PIANISTS EMANUEL AX AND NIKOLAI LUGANSKY TO GIVE RECITALS ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Press Contacts:
April 21, 2014 Eileen Chambers, 312.294.3092
Rachelle Roe, 312.294.3090
Photos Available By Request
[email protected]

PIANISTS EMANUEL AX AND NIKOLAI LUGANSKY TO GIVE
RECITALS IN MAY AT SYMPHONY CENTER

May 4 and 18, 2014

CHICAGO— The 2014/15 SCP Piano series continues in May with programs by two
distinguished pianists.

Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky makes his Symphony Center recital debut on Sunday,
May 4, at 3 p.m., in a program of works by Franck, Prokofiev, and Rachmaninov. On this
program, Lugansky brings his technique to the second and final installment of
Rachmaninov’s twenty-four preludes, the Thirteen Preludes, Op. 32. Complementing the
CSO’s Truth to Power festival later in May, Lugansky’s program will showcase Prokofiev’s
fourth piano sonata, composed in 1917 amidst widespread political upheaval.

Audience favorite Emanuel Ax returns to Chicago for his SCP recital on Sunday, May 18 at
3 p.m., bringing a program of works from his Brahms Project, a three-concert series that
pairs the music of Johannes Brahms with specially commissioned works by four of today’s
leading contemporary composers. Opening and closing Ax’s performance are works by
Brahms, with the premieres of two Symphony Center Presents co-commissioned works by
Brett Dean and Missy Mazzoli featured in between. The Dean co-commission, performed
as a stand-alone work earlier this season, will be featured interspersed with Brahms’ Four
Piano Pieces as a performance practice envisioned by the composer.

Missy Mazzoli, an American composer and pianist based in Brooklyn, composed Bolts of
Loving Thunder for this project with inspiration from Brahms’ rhapsodies and intermezzi. In
her words, “I wanted to create a work based on this romantic, stormy idea of Brahms,
complete with hand crossing and dense layers of chords. I also felt that there needed to be
a touch of the exuberant, floating melodies …Brahms’s “F–A–F” motive (shorthand for “frei
aber froh” or “free but happy”) gradually breaks through the surface of this work, frenetically
bubbling out in the final section.”

Brett Dean, an active composer, conductor and former violist with the Berlin Philharmonic,
has garnered recognition and awards for his compositions for over twenty years.
Commissioned and composed for Emanuel Ax’s Brahms Project, Hommage á Brahms is
one of four such homages that Dean has written since 2009 (others are for Bach, Kurtág,
and Janáček). This work draws from elements of Brahms' duo sonatas and lieder, and was
inspired by Dean's experience of watching Ax and Frank Peter Zimmerman perform
Brahms’ three violin sonatas in 2013.

Program and Ticket Details

Tickets for all CSO concerts can be purchased by phone at 800-223-7114 or 312-
294-3000; online at cso.org, or at the Symphony Center box office: 220 S. Michigan Ave.,
Chicago, IL 60604.

Discounted student tickets for select concerts can be purchased, subject to availability,
online in advance or at the box office on the day of the concert. For group rates, please call
312-294-3040.

Artists, programs and prices are subject to change.

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Symphony Center Presents Sunday, May 4, 2014, 3 p.m.
Piano Series Nikolai Lugansky, piano

FRANCK Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for Piano
PROKOFIEV Piano Sonata No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 29
RACHMANINOV Thirteen Preludes, Op. 32

Tickets: $20-$78

Symphony Center Presents Sunday, May 18, 2014, 3 p.m.
Piano Series Emanuel Ax, piano

BRAHMS Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel,
Op. 24
BRAHMS Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119
DEAN Hommage à Brahms [SCP Co-commission]
MAZZOLI Bolts of Loving Thunder [CSO Co-commission]
BRAHMS Piano Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 2

Tickets: $28-$92

About Nikolai Lugansky
Nikolai Lugansky has been hailed as the “next” in a line of great Russian pianists by his former
teacher, the renowned pedagogue, Tatiana Nikolaeva. He has been described as “a pianistic
phenomenon of exceptional class” by the Netherlands’ NRC Handelsblad and as “riveting” and
“stand out” by London’s Telegraph.

Known for his superb interpretations of Rachmaninoff’s music, Lugansky has been a prizewinner in
several international competitions, including the International Bach Competition in Leipzig in 1988,
the All-Union Rachmaninoff Competition in 1990, and the Tchaikovsky International Competition in
1994. He made his American debut at the Hollywood Bowl in 1996 as a part of a tour with the Kirov
Orchestra and Valery Gergiev.

Lugansky has appeared with major symphony orchestras and distinguished conductors worldwide,
as well as regularly at some of the world's most distinguished festivals, including the BBC Proms, La
Roque d'Anthéron, Verbier, Baden Baden, Salzburg, and the Edinburgh International Festival.

