Pittsburgh Symphony Opens Season With Russian Pianist Danill Trifonov Tonight

Pittsburgh Symphony Music Director Manfred Honeck opens the 2015-2016 BNY Mellon Grand Classics season with the return of phenomenal Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov this weekend, September 18 & 20 at Heinz Hall.

Opening weekend has a distinctly Italian flair, offering performances of Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 "Italian" and Tchaikovsky's Capriccio italien, bastions of the orchestral repertoire that were both inspired by the sights and sounds of Italy.

Between these two great works, Trifonov joins the orchestra for the first of two appearances this season, giving audiences the rare opportunity to hear him perform the Pittsburgh premiere of his own composition, Concerto in E-flat minor for Piano and Orchestra. The piece is Trifonov's first large-scale orchestral composition and is a remarkable contribution to the centuries-old tradition of the composer-virtuosos who performed their own works. Zachary Lewis wrote in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the piece's premiere, "Even having seen it, one cannot quite believe it. Such is the artistry of pianist-composer Daniil Trifonov."

A pre-concert talk, open to all ticket holders, led by Assistant Conductor Andrés Franco will occur on stage one hour before each concert. Program notes are available online at pittsburghsymphony.org/trifonov and on the PSO mobile app the day of the concert.

The concert begins at 8 p.m. on Friday and 2:30 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets, ranging in price from $27 to $94, can be purchased by calling the Heinz Hall box office at 412-392-4900 or visiting pittsburghsymphony.org/trifonov.

The Pittsburgh Symphony would like to recognize and thank BNY Mellon for its 2015-2016 title sponsorship of BNY Mellon Grand Classics. Fairmont Pittsburgh is the official hotel of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Delta Air Lines is the official airline of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

About the Artists

Manfred Honeck has served as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra since the 2008-2009 season. Together with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Honeck's widely celebrated performances and distinctive interpretations continue to receive international recognition. To great acclaim, Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra regularly perform in major music capitals and festivals, among them the BBC Proms, Musikfest Berlin, Lucerne Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival, Beethovenfest Bonn, Grafenegg Festival, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra have also built a close relationship with the Musikverein in Vienna. Following a week-long residency in 2012, they will return once again for three performances in the course of an extensive tour of Europe in spring 2016.

Honeck's successful work with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has been extensively documented on recordings with the Reference and Exton labels. The first SACD released by Reference Records of Strauss tone poems, drew rave reviews. The second recording, of Dvo?ák's Symphony No. 8 and the Symphonic Suite from Janá?ek's opera Jen?fa, conceptualized by Honeck himself, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 was released in February 2015 to critical acclaim and additional recordings are completed for future release. Several recordings, among them Mahler's Symphony No. 4, which won a 2012 International Classical Music Award, are also available on the Japanese label Exton.

As a guest conductor, Honeck has worked with the world's leading orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris and Accademia di Santa Cecilia Rome. In the United States, Honeck has conducted the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra. He is also a regular guest at the Verbier Festival. In 2013, Honeck gave his successful debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, resulting in a CD recording of Dvo?ák together with Anne-Sophie Mutter for Deutsche Grammophon which received an Echo Klassik award in 2014. The 2015-2016 season sees him return to Bamberg, Stuttgart, Rome, Stockholm and New York, as well as the Munich Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, among others.

Born in Austria, Honeck received his musical training at the Academy of Music in Vienna. Many years of experience as a member of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and at the helm of the Vienna Jeunesse Orchestra have given his conducting a distinctive stamp. Honeck began his career as assistant to Claudio Abbado in Vienna. Subsequently, he was engaged by the Zurich Opera House, where he was bestowed the prestigious European Conductor's Award in 1993. Honeck was one of three main conductors of the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig and in Oslo, he assumed the post of music director at the Norwegian National Opera and was engaged as principal guest conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. From 2000 to 2006, he was music director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm and, from 2008 to 2011, principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he resumed for another three years at the beginning of the 2013-2014 season.

From 2007 to 2011, Honeck was music director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart where he conducted premieres including Berlioz's Les Troyens, Mozart's Idomeneo, Verdi's Aida, Richard Strauss's Rosenkavalier, Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites and Wagner's Lohengrin and Parsifal, as well as numerous symphonic concerts. His operatic guest appearances include Semperoper Dresden, Komische Oper Berlin, Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, Royal Opera of Copenhagen, the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg and the Salzburg Festival.

Honeck has received honorary doctorates from St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania and, most recently, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Moreover, he has been artistic director of the "International Concerts Wolfegg" in Germany for more than 20 years.

Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov has made a spectacular ascent to classical music stardom since winning First Prize at both the Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein competitions in 2011 at the age of 20.

Trifonov launched the 2014-2015 season with the Seattle Symphony, making his debut in Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. For first appearances with the Dallas Symphony and returns to the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony and London's Philharmonia Orchestra, he performed the first concerto of Rachmaninov, whose orchestral output continues to figure prominently in the pianist's programming; he also plays the second concerto with the Vienna Symphony; the third with Washington's National Symphony and London's Philharmonia; and the "Paganini Variations" with the Atlanta Symphony, Czech Philharmonic and for his Toronto Symphony debut. Trifonov joined the Cleveland Orchestra for Shostakovich's first concerto, and played Chopin on European tours with the Kremerata Baltica and Philharmonia Orchestra.

