embellish a phrase.”
Winner of a 2013 MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, the 2014 Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s 2014 Instrumentalist of the Year award, Denk has recently appeared as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and London. His four-year partnership with SPCO began in 2014.
Denk also is known for his original and insightful writing on music, which New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross praised for its “arresting sensitivity and wit.” Denk’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New Republic and The Guardian, and on the front page of The New York Times Book Review. One of his New Yorker contributions, “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” forms the basis of a memoir for future publication by Random House in the US, and Macmillan in the UK. Recounting his experiences of touring, performing and practicing, his blog, Think Denk, was recently selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress web archives. Denk also wrote the libretto for a comic opera, The Classical Style, music by Steven Stucky, presented by Carnegie Hall in 2014.
Tsontakis has long been recognized as one of America's most vibrant and gifted composers. “Tsontakis is a very big talent…brilliant orchestral effects, snatches of intriguing melody and a genuinely moving ending,” wrote the Baltimore Sun. Wrote Eclectica Magazine, “Tsontakis is a composer of tremendous technical integrity, not to mention skill. He stands alone among current American composers for this integrity. Each work is as if whatever he needs to say at that time, he has an ethical commitment to say fully and without compromise. Part of his technical skill is an ability to build from small motifs and to transform them endlessly so that they are never merely variations, but always re-envisioned. In this respect, he seems almost to invite comparison to Beethoven.”
Born in Astoria, N.Y., Tsontakis received a doctoral degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Roger Sessions. He has been composer-in-residence at the Aspen Music School and Festival since 1976, where he also founded and directed the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble from 1991 to 1998. He is the recipient of the two most lucrative prizes in classical music: the international Grawemeyer Award in 2005 for his Second Violin Concerto, and the 2007 Charles Ives Living, awarded every three years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Tsontakis' works have been performed in at least a dozen European countries and in some of the world's revered venues, including Berlin's Philharmonic Hall and New York's Carnegie Hall. He has been commissioned in recent years by the symphonies of Baltimore, Oregon, Dallas and Albany, the National Symphony, the Oxford Philomusica and the Athens State Orchestra. His music consistently enjoys performances by the world’s most prestigious orchestras. Three all-Tsontakis orchestral CDs have been released, including his Man of Sorrows piano concerto and KOCH CDs featuring the SPCO and the Albany Symphony. O Mikros, O Megas was commissioned by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Hop and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Download high-resolution photos: https://hop.dartmouth.edu/Online/media_resources
CALENDAR LISTING:
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra with Jeremy Denk, piano
Musician-led and internationally admired for its gleaming artistry and refreshing repertoire, the SPCO performs with Jeremy Denk, a MacArthur “Genius” who thrilled Hop audiences in 2011 with his rhapsodic imagination and prodigious pianistic skills. The ensemble also premieres a new Hop co-commission by award-winning American composer George Tsontakis (“an endlessly entrancing, accessibly modern approach rooted in the romantic”—Roll Magazine), and a Schubert symphony full of warmth and youthful good humor.
Friday, October 14, 8 pm
Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH
$30/40/50, Dartmouth students $10, youth $17/19
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
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Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, igniting passions, and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with outreach and arts education programs. After a celebratory 50th-anniversary season in 2012-13, the Hop enters its second half-century with renewed passion for mentoring young artists, supporting the development of new work, and providing a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.