Overture Magazine 2019-20 BSO_Overture_Sept_Oct | Page 28

MOZART VIOLIN CONCERTO Previously, Danzmayr served as Music Director of the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra and was also the only conductor in the Chicago area who programmed a piece of American music on every concert. Danzmayr won second prize at the International Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition and prizes at the International Malko Conducting Competition. For his extraordinary success, he was awarded the Bernhard Paumgartner Medal by the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum. Propelled by these early successes into a far-reaching international career, Danzmayr has quickly become a sought- after guest conductor for orchestras around the globe. He has worked with the City of Birmingham, Detroit, New Jersey, Indianapolis, Iceland, Odense, Stuttgart Radio and Vienna Radio symphony orchestras; the Bamber and San Diego symphonies; and the Sinfonieorchester Basel. He has served as the Assistant Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with which he performed in all the major Scottish concert halls and in the Orkney-based St. Magnus Festival. Danzmayr received his musical training at the University Mozarteum where, after initially studying piano, he went on to study conducting in the class of Dennis Russell Davies. Danzmayr gained significant experience as assistant to Neeme Järvi, Stéphane Denève, Carlos Kalmar, Sir Andrew Davis and Pierre Boulez. David Danzmayr makes his BSO debut. Stefan Jackiw Stefan Jackiw is one of the U.S.’ foremost violinists, captivating audiences with playing that combines poetry and purity with an impeccable technique. Hailed for playing that is “striking for its intelligence and sensitivity” by The Boston Globe, Jackiw has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic; the Cleveland and 26 OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org Philadelphia orchestras; and the Boston, National, Chicago and San Francisco symphony orchestras. Highlights of recent seasons include a performance of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall and the world premiere of American composer David Fulmer’s Violin Concerto No. 2, which was written for him, with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Matthias Pintscher. He also appeared on tour with l’Orchestre national d’Île-de- France in Europe and Asia. In recital, Jackiw performs the complete Ives Violin Sonatas with Jeremy Denk at the Tanglewood Music Festival ahead of their upcoming recording of the works for Nonesuch Records. He also joins the acclaimed pianist alongside Benjamin Beilman and Pamela Frank in performances of the Mozart Violin Sonatas both at Carnegie Hall and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Jackiw has performed in numerous important festivals and concert series, including the Aspen Music Festival and School, Ravinia Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, the Celebrity Series of Boston, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Washington Performing Arts Society and the Louvre Recital Series. As a chamber musician, Jackiw has collaborated with Jeremy Denk, Steven Isserlis, Yo-Yo Ma and Gil Shaham, and forms a trio with Jay Campbell and Conrad Tao. Born to physicist parents of Korean and German descent, Stefan Jackiw began playing the violin at the age of four. His teachers have included Zinaida Gilels, Michèle Auclair and Donald Weilerstein. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, as well as an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory. He is the recipient of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Stefan Jackiw last appeared with the BSO in October 2010, performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, Marin Alsop, conductor. About the Concert SIX PIECES FOR ORCHESTRA, OP. 6 Anton Webern Born in Vienna, Austria, December 3, 1883; died in Mittersill, Austria, September 15, 1945 As they broke decisively with tonality—the harmonic system that relies on established keys and pitch hierarchies—Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern boldly designated themselves the “Second Viennese School,” implying their discovery and implementation of the non- tonal twelve-tone system was the successor of the great Viennese classicists Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, the “First Viennese School.” Ironically, it was Webern—the shyest, least confident and most idealistic of the three—who broke most definitively with the traditions that had ruled music for at least two centuries. And he, more than his teacher and father figure Schoenberg, became the patron saint of mid-20 th century serial music. Growing up on his family’s rural estate in the Carinthian Alps of southern Austria, Webern was a passionate mountain-rambler and nature-lover, who always returned to the mountains to rest and restore his highly tuned nervous system. He was less a theorist like Schoenberg and more a Romantic philosopher who sought to achieve in music the perfection of detail he found in nature. When he began studying with Schoenberg in 1904, he found the man and the goals he would follow, with devotion bordering on self- abnegation, for the rest of his life. Strangely, Webern did not believe he was a revolutionary. “I am not so much interested in being a musical terrorist,” he wrote, “as [being] a natural continuer of rightly understood, good, old tradition!” Webern’s earliest works confirmed this belief, for they followed the mellow late Romantic style of Brahms, Max Reger and his contemporary Gustav Mahler. But in 1909 and 1910, Webern—galvanized by Schoenberg’s atonal First Chamber Symphony—plunged feet-first into atonality with his Five Pieces for String Quartet and his Six Pieces for Orchestra.