CSO to Launch New Season at the Taft Theatre Next Week

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra welcomes back pianist and legendary Beethoven interpreter Emanuel Ax for its season opening concerts on Thursday (7:30 p.m.) and Saturday (8 p.m.) September 8 & 10 at Taft Theatre.

Mr. Ax, respected worldwide for his emotional power and expressiveness, will play Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, nicknamed "Emperor." The program, which is led by CSO Music Director, Louis Langrée, will also include the CSO performing Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, which complements the Orchestra's rich sound.

The Los Angeles Times, along with virtually every other major review outlet, has hailed Mr. Ax: "His greatness, his overwhelming authority as musician, technician and probing intellect emerges quickly as he plays. Within minutes, we are totally captured by his intensity and pianistic achievement."

Tickets for these concerts start at just $12 and are available by calling the CSO Box Office at (513) 381-3300 or visiting www.cincinnatisymphony.org.

The Orchestra's home at Music Hall is closed for renovation until fall of 2017. The CSO will perform its 2016-17 season concerts at the historic Taft Theatre in Downtown Cincinnati. The Orchestra has invested over $3 million in improvements to the Taft Theatre, making it an audience- and performer-friendly "home away from home." Subscribers to the CSO and Pops enjoy many benefits, including free, guaranteed parking thanks to the generosity of Western & Southern. For updates on the Music Hall renovation or the season at the Taft Theatre, visit cincinnatisymphony.org/musichall.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Louis Langrée, music director

The French conductor Louis Langrée has been Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York since 2002 and of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra since the 2013/14 season. The Mostly Mozart Festival celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2016, in a programme including Così fan tutte with the Freiburger Barockorchester, the latter following

performances at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. With Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, recent and future highlights have included a performance in New York as part of their anniversary season of Lincoln Center's Great Performers series, a tour to Asia and several world premieres, including three Concertos for Orchestra by Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich and Zhou Tian.

Guest conducting projects over the next two seasons include Louis Langrée's debut with the Philhadelphia and Konzerthaus Berlin Orchestras and return engagements with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Wiener Symphoniker and Hallé. With the Orchestre National de France he will conduct Debussy's opera and Schoenberg's tone poem based on Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande. He will also return to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Wiener Staatsoper and Opéra Comique in Paris.

Louis Langrée has conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker (in concert in both Vienna and Salzburg) and London Symphony Orchestra. He has worked with many other orchestras around the world including the London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Santa Cecilia in Rome, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Budapest Festival, Sao Paulo and NHK Symphony Orchestras. Festival appearances have included Wiener Festwochen, Salzburg Mozartwoche and Whitsun, BBC Proms and Glyndebourne Festival Opera. He has held positions as Music Director of the Orchestre de Picardie (1993-98) and Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège (2001-06) and was Chief Conductor of the Camerata Salzburg (2011-16).

Louis Langrée was the Music Director of Opéra National de Lyon (1998-2000) and Glyndebourne Touring Opera (1998-2003). He has also conducted at La Scala, Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opéra-Bastille and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Dresden Staatsoper, Grand Théâtre in Geneva and the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam.

Louis Langrée's first commercial recording with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra features Copland's A Lincoln Portrait (narrated by Dr Maya Angelou) and world premieres by Nico Muhly and David Lang. Louis Langrée's recordings have received several awards from Gramophone and Midem Classical. He was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2006 and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 2014.

Emanuel Ax, piano

Born in Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His studies at the Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award. Additionally, he attended Columbia University where he majored in French. Mr. Ax captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists followed four years later by the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.

Two major projects are planned for the second half of the upcoming 2014-15 season, the first being a two week "Celebrate the Piano" festival with the Toronto Symphony curated by Mr. Ax that will present performances by multiple pianists, including Mr. Ax, exploring the many facets of the piano. The second will be a European tour with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin beginning with a joint appearance in Carnegie Hall. Throughout the season he will return to the orchestras of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Washington, Nashville, Atlanta, St. Louis, Montreal and Ottawa. Recitals will take him to Vancouver, San Francisco and the mid-west ending in Lincoln Center's Tully Hall where he will also appear in duo with baritone Simon Keenlyside.

In Europe he will return to the Berlin Philharmonic followed by a tour to Vienna, Salzburg, Graz and London performing Winterreise with Simon Keenlyside as well as presenting both Brahms Concerti in Amsterdam and Paris with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Bernard Haitink. Other European orchestras this season feature the London Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Tonhalle Zurich and the National Orchestras of Toulouse and Lyon.

The 2013/14 season began with appearances at the Barbican Centre followed by Lincoln Center with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink as well as collaborations with the Concertgebouworkester and Mariss Jansons in Amsterdam, Bucharest, China and Japan during their world-wide centenary celebrations. The second half of the season saw the realization of a project inspired by Brahms which included new pieces from composers Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, and Brett Dean all producing works linked to Brahms commissioned jointly between the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cal Performances Berkeley, Chicago Symphony and Carnegie Hall with the participation of collaborators Anne-Sophie von Otter and Yo-Yo Ma. To conclude the season, he traveled to Hong Kong and Australia for a complete cycle of Beethoven concerti with Chief Conductor David Robertson in Sydney and with Sir Andrew Davis in Melbourne.

A Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987, recent releases include Mendelssohn Trios with Yo-Yo- Ma and Itzhak Perlman, Strauss's Enoch Arden narrated by Patrick Stewart, and discs of two-piano music by Brahms and Rachmaninoff with Yefim Bronfman. Mr. Ax has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn's piano sonatas. He has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. His other recordings include the concertos of Liszt and Schoenberg, three solo Brahms albums, an album of tangos by Astor Piazzolla, and the premiere recording of John

Adams's Century Rolls with the Cleveland Orchestra for Nonesuch. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax also contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax's recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th century music)/Piano.

In recent years, Mr. Ax has turned his attention toward the music of 20th-century composers, premiering works by John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Krzysztof Penderecki, Bright Sheng, and MeLinda Wagner. Mr. Ax is also devoted to chamber music, and has worked regularly with such artists as Young Uck Kim, Cho-Liang Lin, Mr. Ma, Edgar Meyer, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo, and the late Isaac Stern.

Mr. Ax resides in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki. They have two children together, Joseph and Sarah. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Yale and Columbia Universities.