Royal Philharmonic Orchestra & Charles Dutoit

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) was considered ‘the most powerful and outstanding Orchestra of our generation’ by the UK’s Sunday Times will have concerts with Maestro Charles Dutoit on 29~30 June 2013 at Seoul Arts Center Concert Hall. On the first day, the international acclaimed pianist Yuja Wang who overwhelmed  audience with playing of incredible technique will make a debut in Korea and on second day, world’s renowned violinist Stefan Pi Jackiw will play with RPO. 
One of the UK’s top 5 orchestras, RPO was founded in 1946 at the latest among five orchestras. However, the Orchestra had rapidly grown under distinguished conductors including Rudolf Kempe, Andre Previn, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniele Gatti. Many players in RPO became remarkable star players such as  flutist James Galway, Clarinetist Jack Brymer, Hornist Dennis Brain.  
Maestro Charles Dutoit was appointed to chief conductor and music advisor of the Philadelphia Orchestra as well as artistic director and principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He recorded more than 170 albums and 40 of them were awarded. His outstanding careers such as the recipient of national prize by the government of France, Canada and honorary citizen of the City of Philadelphia in the USA prove his world’s reputation.   
This concert features Yuja Wang’s very first Korea tour who was more spotlighted by Korean fans after her brilliant performance at the Verbier Festival throughout YouTube. In addition, another soloist, Violinist Stefan Jackiw was praised ‘talent that’s off the scale’ by Washington Post will perform <Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto> which is the same program as Charles Dutoit and Kyung Wha Chung recorded and was selected as the very best album of the program. The violinist will present much better playing than young Kyung Wha’s brilliant technicians.

Program
6/29_ Mendelssohn  <Hebrides overture>, Chopin <Piano Concerto Nº 1>, Debussy <La mer>, Ravel <Daphnis & Chloe Suite Nº 2> 
6/30_ Weber <Euryanthe Overture>, Mendelssohn <Violin Concerto>, Berlioz <Symphonie Fantastique>

[ARTIST PROFILE]

Charles Dutoit, conductor

Recently appointed Chief Conductor and Music Advisor of the Philadelphia Orchestra as well as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Dutoit regularly collaborates with the world's pre-eminent orchestras and soloists. 
Renowned for polished and idiomatic interpretations of an eclectic array of musical styles and since his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980, Charles Dutoit has been invited each season to conduct the other major orchestras of the United States, including those of Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Pittsburgh. 
He has also performed regularly with all the great orchestras of Europe, including the Berlin Philharmonic and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra as well as with all the London orchestras, the major orchestras of Japan, South America and Australia. 
Charles Dutoit has recorded extensively for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips, CBS, Erato among other labels with American, European and Japanese orchestras. His more than 170 recordings, half of them with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, have garnered over 40 awards and distinctions around the world. 
Charles Dutoit also participated in a series of educational documentary films entitled Cities of Music produced by the NHK Television of Tokyo and which features ten musical capitals of the world. 
In 1991, Charles Dutoit was made Honorary Citizen of the City of Philadelphia. In 1995, the government of Quebec named him Grand Officier de l'Ordre national du Quebec and in 1996, he was invested as Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. He is the recipient of two awards by the Canadian Conference of the Arts and in 1998, Charles Dutoit was invested as Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest award of merit whose other honorary recipients include John Kenneth Galbraith, James Hillier, Nelson Mandela, The Queen Mother, Vaclav Havel and Boutros Boutros-Ghali. 
Charles Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland and his extensive musical training included history of music, composition, violin, viola, piano and percussion at the conservatoires of Geneva, Siena, Venice and Boston. A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art and architecture, Charles Dutoit has traveled in all 195 nations of the world. He maintains residences in Switzerland, Paris, Montreal, Buenos Aires and Tokyo. 

[ARTIST PROFILE]

Yuja Wang, piano

Twenty-five year old Chinese pianist Yuja Wang is widely recognized for playing that combines the spontaneity and fearless imagination of youth with the discipline and precision of a mature artist.  Regularly lauded for her controlled, prodigious technique, Yuja has been praised for her authority over the most complex technical demands of the repertoire, the depth of her musical insight, as well as her fresh interpretations and graceful, charismatic stage presence.
Yuja is an exclusive recording artist for Deutsche Grammophon.  Her debut recording, Sonatas & Etudes, released in the spring of 2009, “suggests a combination of blazing technique and a rare instinct for poetry” wrote Gramophone magazine, which named Yuja the Classic FM Gramophone Awards 2009 Young Artist of the Year.  For her second recording, Transformation, Yuja received an Echo Award 2011 as “Young Artist of the Year”.  Yuja next collaborated with Maestro Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra to record her first concerto album featuring Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor which was nominated for a Grammy® as “Best Classical Instrumental Solo.”   Her most recent record, Fantasia, is a collection of encore pieces by Albeniz, Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Saint-Saens, Scriabin and others.
In the few short years since her 2005 debut with the National Arts Center Orchestra led by Pinchas Zukerman, Yuja has already performed with many of the world’s prestigious orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, in the U.S., and abroad with the Berlin Staatskapelle, China Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala, Israel Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orquesta Nacional Espana, the NHK Symphony in Tokyo, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra Mozart and Santa Cecilia, among others.   
Already Yuja has also worked with many of the world’s esteemed conductors including Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Mikko Franck, Manfred Honeck, Pietari Inkinen, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Sir Roger Norrington, Antonio Pappano, Yuri Temirkanov, Michael Tilson-Thomas and Pinchas Zukerman. 
In the 2012-13 season Yuja returns to the Israel Philharmonic to work with Zubin Mehta, followed by a tour of the U.S. that includes performances at Carnegie and Disney halls.  She then launches into a three-week tour of Asia with the San Francisco Symphony and Tilson Thomas, traveling to  Macau, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan.  Yuja will again join the principal players from the Berlin Philharmonic with a series of all-Brahms concerts in Paris and Berlin, and will be presented by the Berlin Philharmonic in recital at the Philharmonie.  In spring 2014 she returns to Carnegie Hall again in both recital and a concerto appearance with the San Francisco Symphony, and then a recital tour of Japan where she makes Suntory Hall recital debut.

