Carnegie Hall

Driven by his strikingly uncompromising artistic philosophy, Gidon Kremer has established a worldwide reputation as one of his generation’s most original and compelling artists. His repertoire encompasses standard classical scores and music by leading 20th- and 21st-century composers. He has championed the works of Russian and Eastern European composers and performed many important new compositions, several of which have been dedicated to him.

Mr. Kremer is closely associated with such composers as Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Luigi Nono, Edison Denisov, Aribert Reimann, Pēteris Vasks, John Adams, Victor Kissine, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass, Leonid Desyatnikov, and Astor Piazzolla, whose works he performs in ways that respect tradition while being fully alive to their freshness and originality. His commitment to composer Mieczysław Weinberg recently led to recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon, Accentus Music, and ECM labels of the composer’s orchestral and chamber music works.

Mr. Kremer has recorded more than 200 albums, many of which have received prestigious international awards in recognition of their exceptional interpretative insights. His long list of honors and awards include the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, Germany’s Federal Cross of Merit, Moscow’s Triumph, Unesco Prize, and Una Vita Nella Musica—Arthur Rubinstein Prize. In 2016, he received a Praemium Imperiale, widely considered to be the Nobel Prize of music.

In 1997, Mr. Kremer founded the chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica to foster outstanding young musicians from the Baltic States. The ensemble tours extensively and has recorded almost 30 albums for the Nonesuch, Deutsche Grammophon, and ECM labels. In the 2016–2017 season, Kremerata Baltica toured the Middle East, North America, Europe, and Asia to celebrate the orchestra’s 20th anniversary.

Universally hailed as one of the world’s finest musicians, Grammy Award winner Maxim Vengerov enjoys international acclaim as a conductor and is one of the most in-demand soloists. Born in 1974, he won the Wieniawski and Carl Flesch international competitions at ages 10 and 15, respectively; studied with Galina Turchaninova and Zakhar Bron; made his first recording at the age of 10; and went on to record extensively for high-profile labels, earning Grammy and Gramophone artist of the year awards.

In 2007, Mr. Vengerov followed in the footsteps of his mentor, Mstislav Rostropovich, and turned his attention to conducting. Three years later, he was appointed the first chief conductor of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra.

In 2020, Mr. Vengerov became Classic FM’s first solo artist in residence, releasing a new recording of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with conductor Myung-Whun Chung and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, as well as a live recording of his Carnegie Hall recital in October 2018.

In April, Mr. Vengerov celebrated a belated 40 years on stage at Royal Albert Hall, where he was joined by cellist Sandra Lied Haga, the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director Marios Papadopoulos, and students from London’s Royal College of Music. Additional highlights this season include an extensive recital tour of the US and Canada, and an 11-concert tour of the UK. In concerto performances, he joins the orchestras of Montreal, Vienna, London, Paris, and Taiwan. Mr. Vengerov also performs in chamber settings with Martha Argerich in Germany, and Simon Trpčeski and Steven Isserlis in Switzerland. Later this summer, he joins the Aspen and Bravo! Vail festivals in recitals, master classes, and concerto performances with Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

One of Mr. Vengerov’s greatest passions is teaching. He currently holds the Stephan and Viktoria Schmidheiny Stiftungsprofessor at the Mozarteum University Salzburg and since 2016 has been the Polonsky Visiting Professor of Violin at the Royal College of Music in London. In 2018, he became the Goodwill Ambassador of the Musica Mundi School, a unique institution that supports young talent. In order to make music education more accessible, he established his own online teaching platform in January 2021 at maximvengerov.com.

Mr. Vengerov has received numerous honors, including a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance and a World Economic Forum Crystal Award. He was also named a chevalier of the Ordre du Mérite Culturel from the palace in Monte Carlo, where he resides. Mr. Vengerov plays the ex-Kreutzer Stradivari (1727).

Acclaimed worldwide for his profound musicianship and technical mastery, British cellist Steven Isserlis enjoys a uniquely varied career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, author, and broadcaster. He appears with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, and gives recitals in major musical centers. As a chamber musician, he has curated concert series for many prestigious venues, including London’s Wigmore Hall, New York City’s 92nd Street Y, and the Salzburg Festival. Unusually, he also directs chamber orchestras from the cello in classical programs.

