ARTISTS:       

Honolulu Symphony: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 1
Vasily Petrenko, conductor
William Wolfram, piano           
                                    

CONCERT:       

Saturday, May 2 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 3 at 4 p.m.
           
Blaisdell Concert Hall
    

PROGRAM:       

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: Suite from the opera Tale of the Tsar Saltan
RACHMANINOFF: Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 1 in F minor

TICKETS:       

$19, $26, $40, $52, $70 (including service fees)
Military & seniors receive 20% discount. Student tickets are $10.
Tickets sold at Ticketmaster outlets (1-800-745-3000), Macy’s and www.ticketmaster.com.
           
Call the Box Office at (808) 792-2000 (weekdays) or (808) 524-0815 ext. 245 (evenings) for more information.
www.honolulusymphony.com

HONOLULU – A duo of renowned guest artists – one a returning favorite and the other making his debut – will bring spirit and romance to the Honolulu Symphony stage this weekend. Uniting with the gifted musicians of the orchestra are pianist William Wolfram and conductor Vasily Petrenko in performance of Rachmaninoff’s exuberant Piano Concerto No. 1 on Saturday, May 2 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 3 at 4 p.m. at the Blaisdell Concert Hall. Concertgoers can escape the everyday at this stirring concert that also features Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral showpiece, the Suite from the opera Tale of the Tsar Saltan, and Shostakovich’s beautiful Symphony No. 1 in F minor. Tickets are on sale now and start from $19. Mahalo to concert sponsor Commercial Data Systems for making these concerts possible.

Wolfram, who returns to the Honolulu Symphony stage for what promises to be two riveting performances, has garnered the respect of musicians and the acclaim of critics here in Hawaii and across the country. Petrenko, who appears for the first time on the Honolulu Symphony stage, will travel from Europe for these special performances. Petrenko, who was educated in Russia, serves as the Principal Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.

Full of “joie de vivre,” Rachmaninoff completed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1891 when he was only 18 and a student at the Moscow Conservatory. It was first performed that year, with Rachmaninoff as soloist. He rewrote it in Moscow during the October Revolution in 1917 – more than twenty years later – giving it the form we know today. The revised version still holds all the youthful freshness and spirit that Rachmaninoff instilled in the original as a teenage composer.

A highlight of the concert will be Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 in F minor, which was also written during the composer’s teenage years. Shostakovich completed the work in 1925 at the age of nineteen as a Petrograd Conservatory graduation piece. Lighthearted in style, the Symphony was a tremendous success at its premiere and is still ranked amongst Shostakovich’s most beloved works.

About Vasily Petrenko
Vasily Petrenko was born in 1976 and started his music education at the St Petersburg Capella Boys Music School – the oldest music school in Russia. He then studied at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. He has participated in master classes with such major figures as Ilya Musin, Mariss Jansons, Yuri Temirkanov and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Between 1994 and 1997, Petrenko was Resident Conductor at the St Petersburg State Opera and Ballet Theatre in the Mussorgsky Memorial Theatre. Following considerable success in a number of international conducting competitions, including the Fourth Prokofiev Conducting Competition in St Petersburg (2003), First Prize in the Shostakovich Choral Conducting Competition in St Petersburg (1997), and First Prize in the Sixth Cadaques International Conducting Competition in Spain, he was appointed Chief Conductor of the State Academy Orchestra of St Petersburg from 2004 to 2007. During recent seasons, Petrenko has conducted many key orchestras in Russia including the St Petersburg Philharmonic and the Moscow Philharmonic.

Petrenko commenced his position as Principal Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2006 and six months into his first season, the contract was extended to 2012. Following his tremendous debut with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, which for the Guardian “deliver[ed] a clarity of expression that sounds as if he has been at the helm of the NYO for years,” he has been appointed their Principal Conductor to work with the orchestra each season.

Petrenko is equally at home in symphonic and operatic repertoire. In the 2007/08 season, he made his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra, his BBC Proms debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and toured with the European Union Youth Orchestra. Highlights of the 2008/09 season and beyond include his debuts with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Iceland Symphony, Russian National Orchestra, NHK Symphony Tokyo, Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Recordings with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra include a rare double bill of Fleishman’s Rothschild’s Violin and Shostakovich’s The Gamblers, and a disc of suites from Tchaikovsky’s ballets. Recently released are his debut recordings for Naxos of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony, Liszt Piano Concertos, and in March 2009 Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11, his first disc in a Shostakovich symphony project.

In October 2007, Petrenko was named Young Artist of the Year at the annual Gramophone Awards. In March 2009, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Liverpool Hope University, in recognition of the immense impact he has had on the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the city’s cultural scene.

About William Wolfram
American pianist William Wolfram was winner of the Silver Medal in both the William Kapell and the Naumberg International Piano Competitions. He also holds the distinction of Bronze medalist of the prestigious Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow.

Wolfram’s concerto debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony under the baton of Leonard Slatkin was the first in a long succession of appearances and career relationships with numerous American conductors and orchestras. He has appeared with the San Francisco Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the National Symphony, the Seattle Symphony and the Buffalo Philharmonic to name just a few; and he enjoys regular and ongoing close associations with the Dallas Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony, and the Indianapolis Symphony as well as the Minnesota Orchestra—with whom he completed a traversal of all Five Beethoven Piano Concerti in the summer of 2003.

Wolfram has worked with conductors such as Mark Wigglesworth, Andrew Litton, Jeffrey Tate, Vladimir Spivakov, Andreas Delfs, Hans Vonk, Gerard Schwarz, Keith Lockhart, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Jeffrey Kahane, James Judd, Jerzy Semkow, Jens Nygaard, Roberto Minczuk, Stefan Sanderling, JoAnn Falletta, James Paul, William Eddins, Carlos Kalmar, and Marin Alsop.

Overseas, Wolfram has appeared with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Budapest Philharmonic, the Capetown and Johannesberg Symphonies of South Africa and the National Symphony of Peru.

A very devoted supporter of contemporary music, Wolfram has close ties with composers such as Aaron Jay Kernis, Kenneth Frazelle, Marc Andre Dalbavie, Kenji Bunch, and Paul Chihara. His world premiere performance of the Chihara re-orchestration of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 under the baton of Andreas Delfs and the Milwaukee Symphony was met with great critical attention and acclaim.

His concerts least season included dates with the Baltimore Symphony and Marin Alsop (Corigliano Piano Concerto), the American Symphony Orchestra at Lincoln Center with Leon Botstein, the Phoenix Symphony with Michael Christie, and the Rochester Philharmonic with Jerzy Semkow among others.

In the recording studio, Wolfram has completed a project featuring the piano concertos of Edward Collins with Marin Alsop and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for the Albany label. He also has begun a long project with Naxos records featuring the solo piano music of Franz Liszt of which two CDs have been completed.

A graduate of the Juilliard School, Wolfram resides in New York City with his wife and two daughters.