An acclaimed recording artist, he has recently signed an exclusive deal with the Naïve-Ambroisie
label, whose releases include his performances of solo Liszt works and Rachmaninoff’s two piano
sonatas. An all-Chopin recital for Onyx was described by The Guardian as “unquestionably thrilling”,
and in October of 2010 Deutsche Grammophon released a disc of chamber music recorded together
with Vadim Repin—with whom he has developed a long-lasting and fruitful musical partnership—
which won the 2011 Edison Klassiek Award and the Chamber Music category award of the 2011
BBC Music Magazine Awards.

Lugansky’s recordings on Warner Classics label have garnered the Diapason d’Or, the Preis der
deutschen Schallplattenkritik and the ECHO Klassik 2005 and the Gramophone Editor’s Choice
(February 2004). In fall 2005, Warner Classics released his first disc of Beethoven Sonatas that
includes the “Moonlight” and “Appassionata” sonatas. Nikolai Lugansky and Alexander Kniazev won
the 2007 ECHO Klassik Award for their recording of works by Chopin and Rachmaninov released in
January of that year.

Lugansky studied at the Central School of Music in Moscow, where his principal teachers included
the renowned pianist and teacher Tatiana Nikolaeva, and the current director of the Tchaikovsky
School of Music in Moscow, Sergei Dorensky.

About the Emanuel Ax Brahms Project
Early in his career, violinist Joseph Joachim had taken as his motto Frei aber einsam (Free but
lonely); inspired by the first three letters of this motto, his close friends and composers Robert
Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Albert Dietrich jointly composed the F–A–E Violin Sonata in 1853,
which was dedicated to Joachim. Years later, Brahms declared himself to be Frei aber froh (Free but
happy). His own F–A–F motto, in various forms, can be heard throughout his Third Symphony. With
Brahms’ collaborative spirit and his F-A-F motto as a musical starting point, pianist Emanuel Ax has
invited four of today’s most important composers— Brett Dean, Anders Hillborg, Missy Mazzoli, and
Nico Muhly, , —to write new compositions to be presented alongside some of Brahms’ most
esteemed works: his Four Serious Songs, the two cello sonatas and the F-sharp Minor Piano
Sonata. For this project, Symphony Center Presents offers these new compositions over three
concerts. The series concludes with a solo recital by Ax featuring new compositions by American
composer Missy Mazzoli and Australian Brett Dean. This project was co-commissioned by the CSO’s
Symphony Center Presents series, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cal Performances at UC Berkeley
and Carnegie Hall.

About Emanuel Ax
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. He
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.

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. 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. In recent years, 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. He is also devoted to chamber music, and has worked regularly with
such artists as Young Uck Kim, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo,
and the late Isaac Stern. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds
honorary doctorates of music from Yale and Columbia Universities.

About the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (cso.org)
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) is consistently hailed as one of the greatest orchestras in
the world. Its music director since 2010 is Riccardo Muti, one of the preeminent conductors of our
day. Pierre Boulez is the CSO’s Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus; Yo-Yo Ma is the CSO’s
Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant. Mason Bates and Anna Clyne are the CSO’s Mead
Composers-in-Residence.

The musicians of the CSO annually perform more than 150 concerts, most at Symphony Center in
downtown Chicago and, in the summer, at the suburban Ravinia Festival. The CSO frequently tours
internationally and occasionally performs in other parts of the U.S. Since its founding in 1891, the
Orchestra has made 57 international tours, visiting 28 countries on five continents. At home and on
tour, tickets are always in high demand and frequently sold out.

People around the globe enjoy the extraordinary sounds of the Orchestra through broadcasts and
webcasts of the weekly CSO Radio program and through CSO Resound, the CSO’s own record
label. Recordings by the CSO have won 62 Grammy Awards®.

The parent organization for the CSO is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association (CSOA). It
also includes the Chicago Symphony Chorus, directed by Duain Wolfe, and the Civic Orchestra of
Chicago, a pre-professional ensemble conducted by Cliff Colnot. Through a series called Symphony
Center Presents, the CSOA brings internationally known guest artists and ensembles from a variety
of musical genres—classical, jazz, pop, world, and contemporary—to Chicago.

The CSOA’s Institute for Learning, Access, and Training offers a variety of youth, community, and
education programs that engage more than 200,000 people of diverse ages, incomes and
backgrounds. Through the programs of the Institute as well as many other activities, including a free
annual CSO concert, the CSOA promotes the concept of Citizen Musicianship: using the power of
music to contribute to our culture, our communities and the lives of others.

A nonprofit organization, the CSOA is governed by a voluntary board of trustees and supported by
tens of thousands of other volunteers, patrons and corporate, foundation and individual donors.
Deborah F. Rutter, a highly regarded arts executive, is president of the CSOA.