UPDATE: Cleveland Orchestra postpones IU residency and concerts.
The Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Franz Welser-Möst comes to the Indiana University Auditorium on January 20 of 2010 for music of Brahms, Wagner and the young English composer Thomas Adès. Violinist Leila Josefowicz will be the soloist in the concerto by Adès.
Actually, this is a return trip to Bloomington for Josefowicz. "Yes, I came a couple of times in the summers when I was a teenager. I studied quite intensively with Professor Josef Gingold. It was great to get a chance to work with him at such a young age. He was a wonderful warm man with a great depth of knowledge and also quite a sweet tooth. We'd work for hours on fingerings and expression in Brahms or Beethoven and then go down the hall to see just how much damage we could do at the vending machines. "
Although Josefowicz studied, performed and recorded much of the basic repertoire, her focus currently is on more modern works. "I still play standards as part of my concert work, but it's the twentieth and twenty-first century that really attracts me. For one thing, it brings the orchestra and the audience more together. With a standard work, both think that they know it and somehow there's a certain lack of tension. A new piece puts both the players and the listeners together on their best for a new experience."
Thomas Adès is an incredible young English composer. His concerto is so demanding. It sends me up past the end of the fingerboard, calls for great variation in dynamics and has some really challenging fingering. It took much of a year to learn. At the same time, it's not music that a listener has to do advanced math to appreciate. It's a very organic piece full of energy and emotion."
Cleveland Orchestra
Music of Wagner, Brahms and Thomas Adès
Conductor Franz Welser- Möst
Violinist Leila Josefowicz
IU Auditorium January 20, 2010