By Eileen Wingard
LA JOLLA, California — For his final season as Music Director of the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, before handing over the director’s reins to the brilliant Israeli pianist, Inon Barnatan, violinist Cho-Liang Lin has assembled an outstanding group of artists to perform at sixteen concerts. Each concert includes a Prelude Lecture or performance, beginning an hour before.
The second night of the festival, Saturday, August 4, 8:00 p.m. is billed as “An Evening with Yefim Bronfman,” and will feature that classical icon. Programmed are the Schubert Piano Sonata in C Minor, the Schumann Quintet for Piano and Strings and Mozart’s Sonata in E Minor for Violin and Piano.
Bronfman was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1958, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. At the age of 15, he and his parents escaped to Israel. An America-Israel Cultural Foundation Award enabled him to study with Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy. Bronfman toured with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1976 and that year, emigrated to the US, where he studied with Rudolph Serkin at the Curtis Institute and Leon Fleisher at the Juilliard School in NYC. He and outgoing Summerfest director, Cho-Liang Lin, are close friends. Lin will also participate in that program.
Another of the great pianists of today will be featured in “An Evening with Emanuel Ax,” on Wednesday, August 22, 8:00 p.m. Included in the evening’s offerings are Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Haydn, Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces, Mozart’s Trio in E-flat Major, and Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor.
Ax was born in the former Soviet Union in 1949 in Lviv, Ukraine. From there, his family moved to Warsaw,Poland before emigrating to Winnepeg, Canada. Ax entered Juilliard, where he now teaches. He is considered one of the great soloists of today. In addition to his solo career, he has collaborated with many famous artists, including Isaac Stern and Shlomo Mintz. Lin will also be playing that evening, as will Ax’s student, Orion Weiss. Violist Toby Hoffman and his brother, cellist Gary Hoffman are part of that program. I recall their father, Irwin Hoffman, a protégé of Serge Koussevitzky, under whom I played during my summer at the Berkshire Music Festival in Tanglewood, Massachusetts. Irwin, whose conducting career included music director of the Vancouver Symphony, the Florida Orchestra and orchestras in Columbia and Costa Rica, fathered four children, all musicians. His eldest, Joel, is a pianist and composer, his daughter, Deborah, plays harp.
The Hoffman brothers will also be participating in “The Glory of Cremona: Stradivari, Guarneri & Amati,” on Sunday, August 19, 3:00 p.m. with works by Telemann, Tchaikovsky, Massenet, Schumann, Dvorak, and Mendelsohn.
Another concert featuring an artist with Israeli ties is “An Evening with Adele Anthony & Gil Shaham.” Shaham is regarded as one of the most talented violinists on the concert stage. He was born in 1971 in Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, when his Israeli parents were on an academic fellowship at the University of Illinois. When Gil was two years old, his family returned to Jerusalem. At the age of eleven, an AICF scholarship allowed him to study at Juilliard with Dorothy Delay. It was there that he later met his Tasmanian-born wife, Adele Anthony, with whom he will share in a program of works for two violins by Leclair, Moszkowski and Bartok, culminating in a work by Milone for twelve violins. Other festival violinists along with students from the Bravo! International Music Academy will participate in the final number.
In celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, the festival is devoting an evening, Wednesday, August 8, 8:00 p.m. “Late Night with Leonard Bernstein,” hosted by his daughter, Jamie Bernstein, featuring soprano Amy Burton and pianists John Musto and Michael Boriskin in a multimedia portrait of that great conductor-composer-pianist.
The concluding concert, “Finale with David Zinman,” will feature works by Elgar and Beethoven. It will include pianists Emanuel Ax and Jon Kimura Parker, violinist, Cho-Liang Lin, cellist, Gary Hoffman, the New Orford String Quartet, the San Diego Master Chorale and the Summerfest Orchestra.
All concerts, except the finale, will take place at the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, 9500 Gilman Drive, on the campus of UCSD in La Jolla. The Finale will take place at the Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., San Diego.
There will also be three free 12:30 p.m. Encounters at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library August 9, 16 and 22.
For information on all the concerts and ticket prices, contact the La Jolla Music Society at 858-459-3728 or go to LJMS.ORG.
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Wingard, a retired violinist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts. She may be contacted via eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com