The New Criterion: Symphony by the sea
The coalescence of art, capital, and wise public health policies that is rapidly transforming South Florida into an international cultural hub has received a great boost this spring from the Palm Beach Symphony. The orchestra’s dynamic maestro, Gerard Schwarz, has led it to new heights and placed it among the ranks of the very best American regional ensembles (an ascendancy that was sorely needed following the closing of the Florida Philharmonic in 2003). The longtime director of the Seattle Symphony and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Schwarz moved to Florida in 2019 to become Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and the director of the Frost Symphony, before assuming his post as the Palm Beach Symphony’s musical and artistic director last season.
The New Criterion
Paul du Quenoy
On a live concert by the Palm Beach Symphony.
The coalescence of art, capital, and wise public health policies that is rapidly transforming South Florida into an international cultural hub has received a great boost this spring from the Palm Beach Symphony. The orchestra’s dynamic maestro, Gerard Schwarz, has led it to new heights and placed it among the ranks of the very best American regional ensembles (an ascendancy that was sorely needed following the closing of the Florida Philharmonic in 2003). The longtime director of the Seattle Symphony and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Schwarz moved to Florida in 2019 to become Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and the director of the Frost Symphony, before assuming his post as the Palm Beach Symphony’s musical and artistic director last season. His son Julian, an accomplished cellist who joined his father as the soloist in this judiciously programmed concert, quite rightly described him to me as “the busiest conductor of the covid-19 pandemic era.”
Read more here.
Los Angeles Times: Vicente Chamber Orchestra featuring Anne Akiko Meyers and Julian Schwarz
Featured in this week’s Los Angeles Times list of classical music performances are two of our artists, violinist Ann Akiko Meyers and cellist Julian Schwarz.
Los Angeles Times
Matt Cooper
Featured in this week’s Los Angeles Times list of classical music performances are two of our artists, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and cellist Julian Schwarz. To view the full list, click here.
Vicente Chamber Orchestra All-Beethoven program features the composer’s Symphony No. 4, “Coriolan” Overture and the Triple Concerto featuring violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, cellist Julian Schwarz and pianist Wendy Chen. The Broad Stage, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. Sat., 7:30 p.m. $15, $40. For tickets and more information, click here.
Miami Artzine: A Conversation With Cellist Julian Schwarz
Many musicians often come from musical families, but American cellist Julian Schwarz of Seattle truly has an unusual royal musical lineage.
Miami Artzine
Marvin Glassman
Many musicians often come from musical families, but American cellist Julian Schwarz of Seattle truly has an unusual royal musical lineage.
Schwarz, who will be performing classical musical selections on cello in a concert recital on Sunday, April 14 at 1 p.m. at Temple Israel in Miami and on Tuesday, April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale with the South Florida Symphony Orchestra, has ten relatives who attended the prestigious Julliard School Of Music and became acclaimed professional musicians.
Read more here.
Washington Classical Review: Cellist Julian Schwarz unearths fascinating rarities at Austrian Embassy
Julian Schwarz had a lot to celebrate on Friday night. The American-born cellist played a recital at the Austrian Embassy, presented by the Embassy Series, bringing together composers associated with the city of Vienna. In several amiable turns at the microphone between pieces, Schwarz explained that since his last performance here, in 2015, he had become an Austrian citizen and was now engaged to Marika Bournaki, the pianist sharing the stage with him.
Washington Classical Review
Charles T. Downey
Julian Schwarz had a lot to celebrate on Friday night. The American-born cellist played a recital at the Austrian Embassy, presented by the Embassy Series, bringing together composers associated with the city of Vienna. In several amiable turns at the microphone between pieces, Schwarz explained that since his last performance here, in 2015, he had become an Austrian citizen and was now engaged to Marika Bournaki, the pianist sharing the stage with him…
In Stutschewsky’s Legend, Schwarz drew from his Neapolitan cello, made by Gennaro Gagliano in 1743, a gorgeous melody adorned with beautiful blue notes and folk music-like vocal cantillation. The Freilachs Tanzparaphrase, on a simple, joyful traditional tune, was also a delight.
Read more here.
Violin Channel: Julian Schwarz – 'Considerations for Preparing the Rococo Variations'
In a VC exclusive guest blog, American cellist Julian Schwarz shares his top considerations for preparing Tchaikovsky's 'Variations on a Rococo Theme'
Violin Channel
The Violin Channel recently caught up with former Schoenfeld International Cello Competition and the Boulder International Art of Duo Chamber Music Competition 1st prize winner, American cello virtuoso Julian Schwarz.
In a VC exclusive guest blog, the 27-year-old soloist shares his top considerations for preparing Tchaikovsky’s virtuosic ‘Variations on a Rococo Theme’.
“Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme Op. 33 is a balletic minefield for cello and orchestra. A minefield because of the various technical challenges that seem to pop up in the most inconvenient places, and balletic because of the work’s natural kinship with Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet scores. Just as traditional ballets include ‘variations’ for each lead role to showcase his/her most impressive leaps, twirls, and flourishes, the Rococo does the same, with the cellist playing almost every role!”
Read more of Julian’s considerations here.
Cellist Julian Schwarz performing the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations with Camerata Chicago conducted by Drostan Hall on 29 April, 2016 at Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago.
Meet the Artist: Julian Schwarz
On October 12th, The Cross-Eyed Pianist sat down with cellist Julian Schwartz to speak about his inspirations, influences and challenges as an artist.
On October 12th, The Cross-Eyed Pianist sat down with cellist Julian Schwartz to speak about his inspirations, influences and challenges as an artist. To read the interview, click here.
Strings: Cellist Julian Schwarz on Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1
Laurence Vittes connects with Julian Schwarz about getting the upper hand on Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1.
Strings
Laurence Vittes
Photo Credit: Matt Dine
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107, was composed in 1959 for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who committed it to memory in four days and gave the premiere with Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in the Large Hall of the Leningrad Conservatory.
It has attained mainstream popularity—more than 60 recordings fill the catalogue including five different performances by Rostropovich himself. Julian Schwarz has not recorded the concerto—yet—but he performed it with the Tucson Symphony in January, and will play it twice this fall, in Lake Forest, Illinois, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In other words, he’s all pumped up for Shostakovich.
In addition to being a virtuoso cellist, Schwarz likes to interact with his audiences—to find out what they feel, what captures their attention, what stands out as “formidable.” After he finished a 30-minute Shostakovich workout in Tucson, Arizona, he returned to the stage and recounted a master class he had led at the University of Arizona earlier in the day, then played five minutes of Bach for an encore.
Click here to read the interview.
Blogcritics: Concert Review with Julian Schwarz and Marika Bournaki
Cellist Julian Schwarz and pianist Marika Bournaki presented an eye-opening survey of a fascinating and mostly neglected 20th-century musical movement at the Center for Jewish History on May 22.
Blogcritics
Jon Sobel
Cellist Julian Schwarz and pianist Marika Bournaki presented an eye-opening survey of a fascinating and mostly neglected 20th-century musical movement at the Center for Jewish History on May 22. With contributions from violinist Avi Nagin and clarinetist Alec Manasse, the pair gave us a powerful representative sample of concert music from the New Jewish National School, and especially by cellist-composer Joachim Stutschewsky (1891-1982), with musicianship of the highest order...
Schwarz’s velvety, singing tone and Stutschewsky’s creative strength were both immediately on display in the folk-dance-influenced “Legend” at the top of the program. Gentle dissonances from the piano set the 20th-century scene as Schwarz showed brilliant dynamic control on the cello. Stutschewsky’s “Freylekhs: Improvisation” reworked Jewish folk songs into beautiful chamber music through the twin lenses, as I fancied I heard it, of Rachmaninoff and Gershwin.
Read the full review here.
Blogcritics: Cellist Julian Schwarz on Joachim Stutschewsky and 20th-Century Jewish Music
Julian Schwarz spoke with us about his approach to playing Stutschewsky and other 20th-century music, the preparation for this unique concert program, and his interest in “music of Jewish connection.”
Blogcritics
Jon Sobel
Julian Schwarz is an award-winning cellist, an active soloist and chamber musician and a champion of new and unheralded music. Together with pianist Marika Bournaki, violinist Avi Nagin, and clarinetist Alec Manasse, he will present on Tuesday May 22 a concert sponsored by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, part of its Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series series and co-sponsored by American Society for Jewish Music. The program features compositions by Joachim Stutschewsky (1891-1982) and other 20th-century Jewish composers, much of whose music is today obscure, along with a new work written for the occasion by Israeli composer Ofer Ben-Amots. Neil W. Levin, YIVO’s Anne E. Leibowitz Visiting Professor-in-Residence in Music, will give a pre-concert lecture on the life, work, and artistic milieu of Stutschewsky, a composer whose influences ranged from Schoenberg to klezmer.
Julian Schwarz spoke with us about his approach to playing Stutschewsky and other 20th-century music, the preparation for this unique concert program, and his interest in “music of Jewish connection.”
Click here to read the exclusive interview.
WTOL-TV: Catch one of the world's greatest musicians at the Toledo Museum of Art
Catch cellist Julian Schwarz, heralded as one of the finest musicians of the 21st century, at the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle on Friday and Saturday.
WTOL-TV
Catch cellist Julian Schwarz, heralded as one of the finest musicians of the 21st century, at the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle on Friday and Saturday.
Watch the interview here!