→ COMING SOON Prokofiev by Word of Mouth Like Chen, Gil Shaham made his LA Phil debut playing the Mendelssohn Concerto at the Hollywood Bowl. But that was in 1991, when Chen was two years old. Shaham’s star was already in ascendence, thanks in large part to a celebrated substitution for Itzhak Perlman with the London Symphony Orchestra two years earlier. Born in Illinois, Shaham was raised in Israel, where he began studying violin at age seven, later working with Dorothy DeLay at the Aspen Festival and Juilliard. With more than two dozen CDs released, Shaham has won every major classical recording award, including multiple Grammys. He founded his own label, Canary Classics, in 2004, and has covered his instrument’s repertory, from Bach and Mozart to new works by Avner Dorman, William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, and others. Most of this he has also presented in regular appearances with or for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, including a memorable evening of Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas with video by David Michalek. Shaham’s recording of the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 is on Vol. 2 of his “1930s Violin Concertos” project, released earlier this year, with The Knights ensemble under Eric Jacobsen. “I have really cherished the conversations I have had discussing this score with legendary violinist Isaac Stern, who recounted conversations [he] had with Prokofiev himself,” Shaham wrote in the liner notes. This is a work he has played many times – he learned it from a copy of the score marked with David Oistrakh’s fingerings and first played it on a U.S. tour with the Israel Sinfonietta when he was 13 years old – and even recorded before, but over time ”things grow in your head, and the way you feel about the music changes.” Hear him play the concerto January 19-21. “Shaham sustains long phrases with plenty of substance to the sound, and brings a poised, well-articulated lightness to the faster passages,” Erica Jeal wrote in her review of the recording for The Guardian. (Shaham plays the “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius.)
Gil Shaham
Lifetime Achievement Itzhak Perlman’s name is one of the most recognizable brands in the arts today. In addition to 16 Grammys (including the Lifetime Achievement Award), he has four Emmys for a television presence that started on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958, and ranges from Sesame Street to The Late Show with David Letterman. He collaborated with John Williams in the scores for Schindler’s List and Memoirs of a Geisha, as well as with Tan Dun in Zhang Yimou’s film Hero. Perlman began studying violin at age three in his native Tel Aviv, and later with Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard, a generation before Shaham. He contracted polio at four, and uses crutches and a motorized scooter for mobility onstage, and has become a prominent activist for people with physical disabilities. Honored with the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he is almost as widely known as a humanitarian conscience as he is as a musical force, making news recently for cancelling a performance in North Carolina in protest of the state’s controversial new law limiting civil rights protection for LGBT people. (He had also refused to play in South Africa during apartheid and to record and play with Herbert von Karajan, over the famed Austrian conductor’s membership in the Nazi Party.) Perlman made his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in February 1966, playing the Bruch Gminor Concerto under Sixten Ehrling. He returned that summer at the Hollywood Bowl, and has been almost an annual presence now for over 50 years. He is also an active conductor, and made his LA Phil debut in that capacity at the Bowl in 2000. He returns January 24 for a Celebrity Recital with his frequent collaborator, pianist Rohan de Silva. Expect classics of the sonata repertory, as well as Perlman’s patented mix of popular short pieces.
Sergei Prokofiev
Rohan de Silva An image from Alberto Arvelo’s video for The Creation
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