Mostly Mozart Festival 2015 Reveals Week Two Highlights

Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, New York's celebrated annual summer classical music festival, embarks on its second week with ten performances and a wide variety of superb musicians, some making multiple appearances and some making their Festival debut.

The resident orchestra of the Festival, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, will present four concerts, beginning with performances on August 4 and 5 featuring two rising young artists making their first Festival appearances. The German conductor Cornelius Meister, who has been gaining attention from appointments in Heidelberg and more recently at the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, makes his New York and Mostly Mozart Festival debuts leading Mozart's Overture to Le nozze di Figaro and Beethoven's Symphony No. 4. Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta, also in her Mostly Mozart Festival debut, is the featured soloist for Haydn's Cello Concerto. Piano duo Anderson & Roe will perform pre-concert recitals on both evenings; details may be found in the listings below. On August 7 and 8, British conductor Edward Gardner returns to the Festival alongside another returning artist, pianist Steven Osborne, who wowed audiences last summer. Their program together with the Festival Orchestra includes Weber's Overture to Der Freischütz, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, K.491, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. Prior to these concerts on August 7 and 8, the Calidore String Quartet will perform pre-concert recitals.

The Festival will also welcome two highly-acclaimed ensembles at Alice Tully Hall. The Emerson String Quartet, a Mostly Mozart mainstay since 1984, will return to Mostly Mozart on Monday, August 3, with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. This summer's concert will feature a pre-concert recital with the group performing Haydn's String Quartet in G major, Op. 76, No. 1, followed by the main performance of Mozart's String Quartet in G major, K.387, Beethoven's String Quartet in F major, Op. 135, and Fauré's Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor, Op. 45. Additionally, the Academy of Ancient Music, described as "the finest period-instrument orchestra in the world" by Classic FM, will make its Mostly Mozart Festival debut with an all-Mendelssohn program. After his appearances with the Festival Orchestra on August 7 and 8, conductor Edward Gardner will lead the Academy of Ancient Music on Sunday, August 9 with rising-star violinist Alina Ibragimova in the Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64. The ensemble will also perform The Hebrides, Op. 26 ("Fingal's Cave") and Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 ("Scottish").

Mostly Mozart's late-night recital series "A Little Night Music" has long been a popular series with audiences, featuring intimate concerts with candlelit tables, complimentary wines, and a sparkling skyline. Four concerts will be presented on four consecutive evenings. On August 5, immediately after her appearance with the Festival Orchestra, cellist Sol Gabetta will perform a program of Rachmaninoff and Servais with pianist Ilya Yakushev. The following evening, August 6, violinst Alina Ibragimova will perform an all-Prokofiev program with accompanist Steven Osborne. The Danish String Quartet makes its Festival debut on August 7, with a recital featuring music by Mozart, Adès, and Beethoven. The final late-night recital of the week, on August 8, once again features pianist Steven Osborne in concert with the clarinetist Jean Johnson (making her Festival debut). The married couple performs music by Beethoven, Baermann, and Brahms.

About the Mostly Mozart Festival

Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival-America's first indoor summer music festival-was launched as an experiment in 1966. Called Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival, its first two seasons were devoted exclusively to the music of Mozart. Now a New York institution, Mostly Mozart continues to broaden its focus to include works by Mozart's predecessors, contemporaries, and related successors. In addition to concerts by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Mostly Mozart now includes concerts by the world's outstanding period-instrument ensembles, chamber orchestras and ensembles, and acclaimed soloists, as well as opera productions, dance, film, late-night performances, and visual art installations. Contemporary music has become an essential part of the festival, embodied in annual artists-in-residence including Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Among the many artists and ensembles who have had long associations with the festival are Joshua Bell, Christian Tetzlaff, Itzhak Perlman, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Stephen Hough, Osmo Vänskä, the Emerson String Quartet, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Mark Morris Dance Group.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Mostly Mozart Festival, and is the only orchestra in the U.S. dedicated to the music of the Classical period. Since 2002 Louis Langrée has been the Orchestra's music director, and since 2005 the Orchestra's Avery Fisher Hall home has been transformed each summer into an appropriately intimate venue for its performances. Over the years, the Orchestra has toured to such notable festivals and venues as Ravinia, Great Woods, Tanglewood, Bunkamura in Tokyo, and the Kennedy Center. Conductors who made their New York debuts leading the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra include Jérémie Rhorer, Edward Gardner, Lionel Bringuier, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, and Edo de Waart. Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, flutist James Galway, soprano Elly Ameling, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida all made their U.S. debuts with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.

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