The North Carolina Symphony – Opening Night: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Alessio Bax

The North Carolina Symphony Presents

Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Alessio Bax

Sunday, September 25, 2016 – 7:30 p.m.

Tickets for this performance range from $18 – $57 + taxes & fees

 

Glinka: Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila

Stravinsky: Petrouchka

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1

Grant Llewellyn, conductor

Alessio Bax, piano

Join us for our season-opening program of spirited Russian masterpieces—from an exuberant operatic overture, to Stravinsky’s poignant Petrouchka, to Tchaikovsky’s exhilarating Piano Concerto No. 1.

Our guest soloist for Opening Night:

Pianist Alessio Bax’s quintessential lyricism, insightful interpretations, and dazzling facility create “a ravishing listening experience,” with playing that “quivers with an almost hypnotic intensity” (Gramophone), leading to what Dallas Morning News calls “an out-of-body experience.” First Prize winner at the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions and a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, he has appeared as soloist with more than 100 orchestras, including the London and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, Dallas and Houston Symphonies, NHK Symphony in Japan, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and the City of Birmingham Symphony with Sir Simon Rattle.

This summer, Bax has performed at festivals including the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Mimir Chamber Music Festival, Minnesota’s Beethoven Festival, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, and Italy’s Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, where he was recently appointed Artistic Director for a three-year term starting in 2017. Next season he makes his solo recital debut at London’s Wigmore Hall with a program of Schubert, Scriabin and Ravel; gives solo recitals in Spain, Italy and California; and performs with his wife, pianist Lucille Chung, in Guatemala, the U.S., and, in fall 2017, at the Fundación Beethoven in Santiago, Chile. He also gives six performances at Japan’s Le Pont Music Festival with Berlin Philharmonic concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto, flutist Emmanuel Pahud, and others; tours Japan with Kashimoto before giving a summer recital together at Wigmore Hall; and tours the U.S., both with his frequent recital partner, violinist Joshua Bell, and with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS), culminating with a performance at New York’s Alice Tully Hall. Later in the spring, he participates in CMS performances at both Alice Tully Hall and Wigmore Hall.

His performances have been broadcast live on the BBC (UK); CBC (Canada); RAI (Italy); RTVE (Spain); NHK (Japan); WDR, NDR, and Bayerischer Rundfunk (Germany); American Public Media’s “Performance Today”; WQXR (New York); WGBH (Boston); WETA (Washington, DC); and SiriusXM satellite radio, among many others.

Other highlights of recent seasons: Bax opened – with a pair of Mozart piano concertos – and closed the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2014-15 season, partnered with Joshua Bell, for more than 35 concerts in Europe, North and South America, and Asia, and with Lucille Chung in the U.S., Canada, France, and Hong Kong. In 2013, he received the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award and Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, which recognizes young artists of exceptional accomplishment. Recently he has released a solo album of Mussorgsky and Scriabin, joined Chung on her new disc of Poulenc piano works, and released Lullabies for Mila, a collection dedicated to their baby daughter. His celebrated discography for Signum Classics also includes Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” and “Moonlight” Sonatas (a Gramophone “Editor’s Choice”); and Bax & Chung, a duo disc with Lucille Chung that includes Stravinsky’s original four-hand version of the ballet Pétrouchka as well as music by Brahms and Piazzolla. Recorded for Warner Classics, his Baroque Reflections album was also a Gramophone “Editor’s Choice.” He performed Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata for maestro Daniel Barenboim in the PBS-TV documentary Barenboim on Beethoven: Masterclass, available as a DVD boxed set on the EMI label. His

Alessio Bax graduated with top honors at the record age of 14 from the conservatory of Bari, his hometown in Italy, where his teacher was Angela Montemurro. In 1994 he moved to Dallas to continue his studies at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, where, with Lucille Chung, he is now the Johnson-Prothro Artist-in-Residence. He also serves with Chung as co-artistic director of Dallas’ Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation, created to cultivate the legacy of the Basque pianist and to support young pianists’ careers. A Steinway artist, Bax resides in New York City with Chung and their two-year-old daughter, Mila. Outside the concert hall he is known for his longtime obsession with fine food; as a 2013 New York Times profile noted, he is not only notorious for hosting “epic” multi-course dinner parties, but often spends his intermissions dreaming of meals to come.