MOZART ’ S PIANO CONCERTO NO . 20
Academy , he was appointed assistant conductor of the Hallé Orchestra , where he was mentored by Sir Mark Elder , and became Music Director of the Hallé Youth Orchestra . In 2023 , he became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music .
Jonathon is committed to education and community outreach work , as well as to including new music within his imaginative concert programs .
Conrad Tao
Pianist and composer Conrad Tao has been dubbed “ the kind of musician who is shaping the future of classical music ” by New York Magazine , and an artist of “ probing intellect and open-hearted vision ” by The New York Times .
Conrad ’ s 2024 – 25 season includes a return to Carnegie Hall in recital performing Debussy ’ s 12 Études , alongside Keyed In , a work arranged and improvised by Tao on the Lumatone . He also returns to the San Francisco Symphony to perform Tchaikovsky with Nicholas Collon , the Dallas Symphony to
Conrad Tao
perform Mozart with Jaap van Zweden , the St Louis Symphony to perform Saint-Saëns with David Danzmayr , and the Baltimore Symphony to perform Mozart with Jonathon Heyward . Further appearances include the Indianapolis Symphony ’ s opening Gala , as well as performances with the Seoul Philharmonic , and NDR Hannover with Ingo Metzmacher . He also continues his collaboration with award-winning dancer Caleb Teicher in a nationwide U . S . tour .
In recent years , Conrad has been the subject of a special focus with the Finnish Radio Symphony and the Swedish Radio Symphony , both of
Brantley Gutierrez whom have presented him over multiple concerts . He has also performed with the Orchestra Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under both Orozco-Estrada and Antonio Pappano . As a composer , his work has been performed by orchestras throughout the world ; his first large scale orchestral work , Everything Must Go , received its world premiere with the New York Philharmonic and its European premiere with the Antwerp Symphony .
Conrad was the recipient of a New York Dance and Performance “ Bessie ” Award for Outstanding Sound Design / Music Composition for his work on More Forever , in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Caleb Teicher . He is also the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and was named a Gilmore Young Artist .
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM by Jacob Jahiel
Benjamin Britten
Born November 13 , 1913 in Lowestoft , United Kingdom Died December 4 , 1976 in Aldeburgh , United Kingdom
PASSACAGLIA FROM PETER GRIMES [ 1943 ]
In a 1941 essay titled “ England and the Folk-Art Problem ,” a young Benjamin Britten penned what might easily pass for a modernist manifesto , writing from America , “ the attempt to create a national music is only one symptom of a serious and universal malaise of our time — the refusal to accept the destruction of ‘ community ’ by the machine .”
Since 1939 , Britten had lived in self-imposed exile with his music and romantic partner , the tenor Peter Pears , both pacifists wary of wartime conscription . Yet , upon returning from the United States to England the following year , Britten would step off a cramped Swedish cargo ship embracing his native home and , with it , the sense of community he once decried . As his student and assistant , Imogen Holst ( daughter to Gustav Holst ), later recalled , the music Britten now composed “ was no longer the music of exile .”
This reversal was prompted in part by a chance encounter with George Crabbe ’ s poem , “ The Borough ,” which Britten discovered in a 1941 review by the English author E . M . Forster , who remarked , “ To talk about Crabbe is to talk about England .” So moved was Britten by the poem — which tells of an ill-fated fisherman , Peter Grimes , who lived in Aldeburgh , the seaside town on England ’ s craggy eastern coast where Crabbe
was born — that he resolved to return home and lay out the first sketches for a new opera . Britten completed the opera , Peter Grimes , two years later in 1943 , and it was premiered in London ’ s Sadler ’ s Wells on June 7 , 1945 , commemorating the theater ’ s reopening following the conclusion of the war .
Peter Grimes tells of a gruff and misanthropic , albeit misunderstood fisherman whose callousness contributes to the inadvertent deaths of two apprentices while at sea . Having already become a social pariah , he is now hunted outright by a village mob . Grimes sails to sea in his fishing boat , which he deliberately sinks , presumably drowning as a result . The Passacaglia — the fourth of six interludes Britten composed to accompany scene transitions — was also published separately for concert performances as Op . 33b .
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