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NADJA SALERNO-SONNENBERG AND THE NEW CENTURY CHAMBER
ORCHESTRA PRESENT WORLD PREMIERE BY FEATURED COMPOSER LERA
AUERBACH
MAY 23-26
San Francisco, CA – April 25, 2013 – Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New
Century Chamber Orchestra conclude their 2012-2013 season May 23-26 with the world
premiere of String Symphony “Memoria de la Luz” by Featured Composer Lera Auerbach. An
abstract exploration of past memories, String Symphony is a six movement work that blurs the
boundaries between the secular and sacred. Each movement incorporates extended techniques
and effects for the ensemble serving as a soul searching
“prayer” connecting the listener with distant memories
of the primordial light. Discussing the themes of her
work, Ms. Auerbach states, “I believe that music is
about connection – it’s about emotional connection on
the strongest emotional level that transcends our
intellect, our reason.” Also featured on the program is
Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Haydn’s Symphony No.
45.
The only purely instrumental work in Wagner’s compositional output, Siegfried Idyll was written
expressly as an offering to his wife Cosima Liszt on her first birthday of their marriage.
Performed on Christmas Eve, 1870, 16 musicians participated in the memorable performance
including Hans Richter on trumpet, prior to his future success as a world famous conductor. The
work was eventually published at a time of financial difficulty for Wagner and became more
commonly performed with a larger string scoring, rendering the chamber version a rarity.
Haydn’s Symphony No. 45 “Farewell” serves as an insight into the composer’s exploration into
the symphonic genre as he sought new compositionally creative directions. The key of F-sharp
minor was extremely rare in the 18th century and, as far as historical research can tell, this was
the only time that it was ever used in a symphony. It is the final
movement in the symphony that earned the symphony its “Farewell”
nickname. Written for Haydn’s employer Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, it
was first performed at his summer palace in Eszterhaza, Hungary,
where the musicians in the orchestra were not permitted to bring their
families. After the Prince extended his stay for several weeks, Haydn
decided to incorporate a subtle message to the Prince into the
symphony on behalf of the musicians who, one by one, would complete
their part, pack up and leave the stage leaving only two solitary violins
to finish the work.
The program will be given on four evenings in different locations around the Bay Area:
Thursday, May 23 at 8 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley, Friday, May 24 at 8 p.m.,
First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto, Saturday, May 25 at 8 p.m., SF Conservatory of
Music, San Francisco and Sunday, May 26 at 5 p.m., Osher Marin JCC, San Rafael. New
Century offers an Open Rehearsal Tuesday, May 21 at 10 a.m., SF Conservatory of Music, San
Francisco for a price of only $8. The Open Rehearsal will offer a sneak preview of the concert
repertoire, while allowing audiences to experience the musical democracy of a rehearsal without
a conductor.
The concerts will also feature a From the Stage video presentation, serving as a short, dynamic
visual program note to provide insight about the world premiere from Lera Auerbach and Nadja
Salerno-Sonnenberg.
Lera Auerbach is the Featured Composer for the 2012-2013 Season, a program established by
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg in her first season as music director to commission new works for the
chamber ensemble. Ms. Auerbach is the orchestra’s fifth Featured Composer, following Clarice
Assad, William Bolcom, Mark O’Connor, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Lera Auerbach’s Featured
Composer Residency is made possible in part by the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation.
Characterized by her stylistic freedom and juxtaposition of tonal and atonal musical language,
virtuoso pianist and composer Lera Auerbach is one of the most sought after creative artists
today, encompassing music, literature and visual arts. A prolific composer, Auerbach’s published
works include more than 90 operas and ballets, symphonic and chamber music, with
performances by leading orchestras across the States and abroad such as the New York
Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo Philharmonic. Her ballet The Little
Mermaid, originally commissioned by Hamburg Ballett and the Royal Danish Ballet, has been
performed worldwide since its premiere in Copenhagen in 2005 and received its U.S. premiere
with the San Francisco Ballet.
As a performer, Auerbach appears regularly at renowned venues such as the Lincoln Center in
New York, Orchestra Hall Chicago, Moscow Conservatory, Tokyo Opera City and Herkulesaal
München. Lera Auerbach is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the
Hindemith Prize by the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany, Deutschlandfunk’s
Förderpreis, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship and as a member of the Young Global Leaders
forum by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She has also featured as
Composer-in-Residence at numerous international festivals including the Marlboro Music
Festival, Verbier Festival, the Pacific Music Festival and Kammermusikfest Lockenhaus.
Lera Auerbach was born in the city of Chelyabinsk at the gateway of Siberia. Following the
success of her first opera at 12 years of age, she was invited to tour the United States in 1991,
subsequently choosing to stay and continue her studies in piano and composition at the Juilliard
School. She is the youngest composer on the roster of Hamburg’s prestigious international music
publishing company Hans Sikorski, home to Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Schnittke.
CALENDAR EDITORS, PLEASE NOTE:
Auerbach World Premiere
May 23-26, 2013
Auerbach: String Symphony “Memoria de la Luz”
World Premiere Commission
Wagner: Siegfried Idyll (in celebration of the bi-centennial of Wagner’s birth)
Haydn: Symphony No. 45 “Farewell”
Concerts:
Open rehearsal: Tuesday, May 21, SF Conservatory of Music, San Francisco, 10 a.m. - 12:30
p.m.