With a strong interest in historical performance, Mr. Isserlis has worked with many period-instrument orchestras, and has performed and recorded recitals with harpsichord and fortepiano. Also a keen exponent of contemporary music, he has given many premieres, including Sir John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil, Thomas Adès’s Lieux retrouvés, and works by György Kurtág, Heinz Holliger, and Jörg Widmann.

Mr. Isserlis’s extensive and award-winning discography includes the complete solo cello suites of J. S. Bach (Gramophone’s Instrumental Album of the Year), Brahms’s Double Concerto with Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and—as director and soloist—concertos by Haydn and C. P. E. Bach with Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. His recording of works by Sir John Taverner won the 2021 BBC Music Magazine Award.

Since 1997, Mr. Isserlis has been artistic director of the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove. He also enjoys performing for children and has created three musical stories with composer Anne Dudley. His two books for children, published by Faber & Faber, have been translated into many languages; his latest books include a commentary on R. Schumann’s Advice to Young Musicians and J. S. Bach’s cello suites. He has also devised and written two evenings of words and music, one describing the last years of Robert Schumann, the other devoted to Marcel Proust and his salons.

Mr. Isserlis’s honors include the Robert Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau, Piatigorsky Prize, Maestro Foundation Genius Grant, Glashütte Original Music Festival Award, Armenian Ministry of Culture’s Gold Medal, and Wigmore Medal. He was also named a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services to music.

Mr. Isserlis plays the “Marquis de Corberon” Stradivarius of 1726, on loan from the Royal Academy of Music.

Georgijs Osokins gained international attention at the age of 19 after participating in the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition. He made debuts at the Berlin Konzerthaus, Vancouver Playhouse, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Chopin and His Europe Festival in Warsaw, Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, International Piano Series in Bern, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Zaryadye Concert Hall in Moscow, Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, and Tongyeong International Music Hall in South Korea. Most recently, he performed at Wigmore Hall, Boulez Saal, and Sala Verdi.

On the Piano Classics label, Mr. Osokins has released two albums of works by Chopin and Rachmaninoff that were praised by Pizzicato, Gramophone, France Musique, and Danish Radio, among others. In 2020, Accentus Music released his first chamber music album alongside Gidon Kremer, featuring trios by Chopin and Beethoven. The album was nominated for an International Classical Music Award and an Opus Klassik. In 2021, he made his debut at the Martha Argerich Festival in Hamburg and the 101st Salzburg Festival, sharing the stage with Mr. Kremer and Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė.

Since his debut with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra at the age of 10, Mr. Osokins has appeared with the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, Tokyo New City Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, and Sinfonietta Cracovia. He has also shared the stage with Sergei Nakariakov, Nicolas Altstaedt, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Yulianna Avdeeva, and Lio Kuokman, among others.

In 2019, alongside Lucas Debargue, Mr. Osokins was announced as one of the first permanent guest artists of Kremerata Baltica in its 22-year history.

Evgeny Kissin’s musicality, the depth and poetic quality of his interpretations, and his extraordinary virtuosity have earned him the veneration and admiration deserved only by one of the most gifted classical pianists of his generation and, arguably, generations past. He is in demand the world over, and has appeared with many of the world’s great conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Carlo Maria Giulini, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, and Seiji Ozawa, as well as all the great orchestras of the world.

Mr. Kissin was born in Moscow in October 1971, and began to play by ear and improvise on the piano at the age of two. At six years old, he entered a special school for gifted children, the Moscow Gnessin School of Music, where he was a student of Anna Pavlovna Kantor, who has been his only teacher. At the age of 10, he made his concerto debut playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 and gave his first solo recital in Moscow one year later. Mr. Kissin came to international attention in March 1984 when, at the age of 12, he performed Chopin’s piano concertos nos. 1 and 2 in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under Dmitri Kitaenko. This concert was recorded live by Melodiya, and a two-LP album was released the following year. Given the astounding success of this recording, Melodiya proceeded to release five more LPs of live performances in Moscow in the two years that followed.

During the 2022–2023 season, Mr. Kissin returns to the Vienna Philharmonic with Jakub Hrůša, the London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle, the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra with Kent Nagano, and the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra with Andrey Boreyko, among others. In January, he began a recital tour of Europe with Renée Fleming, performing a program of Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, and Duparc in Vienna’s Musikverein, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The two artists take the same program on a tour of North America this month, stopping at the Kennedy Center, Chicago, Gilmore Piano Festival, and Carnegie Hall. Mr. Kissin also tours North America with a solo recital program.

