92NY presents

Stefan Jackiw, violin; Alisa Weilerstein, cello; and Daniil Trifonov, piano, play Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and more

May 20, 2023

Leading NYC cultural institution welcomes audiences to 22/23 Tisch Music Season

The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY), one of New York’s leading cultural venues, presents, Stefan Jackiw, violin; Alisa Weilerstein, cello; and Daniil Trifonov, piano, play Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and more on May 20, 2023 at 7:30pm ET in the Kaufmann Concert Hall. The concert will also be available for viewing online for 72 hours from time of broadcast. Tickets for both the in-person and livestream options start at $25 and are available at 92ny.org/event/jackiw-weilerstein-and-trifonov.

Three revered musicians – violinist Stefan Jackiw, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and pianist Daniil Trifonov – join for their first-ever NYC appearance as a trio. Their program invites each musician’s brilliance to be on full display: Jackiw and Trifonov open the program with Lutoslawki’s Partita – a 1984 work with a nod to Baroque keyboard music. The duo of Weilerstein and Trifonov perform Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Cello and Piano. And the three musicians come together in the program’s second half for Tchaikovsky’s A-Minor Piano Trio, a spectacular showcase for this trio of premier musicians.

Program:

Lutos?awski, Partita

Rachmaninoff, Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op. 19

Tchaikovsky, Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50

"This is a young star of astonishing gifts, whose musicality and technical finesse place him at the top of his peers." —Seattle Times

About the Artists

Stefan Jackiw is one of America’s foremost violinists, captivating audiences with playing that combines poetry and purity with an impeccable technique. Jackiw has appeared as soloist with the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, among others.

In Summer 2021, Jackiw returned to the Cleveland Orchestra with Rafael Payare, the Boston Symphony with Alan Gilbert, and the Aspen Music Festival performing the Beethoven Triple Concerto, alongside Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan.

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, Jackiw was scheduled to appear with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and Antwerp Symphony, among others. In the 2021–2022 season, highlights include performances with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Alan Gilbert, and with Orchestre National de Lyon under Nikolaj Znaider. In July 2020, he launched Stefan’s Sessions, a virtual masterclass series exploring major works with up-and-coming violinists. Jackiw also tours frequently with his musical partners, pianist Conrad Tao and cellist Jay Campbell, as part of the Junction Trio.

Born to physicist parents of Korean and German descent, Jackiw began playing the violin at the age of four. His teachers have included Zinaida Gilels, Michèle Auclair, and Donald Weilerstein. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, as well as an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory, and is the recipient of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Jackiw plays a violin made in 1750 in Milan by G.B. Guadagnini, on generous loan from a private collection.

Alisa Weilerstein is one of the foremost cellists of our time. Known for her consummate artistry, emotional investment and rare interpretive depth, she was recognized with a MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship in 2011. Today her career is truly global in scope, taking her to the most prestigious international venues for solo recitals, chamber concerts, and concerto collaborations with all the preeminent conductors and orchestras worldwide. “Weilerstein is a throwback to an earlier age of classical performers: not content merely to serve as a vessel for the composer’s wishes, she inhabits a piece fully and turns it to her own ends,” marvels the New York Times. “Weilerstein’s cello is her id. She doesn’t give the impression that making music involves will at all. She and the cello seem simply to be one and the same,” agrees the Los Angeles Times. As the UK’s Telegraph put it, “Weilerstein is truly a phenomenon.”

An ardent champion of contemporary music, Weilerstein has premiered and championed important new works by composers including Pascal Dusapin, Osvaldo Golijov, Matthias Pintscher and Joan Tower. Also an authority on Bach’s music for unaccompanied cello, the cellist released a best-selling recording of his solo suites on the Pentatone label, streamed them in her innovative #36DaysOfBach project, and deconstructed his beloved G-major prelude in a Vox.com video, viewed more than two million times. Her discography also includes chart-topping albums and the winner of BBC Music’s “Recording of the Year” award, while other career milestones include a performance at the White House for President and Mrs. Obama.

Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at nine years old, Weilerstein is a staunch advocate for the T1D community. She lives with her husband, Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare, and their two young children.

Grammy Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov (dan-EEL TREE-fon-ov) – Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year – has made a spectacular ascent of the classical music world, as a solo artist, champion of the concerto repertoire, chamber and vocal collaborator, and composer. Combining consummate technique with rare sensitivity and depth, his performances are a perpetual source of awe. “He has everything and more … tenderness and also the demonic element. I never heard anything like that,” marveled pianist Martha Argerich. With Transcendental, the Liszt collection that marked his third title as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, Trifonov won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Solo Album of 2018. As The Times of London notes, he is “without question the most astounding pianist of our age.”

In October of 2021, Trifonov released Bach: The Art of Life on Deutsche Grammophon, including The Art of Fugue with the pianist’s own completion of the final contrapunctus, selections from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, music by four of Johann Sebastian’s sons, two pieces known to have been Bach family favorites, and more. He toured a recital program in the 2021-22 season centered on The Art of Fugue in Europe, and a second program in the U.S. of Prokofiev, Szymanowski, Debussy and Brahms. Brahms’s First Piano Concerto served as the vehicle for appearances with the Dallas Symphony led by Fabio Luisi and Philharmonia Zurich under the direction of Gianandrea Noseda, and with Rome’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia led by Antonio Pappano he performs Mozart’s Ninth “Jeunehomme” Piano Concerto on a European tour. He also performed all five of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos in various combinations with eight different orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Mariinsky Orchestra, Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Toronto Symphony. Balancing out these staples of the repertoire, Trifonov gave the world premiere performances of Mason Bates’s new Piano Concerto, composed for him during the pandemic, with the co-commissioning Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, before reprising the piece in the spring with the New Jersey Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, and the other co-commissioner, the San Francisco Symphony. 

