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Christian Tetzlaff & Lars Vogt

violin and piano

SUNDAY CONCERTS

Music Room

On sale August 1 at 10 am.

Tickets are $45, $25 for members, $20 for students with ID, and $5 for youth (ages 8-18); museum admission for that day is included. Advance reservations are strongly recommended.

Members: please sign in to receive member discount, which will be applied at checkout.

Concert sold out? You’ve got options:

Any available Rush tickets will be released via the “buy ticket” link on Fridays at 5 pm preceding each Sunday Concert.

Standby tickets may become available (credit card only) near the entrance to the Music Room.

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Program

German musicians Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt are frequent collaborators who have brought equal parts fire, precision, and intellect to their performances. Their Phillips debut highlights the best of their intuitive musical partnership, featuring Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 30, No. 1, written in 1802 at the precipice of the “new style” that Beethoven’s music would herald. Three iconic and contrasting pieces from the 20th century follow. The muscular sound of Dmitri Shostakovich’s late Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major, Op. 134 is offset by the spare textures and hauntingly meditative sound-world of György Kurtág’s Tre Pezzi, Op. 14e. Maurice Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in G Major, M. 77 maintains the transparency of textures but moves fluidly through different musical styles, including (most notably) the inspiration of blues and jazz.

PROGRAM:

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Violin Sonata in A Major, Op 30, No. 1

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-75)
Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major, Op. 134

INTERMISSION

GYÖRGY KURTÁG (b. 1926)
Tre Pezzi for Violin and Piano, Op. 14e

MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937)
Violin Sonata No. 2 

About the Artists

An artist known for his musical integrity, technical assurance, and intelligent, compelling interpretations, Christian Tetzlaff has for many years been internationally recognized as one of the most sought after violinists and exciting musicians on the classical music scene.

Concerts with Tetzlaff often turn into an existential experience for both the interpreter and the audience; suddenly familiar works appear in a completely new light. From the outset of his career, Tetzlaff has performed and recorded a broad spectrum of the repertoire, ranging from Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas and partitas to 19th-century masterworks by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Brahms; and from 20th-century concertos by Bartók, Berg, and Shostakovich to world premieres of contemporary works such as the Jörg Widmann Violin Concerto. A dedicated chamber musician, he frequently collaborates with distinguished artists including Leif Ove Andsnes and Lars Vogt, and is the founder of the Tetzlaff Quartet, which he formed in 1994 with violinist Elisabeth Kufferath, violist Hanna Weinmeister, and his sister, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff.

Tetzlaff works regularly with the world’s leading orchestras, collaborating with conductors including Christoph Eschenbach, Andris Nelsons, Antonio Pappano, Robin Ticciati, Vladimir Jurowski, Paavo Järvi, and Manfred Honeck. In North America, he performs with the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, and Montreal among many others, as well as with the major European ensembles including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, London Symphony and London Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Dresden Staatskappelle and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He also appears at the world’s most prominent summer music festivals, including Verbier, Salzburg, Tanglewood, Edinburgh, The Proms, and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival.

During the 2018/19 season, Tetzlaff returned to Tanglewood to work with the Boston Symphony under Thomas Adès, as well as to the Cleveland and National Arts Centre Orchestras and the Detroit, New World and Toronto symphonies; was the featured soloist on a US tour with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas, with performances in Chicago, Washington, DC, Boston, and Seattle; and toured with his trio partners, Tanja Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt, to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, New York, Washington, DC, and Denver. Internationally, he toured Vietnam with the NHK Symphony Orchestra and appeared with the London Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Munich Philharmonic, and Helsinki Philharmonic; and was Artist-in-Residence at London’s Wigmore Hall.

Tetzlaff has received numerous awards for his many recordings, including the “Diapason d’or” in July 2018, the Midem Classical Award in 2017, and the “Preis Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik” in 2015. Most recently, his recording of the Bartók Violin Concertos with the Helsinki Philharmonic and Hannu Lintu was chosen as the Gramophone Concerto Recording of the Year. Of special significance is his recording of the unaccompanied Bach Sonatas and Partitas, which he recorded for the third time in September 2017 for Ondine.

Born in Hamburg in 1966, music occupied a central place in his family and his three siblings are all professional musicians. He did not begin intensive study of the violin until making his concert debut playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto at the age of 14, and attributes the establishment of his musical outlook to his teacher at the conservatory in Lübeck, Uwe-Martin Haiberg, for whom musical interpretation was the key to violin technique, rather than the other way around. Christian Tetzlaff currently performs on a violin modeled after a Guarneri del Gesu made by the German violin maker, Peter Greiner.

