http://www.augustin-hadelich.de/html hu-hu http://www.augustin-hadelich.de/html/news I just finished a series of performances of the Brahms concerto, a work I will never grow tired of, with three wonderful conductors: Mei-Ann Chen, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and Giancarlo Guerrero. This is a piece I never grow tired of, and what I love about  (and something that people criticized when it was premiered) is that the orchestra is not just a backdrop or accompaniment, but rather an equal partner. It is like playing chamber music on a very large scale. There is no other great concerto that has so many instances in which the violinist follows the orchestra, or accompanies and ornaments while the winds play the important thematic material. At the same time, the soloist gets to shine in the most dramatic and the most poetic moments, and is the one who drives the development of the material - I never feel like Brahms didn't give me enough to do, he really struck a perfect balance. The famous opening of the slow movement is one of the most beautiful oboe solos ever written, and whenever stand on the stage listening to it, waiting to enter, I wish that moment would last forever.   Since my last news entry, there was also my first performance of the Britten violin concerto, a piece which leaves the performer and audience gasping for breath at the end. Luckily the work is getting played more and more these days; I definitely can't wait to do it again. There was a very special Dvorak concerto with Peter Oundjian and the Seattle Symphony, and a second performance of the Ligeti concerto, this time with Rossen Milanov and the Symphony in C. This summer I'm particularly looking forward to playing my Boston Symphony debut at Tanglewood with the Barber concerto! This is a piece that is rarely played in Europe, so I didn't really know it before coming to the United States. Over the last 6-7 years, I fell in love with it and played it more and more. Like in the Brahms concerto, the slow movement starts with an ircredible oboe solo, Barber must have been looking to the Brahms for inspiration.   http://www.augustin-hadelich.de/html/news I just got back from Karlsruhe, Germany, where I played a very unusual concert. The orchestra (Badische Staatskapelle Karlsruhe) is celebrating its 350th anniversary (!) this season, and they recreated a concert program that Paganini played with that same orchestra in 1829! It consisted of the first concerto, the 'Moses-Variations', 'Le Streghe', and 'Carnevale di Venezia' - in between all these pieces, a singer sang arias from Mozart and Pacini operas. It was really fun, and fascinating to do a concert program from that era - in a way it's refreshingly different from the formula overture-concerto-symphony that most concerts follow nowadays. As an encore, I played Paganini 24, which for all we know might very well have been his encore!   The first concerto is just gorgeous - in too many performances, the technical fireworks distract from the lyricism of his music, when they should really just be humorous diversions and dramatic flourishes, between the beautifully sung themes. I was reminded once again what an accomplished composer Paganini was, and what an amazing talent he had for writing bel canto melodies. Not all his works may be as great as these, but this week, he was definitely my favorite composer!   http://www.augustin-hadelich.de/html/news The last two weeks were a real whirlwind: first I played at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam for the first time, with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Mei-Ann Chen. It was such an amazing feeling to descend the long Concertgebouw staircase onto the stage! I've played the Tchaikovsky quite a lot over the past few years - I recently realized how much parts of it remind me of the Rococo variations. Mozart was Tchaikovsky's favorite composer, and looking at this piece it makes sense! The first theme of the violin concerto is quite classical (in contrast to the second theme, which is the most romantic and passionate thing imaginable) - it's so important that they sound different.   From Amsterdam I went to St. Paul, where I played the Ligeti concerto for the first time. It was a thrill to perform - the piece is among the hardest and most energy-consuming things one can play on the violin. Now I know how those people feel when they're defusing the bomb and have to decide whether to cut the red or the blue wire! (that's how I feel during the first movement!) The slow movement is so beautiful - it's like a glimpse of a distant time and culture and its music, completely strange sounding, and yet incredibly beautiful. It will take weeks until this music will stop going through my head! In what is quite unusual with orchestras in the US, we had 6 hours of rehearsal with the orchestra, and even a sectional with some principles beforehand. The St. Paul Chamber orchestra and the conductor Joana Carneiro were incredible. We got a good review too (link)!   Next, I will go to Madison to play Prokofiev 2 - that should chase the Ligeti out of my mind - and then to the West Coast to play recitals with the amazing Joyce Yang (website). As hard as these first months of 2012 are in terms of how much repertoire I'm playing in a short time, I've never been happier on stage - what could be better than to play such incredible music in these places and with these musicians?   http://www.augustin-hadelich.de/html/news Happy New Year! 2011 was a really exciting year for me, starting with a new CD being released, debuts with the Baltimore, Cincinnati and Atlanta symphonies, and return engagements with the Cleveland Orchestra and New York Philharmonic. In the fall fall I played my second recital at the Kennedy center, went on a tour of Brazil with the Sao Paulo Symphony and Yan Pascal Tortelier, and got to play with some really exciting young conductors for the first time: Kazuki Yamada in Strasbourg, José Luis Gomez in Grand Rapids, and Christian Vasquez in Monte-Carlo.   My fall was overshadowed however by the passing of Michal Schmidt, who had been my manager for the past 10 years. I joined her roster when I was just 17, still living on a remote farm in Tuscany. If I'd never met her, I probably would not have come to New York seven years ago to study, and I'd be a very different violinist and person. She was more than just a manager - she was a mentor and a friend, and since she died in October, I haven't played a concert without thinking of her, her passion for music and love for her artists.   