Last season saw the release of Trifonov: The Carnegie Recital, the pianist's first recording as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist. Captured live at his sold-out 2013 Carnegie Hall recital debut, which showcased "his uncommon technical gifts and poetic sensibility" (The New York Times). Further recital engagements took the pianist from Chicago to London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro and other international musical hotspots, and he collaborated with 19 of the world's foremost orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the symphony orchestras of Washington, San Francisco and London. He also toured with the Israel Philharmonic, and made high-profile festival appearances in Edinburgh, Verbier and Lucerne.

Recent recitals have also taken Trifonov to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Boston's Celebrity Series, London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw (Master Piano Series), Berlin's Philharmonie (the Kammermusiksaal), Munich's Herkulessaal, Bavaria's Schloss Elmau, Zurich's Tonhalle, the Lucerne Piano Festival, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris and the Seoul Arts Center.

It was during the 2010-2011 season that Trifonov won medals at three of the music world's most prestigious competitions, taking Third Prize in Warsaw's Chopin Competition, First Prize in Tel Aviv's Rubinstein Competition, and both First Prize and Grand Prix - an additional honor bestowed on the best overall competitor in any category - in Moscow's Tchaikovsky Competition. In 2013, he was also awarded the prestigious Franco Abbiati Prize for Best Instrumental Soloist by Italy's foremost music critics.

Born in Nizhny, Novgorod, in 1991, Trifonov began his musical training at the age of five, and went on to attend Moscow's Gnessin School of Music as a student of Tatiana Zelikman, before pursuing his piano studies with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has also studied composition, and continues to write for piano, chamber ensemble and orchestra.

Recently named music director of Tulsa's Signature Symphony at TCC and assistant conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Andrés Franco has established himself as a conductor to watch. He is in his fifth season as principal conductor of the multimedia project Caminos del Inka and his third season as artistic director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra's Summer Festival, "Concerts in the Garden." Franco's 2014-2015 highlights included subscription debuts with the Columbus and Fort Worth symphony orchestras, as well as return engagements with the Houston and Saint Louis symphonies. In 2015-2016, he will make subscription debuts with the Chicago Sinfonietta and the Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra, and will return to conduct the Corpus Christi and Fort Worth symphony orchestras. A native of Colombia, Franco is dedicated to preserving and performing the music of the Americas. As principal conductor of Caminos del Inka, he has led many performances of Latin American music by composers of our time, such as Jimmy López, Diego Luzuriaga and the popular Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. Born into a musical family, Franco began piano studies with his father, Jorge Franco. An accomplished pianist, he studied with Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Jose Feghali and attended piano workshops with Rudolph Buchbinder in Switzerland and Lev Naumov in France. He studied conducting with Marin Alsop, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Kurt Masur, Gustav Meier, Helmut Rilling, Gerard Schwarz and Leonard Slatkin. Franco holds a bachelor's degree in piano performance from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, as well as Master of Music degrees in piano performance and conducting from Texas Christian University.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, known for its artistic excellence for more than 120 years, is credited with a rich history of the world's finest conductors and musicians, and a strong commitment to the Pittsburgh region and its citizens. Past music directors have included Fritz Reiner (1938-1948), William Steinberg (1952-1976), Andre Previn (1976-1984), Lorin Maazel (1984-1996) and Mariss Jansons (1995-2004). This tradition of outstanding international music directors was furthered in fall 2008, when Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck became music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony. The orchestra has been at the forefront of championing new American works, and gave the first performance of Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 1 "Jeremiah" in 1944 and John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine in 1986. The Pittsburgh Symphony has a long and illustrious history in the areas of recordings and radio concerts. As early as 1936, the Pittsburgh Symphony broadcast on the airwaves coast-to-coast and in the late 1970s it made the ground breaking PBS series "Previn and the Pittsburgh." The orchestra has received increased national attention since 1982 through network radio broadcasts on Public Radio International, produced by Classical WQED-FM 89.3, made possible by the musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. With a long and distinguished history of touring both domestically and overseas since 1900-including 36 international tours to Europe, the Far East and South America-the Pittsburgh Symphony continues to be critically acclaimed as one of the world's greatest orchestras.

Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts is owned and operated by Pittsburgh Symphony, Inc., a non-profit organization, and is the year-round home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The cornerstone of Pittsburgh's Cultural District, Heinz Hall also hosts many other events that do not feature its world-renowned orchestra, including Broadway shows, comedians, speakers and much more. For a full calendar of upcoming non-symphony events at the hall, visit heinzhall.org

Friday, September 18 at 8 p.m.

Sunday, September 20 at 2:30 p.m.

Heinz Hall

PITTSBURGH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

BNY MELLON GRAND CLASSICS: TRIFONOV PLAYS TRIFONOV

MANFRED HONECK, conductor

DANIIL TRIFONOV, piano

Felix Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4 in A major, Opus 90, "Italian"

I. Allegro vivace

II. Andante con moto

III. Con moto moderato

IV. Saltarello: Presto

Daniil Trifonov Concerto in E-flat minor for Piano and Orchestra

Andante - Allegro non troppo

Andante

Allegro vivace

Mr. Trifonov

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Capriccio italien, Opus 45