[ARTIST PROFILE]

Stefan Pi Jackiw, violin

Violinist Stefan Jackiw is recognized as “one of the best and most interesting young violinists heard in a long time” (Chicago Sun-Times), captivating audiences with playing that is “striking for its intelligence and sensitivity” (Boston Globe).
Hailed for “talent that’s off the scale” (Washington Post),
Jackiw has appeared as soloist with the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, among others, and he has collaborated with such renowned conductors as Marin Alsop, Andrew Davis, Giancarlo Guerrero, Hannu Lintu, Ludovic Morlot, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Mikhail Pletnev, Arild Remmereit, Gerard Schwarz and Yuri Temirkanov. His solo performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Australia’s Sydney Opera House in March was seen live on YouTube by more than 30 million people worldwide.  
In the 2012/13 season, Jackiw makes his Carnegie Hall recital debut in November, when he performs Stravinsky, Brahms, Strauss and a world premiere work by David Fulmer with pianist Anna Polonsky in Weill Recital Hall. Beyond Carnegie, Jackiw performs recitals throughout the U.S. this season. Other season highlights include performances of the Mendelssohn Concerto at the Detroit Symphony with James Gaffigan, with the Royal Philharmonic under Charles Dutoit, and with the Netherlands Philharmonic and Louie Langree; Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and The Hague Philharmonic; Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 with the Melbourne Symphony and Sir Andrew Davis; and the South American premiere of a concerto by Osvaldo Golijov with the Sao Paolo Symphony and Marin Alsop.

Jackiw is also an active recitalist and chamber musician. He has performed in numerous important festivals and concert series, including the Aspen Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, and Caramoor International Music Festival, the Celebrity Series of Boston, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Washington Performing Arts Society and the Louvre Recital Series in Paris. He is a regular participant at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music and Bard Music Festivals. At the opening night of Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in New York, Jackiw was the only young artist invited to perform, playing alongside such artists as Emanuel Ax, Renee Fleming, Evgeny Kissin, and James Levine.

On disc, Jackiw is garnering acclaim for his debut album of the Brahms Violin Sonatas with pianist Max Levinson (Sony). Fanfare magazine proclaimed, “Jackiw is fantastic. …This is now the recording of Brahms’s violin sonatas to have.”

[ARTIST PROFILE]

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Formed in 1946 by Sir Thomas Beecham, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) has enjoyed more than sixty-five years of success, giving first-class performances of a wide range of musical repertoire all over the world with artists of the highest calibre. Under the inspired leadership of Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Charles Dutoit, the Orchestra maintains and builds on a demanding schedule of performances, tours, community and education work, and recordings. 
Throughout its history, the Orchestra has been directed by distinguished conductors including Rudolf Kempe, Antal Dorati, Andre Previn, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniele Gatti. Today the Orchestra continues to enjoy the support of high-ranking conductors such as Pinchas Zukerman, Grzegorz Nowak and Daniele Gatti.

Central to the RPO’s thriving concert schedule is its prestigious annual series at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. At the Orchestra’s London home Cadogan Hall, the intimate and luxurious surroundings provide the perfect concert atmosphere in an idyllic location. Completing the Orchestra’s London programme of concerts, the iconic Royal Albert Hall provides the ideal setting for a varied series of monumental performances, ranging from large-scale choral and orchestral works to themed evenings of familiar repertoire.  
The Orchestra offers a comprehensive regional touring programme, with established residencies in Croydon, Northampton, Lowestoft, Reading, Crawley, Ipswich, High Wycombe, Aylesbury and Dartford. Internationally the Orchestra is in high demand, undertaking several major tours each season. Recent tours have included performances in the USA, Canada, China, Russia, Azerbaijan, Spain, Italy, Germany and Japan.

The Orchestra’s vibrant community and education programme, RPO resound, involves specially trained musicians from the Orchestra, alongside accomplished project leaders, delivering pioneering projects where music is used as a powerful and inspirational force.  
Frequently found in the recording studio, the Orchestra records extensively for film and television as well as for all the major commercial record companies.

[PRESS QUOTES]

‘The RPO do sensuousness uncommonly well. The end result was rich yet delicate, with wonderfully liquid woodwind solos and an exquisite sheen on the strings.’
-The Guardian

‘Hats off to the RPO who sounded reborn.’
-The Independent

‘The strings are highly impressive ... the RPO offers muscular brass and first-class woodwinds. The rhythmic intricacies and sharp contrasts in mood and tempi were dextrously handled by Dutoit and the musicians delivered the music with fleet bravura.’
-Chicago Classical Review

‘A practically superhuman keyboard technique with artistic eloquence that is second to none ‘
-San Francisco Chronicle

‘one of the best and most interesting young violinists heard in a long time’
-Chicago Sun Times

[PROGRAM]

2013 June 29 (Piano : Yuja Wang)

2013 June 30 (Violin : Stefan Pi Jackiw)