Lars Vogt has established himself as one of the leading musicians of his generation. Born in the German town of Düren in 1970, he first came to public attention when he won second prize at the 1990 Leeds International Piano Competition and has since enjoyed a varied career for nearly 25 years. His versatility as an artist ranges from the core classical repertoire of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms to the romantic repertoire of Grieg, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff.

Vogt is now increasingly performing as a conductor and in September 2015 took up the post of Music Director of Royal Northern Sinfonia at Sage Gateshead. Under his leadership, the orchestra has developed a strong international profile with concerts in Amsterdam, Vienna, Budapest, Istanbul, and Tokyo and regular visits to the La Roque d’Antheron International Piano Festival and Festival de Musique de Menton in France, as well as the Rheingau Festival in Germany. In 2017 they performed a complete Beethoven piano concerto cycle in Beijing, Shanghai, and Seoul. The orchestra also recorded the cycle for a series of releases with Ondine, finishing with a disc of the second and fourth piano concerti which was released in March 2018 to much critical acclaim.

Vogt began the 2018/19 season with a return to the Leeds Competition, this time as a member of the jury. Throughout the season he continued to work with many leading orchestras as a conductor, including debuts with the Singapore and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras, Warsaw Philharmonic, and the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Previous conducting collaborations include leading the Cologne and Zurich Chamber Orchestras, Camerata Salzburg, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Hannover Opera Orchestra, Frankfurt Museumorchester, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Vogt’s solo engagements this season include the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in the prestigious ZaterdagMatinee series at the Concertgebouw and concerts with the San Francisco, St. Louis, and Baltimore symphonies. He returned to North America in Spring 2019 for a tour with Christian and Tanja Tetzlaff which included performances in New York (Carnegie Hall), Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, and Vancouver. He also performs recitals in London, Salzburg, Barcelona, Beijing, and at the Savannah Music Festival.

During his prestigious career, Vogt has performed with many of the great European orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Staatskapelle Dresden, Vienna Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, and the London Symphony Orchestra. Recent performances in North American include appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, New York, and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, National, and Atlanta symphonies, Minnesota Orchestra and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa; recitals at New York’s 92nd St. Y and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center; and appearances at the Mostly Mozart Festival and Tanglewood. He has collaborated with some of the world’s most renowned conductors including Claudio Abbado, Daniel Harding, Mariss Jansons, Paavo Järvi, Andris Nelsons, Sir Simon Rattle, and Robin Ticciati. His special relationship with the Berlin Philharmonic has continued with regular collaborations following his appointment as their first ever Pianist-in-Residence in the 2003/04 season.

Vogt enjoys a high profile as a chamber musician and in June 1998, founded his own chamber music festival in the village of Heimbach near Cologne. Known as “Spannungen,” the concerts take place in an art-nouveau hydro-electric power station and its huge success has been marked by the release of several live recordings on EMI and CAvi. In addition to Christian and Tanja Tetzlaff, Vogt has enjoyed regular partnerships with colleagues such as Thomas Quasthoff, Ian Bostridge, and Julian Pregardian.

A prolific recording artist, Vogt now works closely with the Ondine label, with recent solo releases including works by Schubert and Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which had unprecedented success on download charts as well as widespread acclaim. Adding to his growing list of chamber recordings, recent releases on Ondine include Brahms, Mozart and Schumann sonatas with Christian Tetzlaff, and their GRAMMY nominated Brahms’ piano trios with Tanja Tetzlaff. In earlier years as an EMI recording artist, Vogt recorded more than 10 albums with the label including the Hindemith Kammermusik No. 2 with the Berlin Philharmonic/Claudio Abbado, plus the Schumann, Grieg, and first two Beethoven Concertos with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle. He has also recorded for CAvi (most recently a recording of Larcher, Schumann, and Bartók works for children released in 2016), Oehms Classics (Mozart Concertos/Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra), and Berlin Classics (solo Liszt and Schumann).

A passionate advocate of making music an essential life force in the community, in 2005 Vogt established a major educational program, “Rhapsody in School,” which brings his colleagues to schools across Germany and Austria, thereby connecting children with inspiring world-class musicians. He is also an accomplished and enthusiastic teacher and in 2013 was appointed Professor of Piano at the Hannover Conservatory of Music, succeeding Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, his former teacher and close friend.

Watch and Listen