Thursday, May 23, First Congregational Church, Berkeley, 8 p.m.
Friday, May 24, First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto, 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 25, SF Conservatory of Music, San Francisco, 8 p.m.
Sunday, May 26, Osher Marin JCC, San Rafael, 5 p.m.
Single tickets range in price from $29 to $59 and are on sale through City Box Office:
www.cityboxoffice.com or at (415) 392-4400. Open rehearsal tickets are priced at $8.
For further information on New Century, please visit www.ncco.org. Media contacts are listed at
the end of the release.
About New Century Chamber Orchestra:
The New Century Chamber Orchestra, one of only a handful of conductorless ensembles in the
world, was founded in 1992 by cellist, Miriam Perkoff, and violist, Wieslaw
Pogorzelski. Musical decisions are made collaboratively by the 19-member string ensemble,
including San Francisco Bay Area musicians and those who travel from across the U.S. and
Europe to perform together. World-renowned violin soloist, chamber musician and recording
artist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg leads from the concertmaster chair. She joined the ensemble as
music director and concertmaster in January 2008, bringing “a new sense of vitality and
determination, as well as an audacious swagger that is an unmistakable fingerprint of its leader,”
according to Gramophone magazine.
In addition to performing classic pieces of chamber orchestra repertoire, New Century
commissions important new works, breathes life into rarely heard jewels of the past and
performs world premieres. The New Century Chamber Orchestra Featured Composer program
commissions composers to write new works, with the goals of expanding chamber orchestra
repertoire and providing audiences with a deeper understanding of today’s living composers. The
orchestra provides insight into the breadth of the Featured Composer’s work by performing a
variety of pieces by the composer throughout the season.
In 2011, Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg and New Century embarked on the Orchestra’s first two
national tours together. The performances in the Midwest, East Coast, and Southern California
garnered record-breaking audiences and national critical acclaim. In January and February 2013,
New Century followed with a highly-successful nine-state national tour, the largest and most
ambitious artistic undertaking in the organization’s history. In addition to touring efforts, New
Century’s national footprint has also continued to grow with a rapidly increasing national radio
presence. The ensemble has been broadcast a total of 21 times on American Public Media’s
Performance Today, with each broadcast heard on 260 radio stations across the country.
The orchestra has released six compact discs. The two latest albums, Together (released August
2009) and LIVE: Barber, Strauss, Mahler (released November 2010), were recorded with Nadja
Salerno-Sonnenberg on the NSS Music label. Other recordings include a 1996 collaborative
project with Kent Nagano and Berkeley Symphony Orchestra featuring the work of 20th century
Swiss composer Frank Martin, and Written With the Heart’s Blood, a 1997 Grammy Award
finalist, both on the New Albion label. In 1998 the orchestra recorded and released works of
Argentine composers Alberto Williams and Alberto Ginastera on the d’Note label, and, in 2004,
the orchestra recorded and released Oculus, a CD of Kurt Rohde’s compositions on the
Mondovibe label. All of the recordings have been distributed both internationally and in the
United States. The orchestra's first concert DVD, filmed by Paola di Florio, director of the 1999
Academy Award-nominated film Speaking in Strings, was released May 8, 2012. The DVD
weaves together documentary footage and a live tour concert from a February 2011 performance
at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica.
About Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg:
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, an internationally-acclaimed violin soloist and chamber musician
best known for her exhilarating performances and passionate interpretations, joined the New
Century Chamber Orchestra in January 2008 as music director. Nadja’s first four seasons were
hailed as a tremendous success by audiences and critics alike – “a marriage that works,” in her
words, and renewing enthusiasm for “one of the most burnished and exciting ensembles in the
Bay Area,” according to Rich Scheinin of the San Jose Mercury News.
A powerful and innovative presence on the recording scene, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
continues to enrich the collection of her record label NSS Music, which she started in 2005. The
label’s roster of artists includes Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg, pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, horn
player John Cerminaro, pianist/composer Clarice Assad, conductor Marin Alsop, the American
String Quartet, the Colorado Symphony, Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paulo and the
New Century Chamber Orchestra. Together, the first CD with New Century, features Astor
Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. The second CD, a live recording featuring Strauss’s
Metamorphosen, Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Mahler’s Adagietto from Symphony No. 5, has
been praised as “brilliant” (Oregon Music News), and allmusic.com advised, “For those who like
orchestral music for strings that takes nothing less than revelation as its goal, this is a musthave.”
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg’s professional career began in 1981 when she won the Walter W.
Naumburg International Violin Competition. In 1983 she was recognized with an Avery Fisher
Career Grant, and in 1999, she was honored with the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize. Nadja
Salerno-Sonnenberg was born in Rome and immigrated to the United States at the age of eight to
study at The Curtis Institute of Music. She later studied with Dorothy DeLay at The Juilliard
School. For more information on Nadja, please visit www.nadjasalernosonnenberg.com and
www.nssmusic.com.
PHOTO CREDITS
Lera Auerbach / F. Reinhold
New Century / Kristen Loken
Press and Media Relations Contact:
Karen Ames Communications
Karen Ames and Brenden Guy
(415) 641-7474
[email protected]
[email protected]
Sarah Riddle, Director of Marketing and Institutional Giving
(415) 357-1111, ext. 305
[email protected]