In a few days, I'm going to Amsterdam to play Tchaikovsky, then to St. Paul to play Ligeti, and then on to Prokofiev 2, Paganini 1, Barber and Britten, with a few recitals in-between!   http://www.augustin-hadelich.de/html/news The 2011/12 season has started! I'm excited about all the exciting places I'll go to this year, and also about all the interesting and varied repertoire - between now and May, I'll play 13 different concertos and 2 recital programs! I'm particularly looking forward to playing the Ligeti violin concerto in January with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. I believe it's one of the most important violin pieces of the 20th century (also one of the hardest!), and I'm really thrilled to get the opportunity to perform it. In August, I played my first performance of the Adès violin concerto at the Chautauqua festival. It was a huge task to learn, but it was powerful and exhilarating to perform, and I'll definitely make the piece a permanent addition to my repertoire.   Last weekend, I played with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert at Caramoor. It was a repeat performance of the Mozart 5 we did in July in Vail, CO, and it was even more fun this time around. Although it was a wet, rainy day, and all of us (players, audience, myself) braved rain, flooded streets and weekend traffic to get there, it was a very special night. Alan is a sensitive and inspiring collaborator, who brings out the best in everybody he plays with - and as a violinist himself, he knows the concerto inside and out. The week before that, I was in Fort Worth playing Lalo Symphonie Espagnole with my friend Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the Fort Worth Symphony. I felt that I was with old friends, and realized that I played with them 4 times in the last 5 years! The Lalo is a piece that is both fun to play and to hear, and is very rarely done nowadays. I'll play it again in December, in Monte-Carlo. Coming up next are concerts in Indianapolis, Raleigh and Grand Rapids, and then a 3-week tour of Brazil with the Sao Paulo State orchestra!   http://www.augustin-hadelich.de/html/news I just returned from a wonderful week of concerts in Aspen and Vail, Colorado. In Aspen, I played Bach double concerto and Schnittke concerto grosso no. 1 (also a double violin concerto) with the wonderful violinist Julia Fischer, and the Aspen Chamber Symphony conducted by Vasily Petrenko. I loved playing with Julia, it was a really fun and inspiring collaboration. Interestingly, the Schnittke is unusual among double concertos, in that it has the soloists, after playing together nicely at first, eventually turn against each other in the cadenza. As Vasily pointed out, it sounds like two people having an angry fight, snapping and barking at each other. In the last movement the cembalo starts playing a tango, and the two violinists join in the dance, perhaps still harboring some lingering resentment. The Bach couldn't be more different - the dialogue between the two violins is always harmonious and loving, and it's impossible for the performance to work if the violinists don't get along!   The day after, I played Mozart concerto no. 5 with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic in Vail. It was just as amazing to play with them as last year. Half-way through the second movement, my E string broke! In a recital, I would just go backstage, change the string, and return. In this situation though, I couldn't leave the orchestra and 6000 people in the audience waiting, so Sheryl Staples, who was concertmaster for the concerto, handed me her Guarneri Del Gesù violin, and I was able to keep playing on it (it was a lovely violin as well). By the time we got to the last movement, somebody had put on a new E string on the Kiesewetter Strad, and I was able to finish the piece on it. I will play the same piece again with Alan and the NY Phil on September 23 at Caramoor, New York - hopefully without any such adventures.   On Monday I'm going to beautiful La Jolla for some chamber music, and then on to Chautauqua where I will play the Thomas Adès concerto for the first time, as well as Haydn concerto in C.   http://www.augustin-hadelich.de/html/news A lot has happened since my last update. I was really excited and very honored to be awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Trust fellowship in February! I played with some really amazing orchestras and conductors in the last few months - After my debut with the Baltimore Symphony in January, I played with the Cleveland orchestra in March, and just now came back from my debut in Cincinnati! I also returned to Jacksonville and Denver to play with the orchestras there and visited a few other places for the first time, like Salt Lake City and Spokane - plus I played some recitals with my friend Joyce Yang, which was lots of fun.  The conductors I played with couldn't have been more inspiring either. I played for the first time with Juanjo Mena, Peter Oundjian and Julian Kuerti, and reunited with Fabio Mechetti, Giancarlo Guerrero and Hannu Lintu.   Of course playing with the Cleveland orchestra in Miami was particularly special. There's a short little clip from my concert with the Cleveland orchestra in miami on YouTube (link) It has certainly been an intense few months, and a lot to juggle (I played 7 different concertos in three months!), but I enjoyed every minute of it. They were all such exciting engagements, every time I came back from a trip I couldn't wait to go play the next concert. In my 'spare time', I've been working on learning the violin concerto by Thomas Adès, an amazing and beautiful piece (written in 2005) that I'm playing for the first time in August, at the Chautauqua festival. I've been wanting to play this piece for a while now, ever since I first heard it - I feel that it really stands out among contemporary violin concertos, and that it will one day be part of the standard concerto repertoire. Next up, I will play some recitals with Robert Kulek in Philadelphia (on April 10) and Charlottesville (April 12) - rehearsals start tomorrow!