“I doubt if there is more than a handful of violinists alive who can match Kavakos in the tonal variety, accuracy and speed of his harmonics” (Gramophone). Don’t miss the brilliant Leonidas Kavakos, renowned in his native Greece and across the world for his “superbly articulate” and “rapturously lyrical” playing (The Guardian) in a “deeply absorbing performance” (San Francisco Classical Voice) at Davies Symphony Hall.
Program
Violin Sonata No. 4 in A minor, Opus 23
Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Opus 80
Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin and Piano
Sonata No. 3 in A minor, Opus 25, in the Rumanian style
Presenting Sponsor
Great Performers Series
Piano
Pianist Enrico Pace was born in Rimini, Italy and studied with Franco Scala at the Rossini Conservatory. He later studied at the Accademia Pianistica Incontri col Maestro, Imola and won the Utrecht International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in 1989.
Recent highlights include the Beethoven sonata cycle with Leonidas Kavakos in New York (Carnegie Hall), Athens, Florence, Milan, Amsterdam, Moscow, and Tokyo, and at the Salzburg Festival and the Beethovenfest Bonn. He performs Bach sonatas with Frank Peter Zimmermann in New York, Amsterdam, Zurich, Frankfurt, Bamberg, and Japan; plays Schubert’s Schwanengesang with Matthias Goerne at La Scala in Milan; and gives recitals with violist Antoine Tamestit, violinist Akiko Suwanai, and cellist Sung-Won Yang, in addition to solo recitals at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Herkulessaal in Munich. This performance marks his debut under San Francisco Symphony auspices.
Mr. Pace has performed with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; the Munich, BBC, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Warsaw, and Brussels philharmonics; Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; the Göteborg, Bamberg, London, Stavanger, Sydney, and Melbourne symphonies; Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the MDR Symphony Leipzig, and the RTÉ National Symphony, among others. Mr. Pace’s chamber music partners include violinists Frank Peter Zimmermann and Liza Ferschtman, cellist Daniel Müller-Schott, clarinetist Sharon Kam, pianist Igor Roma, and horn player Marie Luise Neunecker, as well as the Keller Quartet, RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, and Quartetto Prometeo.
Mr. Pace recorded the Mendelssohn piano trios with Mr. Kavakos and cellist Patrick Demenga on Sony Classical. His recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin with Mr. Kavakos was released by Decca Classics in January 2013 and was nominated for a Grammy award. In April 2016 Decca Classics released a CD of the duo performing virtuoso encore works. With Mr. Zimmermann he recorded Busoni’s Violin Sonata No. 2 and the six sonatas for violin and keyboard by J.S. Bach for Sony Classical. In 2011 the label Piano Classics released Mr. Pace’s solo recording of the Années de pèlerinage by Franz Liszt.
(January 2019)
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