Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season March - April 2018 | Page 17

SCHUBERT THE GREAT
MUSIC CENTER AT STRATHMORE
Thursday, March 15, 2018, 8pm
JOSEPH MEYERHOFF SYMPHONY HALL
Friday, March 16, 2018, 8 pm
Saturday, March 17, 2018, 8pm
Lahav Shani, conductor
Nikolai Lugansky, piano
Sergei Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, op. 16
Andantino

Scherzo: Vivace
Moderato

Finale: Allegro tempestoso

Nikolai Lugansky
INTERMISSION
Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 9 in C Major, D. 944, “The Great”

Andante - Allegro, ma non troppo

Andante con moto

Scherzo: Allegro vivace

Allegro vivace
The concert will end at approximately 10 pm.
PRESENTING SPONSOR:
The appearance of guest conductor Lahav Shani and pianist Nikolai Lugansky
is generously underwritten through the Young Artist sponsorship of the
Peggy & Yale Gordon Trust
About the Artists
Lahav Shani
Prodigiously gifted
28-year-old Israeli
conductor Lahav
Shani’s conducting
career was launched
when he won first prize at the 2013
Gustav Mahler International Conducting
Competition in Bamberg. Since then, he
has quickly established himself as one of
the most talked-about young conducting
talents, making a huge impression with
his astonishing maturity and natural,
instinctive musicality.
In January 2016, Shani stood in
for Philippe Jordan, conducting the
Vienna Symphony Orchestra on a major
European tour including concerts in Paris,
Frankfurt and Munich.
In the 2017–2018 season, Shani
becomes principal guest conductor of the
Vienna Symphony Orchestra. In June
2014, Shani made a sensational debut in
Berlin, replacing Michael Gielen, with
the Berlin Staatskapelle with concerts at
the Berlin Konzerthaus and the Berlin
Philharmonie. He returned to conduct
the orchestra for four performances of La
Bohème in December 2016 at the Berliner
Staatsoper and for orchestral concerts in

the Berlin Philharmonie in May 2017.
In December 2015, Shani stepped in
on short notice for an indisposed Franz
Welser-Möst for concerts with the Vienna
Philharmonic in the Musikverein, where
he directed Bach’s Concerto in D Minor
from the keyboard and conducted
Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, winning high
praise from the critics and a standing
ovation from the public.
Recent and upcoming highlights
include engagements with the
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen
Rundfunks, London Symphony Orchestra,
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra,
Dresden Staatskapelle, Tonhalle-Orchester
Zürich, Budapest Festival Orchestra,
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk-
Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Philharmonia
Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Philadelphia
Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic,
Bamberger Symphoniker and Orchestre
Philharmonique de Radio France.
In October 2013, Shani was invited
to open the season of the Israel
Philharmonic Orchestra —Globes,
reviewing one of the performances,
wrote that “this concert will be
remembered as a dizzying, perhaps
even historic event in the history of the
Israel Philharmonic.” An immediate
re-invitation followed for the next two
seasons. His close relationship with the
Israel Philharmonic started in 2007
when he performed Tchaikovsky’s
Piano Concerto under the baton
of Zubin Mehta and continued in
2010 when he joined Mehta and the
orchestra on tour in Asia, where he
participated as solo pianist, conductor’s
assistant and as double bass player.
Shani was born in 1989 in Tel Aviv.
He started his piano studies at six with
Hannah Shalgi and continued with
Arie Vardi at the Buchmann-Mehta
School of Music in Tel Aviv. He then
went on to complete his studies in
conducting with Christian Ehwald and
piano with Fabio Bidini, both at the
Academy of Music Hanns Eisler Berlin.
In recent years he has been mentored
by Daniel Barenboim.
Lahav Shani makes his BSO debut.
M A R –A P R 2018 / OV E R T U R E
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