Highlights of recent seasons include a multi-faceted, season-long tenure as 2019-20 Artist-in-Residence of the New York Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden, featuring the New York premiere of Trifonov’s own Piano Quintet, and a seven-concert, season-long Carnegie Hall “Perspectives” series, crowned by a performance of the pianist’s own Piano Concerto. Trifonov played Tchaikovsky’s First under Riccardo Muti in the historic gala finale of the Chicago Symphony’s 125th-anniversary celebrations; launched the New York Philharmonic’s 2018-19 season; headlined complete Rachmaninoff concerto cycles at the New York Philharmonic’s Rachmaninoff Festival and with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic; undertook season-long residencies with the Berlin Philharmonic and at Vienna’s Musikverein, where he appeared with the Vienna Philharmonic and gave the Austrian premiere of his own Piano Concerto; and headlined the Berlin Philharmonic’s famous New Year’s Eve concert under Sir Simon Rattle. Since making solo recital debuts at Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Japan’s Suntory Hall, and Paris’s Salle Pleyel in 2012-13, Trifonov has given solo recitals at venues including the Kennedy Center in Washington DC; Boston’s Celebrity Series; London’s Barbican, Royal Festival and Queen Elizabeth Halls; Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw (Master Piano Series); Berlin’s Philharmonie; Munich’s Herkulessaal; Bavaria’s Schloss Elmau; Zurich’s Tonhalle; the Lucerne Piano Festival; the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Théâtre des Champs Élysées and Auditorium du Louvre in Paris; Barcelona’s Palau de la Música; Tokyo’s Opera City; the Seoul Arts Center; and Melbourne’s Recital Centre.

Trifonov received Opus Klassik’s 2021 Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award for Silver Age, an album of Russian solo and orchestral piano music by Scriabin, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. Released in fall 2020, this followed 2019’s Destination Rachmaninov: Arrival, for which the pianist received a 2021 Grammy nomination. Presenting the composer’s First and Third Concertos, Arrival represents the third volume of the Deutsche Grammophon series Trifonov recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Nézet-Séguin, following Destination Rachmaninov: Departure, named BBC Music’s 2019 Concerto Recording of the Year, and Rachmaninov: Variations, a 2015 Grammy nominee. Deutsche Grammophon has also issued Chopin Evocations, which pairs the composer’s works with those by the 20th-century composers he influenced, and Trifonov: The Carnegie Recital, the pianist’s first recording as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, which captured Trifonov’s sold-out 2013 Carnegie Hall recital debut live and scored him his first Grammy nomination.

It was during the 2010-11 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 awarded the prestigious Franco Abbiati Prize for Best Instrumental Soloist by Italy’s foremost music critics, in 2016 he was named Gramophone’s Artist of the Year and in 2021 he was made a “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French government.

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. When he premiered his own Piano Concerto, the Cleveland Plain Dealer marveled: “Even having seen it, one cannot quite believe it. Such is the artistry of pianist-composer Daniil Trifonov.”

2022/23 TISCH MUSIC SEASON

In this first season curated by 92NY’s new Vice President of Tisch Music Amy Lam, the season features 39 events, more than 20 92NY debuts, 31 premieres, and four 92NY commissions. The 22/23 season includes premieres of Joseph Schwantner’s guitar quintet Song of a Dreaming Sparrow, a song cycle by Anthony Cheung, and works by Laurie Anderson, Timo Andres, Marcos Balter, Christopher Cerrone, Nicholas DiBerardino, Reena Esmail, inti figgis-vizueta, John Glover, Ted Hearne, Fred Hersch, Stephen Hough, Jimmy López, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Mary Prescott, Caroline Shaw, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Darian Donovan Thomas, Scott Wollschleger, Pamela Z, and more.

Select Highlights:

This season marks the first time 92NY is presenting a fully integrated concert season across genres, including performances by Kate Baldwin, Joshua Bell, Regina Carter, Angela Hewitt, Larisa Martinez, Branford Marsalis, Kelli O’Hara, Eric Owens, Pepe Romero, Caroline Shaw, Sir András Schiff, Daniil Trifonov, and Jessica Vosk.

The World Premiere of a 92NY-commissioned piece from composer Jimmy López, performed by J’Nai Bridges and the Catalyst Quartet.

The New York premiere of Difficult Grace by cellist Seth Parker Woods and dancer Roderick George, presented in collaboration with Harkness Dance Center.

An in-depth two-day Julius Eastman retrospective featuring LA-based music collective Wild Up in three concerts, as well as exhibits, and panel discussions with Eastman friends and scholars examining the life of one of the 20th century’s most iconoclastic voices.

The Bach Collegium Japan, conducted by Masaaki Suzuki with baritone Roderick Williams

92NY’s signature series exploring the American songbook, Lyrics and Lyricists, continues to explore the best of Broadway, while also highlighting significant contributions to American culture by singer-songwriters across a variety of musical genres such as Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, the Mamas and the Papas, and more.

Two performances as part of an ongoing partnerships with The Curtis Institute of Music.

Jazz, which has been a staple of 92NY’s Tisch season since Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus took to the stage in 1955, will be performed by world-class musicians like Branford Marsalis, Fred Hersch, and Regina Carter not just within the renowned Jazz in July series, but throughout the year.