A renaissance artist for modern times, Lera Auerbach is a widely recognized conductor, pianist, and composer. She is also an award-winning poet and an exhibited visual artist. All of her work is interconnected as part of a cohesive and comprehensive artistic worldview.

Ms. Auerbach has gained worldwide recognition for her exquisitely crafted, emotional, and imaginative music, which has been featured in leading venues such as Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, and Vienna’s Musikverein. Her works for orchestra have been performed by renowned conductors, including Manfred Honeck, Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Charles Dutoit, Andris Nelsons, Osmo Vänskä, Hannu Lintu, and Marin Alsop, to mention only a few.

Ms. Auerbach’s recent performances include concerts with Hilary Hahn at Wigmore Hall in London and Boulez Saal in Berlin. She also conducted Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, and performed and conducted Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20. Other recent highlights include Wien Modern’s production of Demons + Angels with Ms. Auerbach as conductor; the premiere of her Fourth Symphony, “Arctica,” by the National Symphony Orchestra; and the world premiere of her Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra, “Diary of a Madman,” with cellist Gautier Capuçon. In 2022, the Nuremberg State Philharmonic Orchestra presented the world premiere of Ms. Auerbach’s Symphony No. 5, “Paradise Lost”; her Symphony No. 6, “Vessels of Light,”—commissioned by Yad Vashem-, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center—was unveiled in Lithuania as part of the country’s Cultural Capital of Europe celebrations and received its US premiere at Carnegie Hall last April.

Ms. Auerbach’s music is championed and recorded by today’s most prominent classical performers, including violinists Leonidas Kavakos, Daniel Hope, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, Vadim Repin, and Julian Rachlin; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Alban Gerhardt, and David Finckel; and violists Kim Kashkashian, Nobuko Imai, and Lawrence Power.

In October 2023, Amare at the Hague will present a two-week Auerbach Festival that features all aspects of her artistic offerings, including concerts, exhibitions, and chamber music.

Ms. Auerbach has published books of poetry in Russian and English. Her illustrated children’s book A is for Oboe: The Orchestra’s Alphabet was named one of 2022’s best audiobooks by AudioFile.

The Emerson String Quartet is completing its final season of concerts, disbanding after more than four decades as one of the world’s premier chamber music ensembles. “With musicians like this,” wrote a reviewer for The Times (London), “there must be some hope for humanity.” The quartet has made more than 30 acclaimed recordings, and has been honored with nine Grammy Awards, three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, and recognition as Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year. As part of their larger mission to keep the string quartet form alive and relevant, members of the Emerson String Quartet have commissioned and premiered works from some of today’s most esteemed composers, and have partnered in performance with leading soloists.

In its final season, the quartet gives farewell performances across North America and Europe before coming home to New York City for Emerson Dimensions—its final series with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in which the quartet performs some of its most storied repertoire. The final performance as the Emerson String Quartet will take place in October 2023 in New York City, and will be filmed for a planned documentary by filmmaker Tristan Cook.

The quartet’s extensive discography includes the complete string quartets of Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bartók, Webern, and Shostakovich, as well as multi-CD sets of the major works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Dvořák. In its final season, the quartet will record Schoenberg’s Second Quartet with Barbara Hannigan, with the sessions documented by Mathieu Amalric for a short film. Deutsche Grammophon will also reissue its box set of the quartet’s complete recordings on the label, with two new additions. In 2019, the quartet joined forces with Evgeny Kissin to release a collaborative album, recorded live at a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert in 2018.

Formed in 1976 and based in New York City, the Emerson String Quartet was one of the first quartets whose violinists alternate in the first violin position. The quartet, which takes its name from American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, balances busy performing careers with a commitment to teaching, and serves as quartet in residence at Stony Brook University. In 2013, cellist Paul Watkins—a distinguished soloist, award-wining conductor, and devoted chamber musician—joined the original members of the quartet to form today’s group.

In the spring of 2016, the State University of New York awarded full-time Stony Brook faculty members Philip Setzer and Lawrence Dutton the status of Distinguished Professor, and conferred the title of Honorary Distinguished Professor on part-time faculty members Eugene Drucker and Paul Watkins. The quartet’s members also hold honorary doctorates from Middlebury College, The College of Wooster, Bard College, and University of Hartford. In 2015, the quartet received the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award—Chamber Music America’s highest honor—in recognition of its significant and lasting contribution to the chamber music field.