James Judd to Conduct Program Also Featuring Elgar’s Symphony No. 2
(Tucson, AZ)─Internationally acclaimed pianist Anne-Marie McDermott will perform Mozart’s final Piano Concerto, No. 27, with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. James Judd, who conducted Conrad Tao in performances of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue last year, will return to the podium for this Classic Series program also featuring Edward Elgar’s Symphony No. 2. Performances are Friday, November 9 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, November 11 at 2:00 p.m. at Tucson Music Hall.
The New York Times calls McDermott, “A pianist who balances qualities of excitement and spontaneity with clarity and elegance.” Gramophone hailed McDermott’s 2013 disc of Mozart Concerti with the Calder Quartet “exceptional on every count.” McDermott was named an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 1995 and performs and tours extensively with CMS each season. She is the Artistic Director of the famed Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado, which hosts the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Dallas Symphony in addition to presenting over 40 chamber music concerts throughout the summer. McDermott last performed with the TSO in 2005 when she opened a Beethoven Festival with the Piano Concerto No. 3, a performance the Arizona Daily Star described as “tender and elegant.” The review stated, “She’s a quiet with a clear passion and reverence for the work and it is difficult not to feel the same when you hear her play.”
British born conductor James Judd came to international attention as the assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, a post he accepted at the invitation of Lorin Maazel. He has also held posts at the Florida Philharmonic and New Zealand Symphony where he brought the orchestra to a new level of visibility and international renown through appearances at the 2000 Summer Sydney Olympics Arts Festival and a specially televised Millennium concert with Kiri Te Kanawa as soloist. In North and South America he is a frequent guest conductor, having appeared with the orchestras of St. Louis, Montreal, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Utah, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
The Piano Concerto No. 27 was not only Mozart’s last piano concerto but also the last piece he performed in public. The Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein claimed that “it was not in the Requiem that Mozart said his last word…but in this work, which belongs to the species in which he also said his greatest.” The concerto is in a subdued, intimate, persuasive voice. There are no trumpets or percussion to add dramatic flourishes. Its deceptively simple character and content define it as unique among his works in the genre that he more or less invented and perfected.
History has been kind to Elgar’s Symphony No. 2. The composer conducted the first performance and was disappointed that it did not get the reception awarded his first. The second is now considered superior to the first for its complex, contrapuntal structure and its development of musical ideas. The first symphony was greeted with thunderous foot stomping but the second’s critical reverberations have overwhelmed it.
The Classic Series is sponsored by Mrs. Dorothy Dyer Vanek.
Tickets to Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27 are $30 to $86. They are available online at www.tucsonsymphony.org, at the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Box Office, 2175 N. Sixth Avenue or by phone at 520.882.8585. TSO Box Office hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. unless otherwise indicated.
Programming, artists and prices are subject to change.
Contact: Terry Marshall, Public Relations Manager, 520.620.9158
