Liza Ferschtman celebrates Bernstein’s centenary with recording and five-country tour
The Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtman will release her 10th album on Challenge Classics in January 2018, featuring Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s ‘Symposium’ and Korngold’s Violin Concerto. The recording comes at the start of Bernstein’s centenary year. From January to June 2018 Ferschtman will give 10 performances of Bernstein’s five-movement concerto across the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, the UK and USA.
In January and February 2018 Ferschtman will tour the Netherlands and Germany with the Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra and Christian Vásquez, with whom she has recorded Bernstein’s Serenade. Her US performances of the concerto will be with the Omaha Symphony and Thomas Wilkins in April 2018. Then she’s joined by the Brussels Philharmonic and Stéphane Denève in Brussels and London in May.
Ferschtman has played Bernstein’s Serenade in 10 cities to date, including Budapest, Amsterdam, New York, Montreal and Dallas. In 2013 her concert with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer at the Lincoln Center gained glowing praise from The New York Times: ‘… with Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtman bringing refined beauty and character to the solo part of the Bernstein [Serenade]… the concert was nothing short of revelatory (22 January 2013). Composed in 1954, the work was inspired by Plato’s dialogue on the nature of love. Bernstein himself conducted the premiere at the 1954 Venice Festival, with the violinist Isaac Stern.
Known for her passionate performances and innovative programming, Ferschtman has a wide-ranging career. Later this month she will collaborate with the Dutch National Ballet for an 85th-birthday tribute to the dancer and choreographer Hans van Manen, playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.1. In October and November she will join forces with the reed quintet Calefax for concerts across the Netherlands. An avid chamber musician, since 2007 Ferschtman has been the artistic director of the Delft Chamber Music Festival, one of the most admired festivals in the Netherlands. In 2006 she received the highest accolade awarded to a musician in the Netherlands, the Dutch Music Prize.
Ferschtman’s last release was of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and String Octet, for which she received four stars from BBC Music Magazine and The Observer, and The Strad commented on her ‘focused, silvery tone, and… constant energy’ (June 2017).
Liza Ferschtman’s recording of Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s ‘Symposium’ and Korngold’s Violin Concerto will be released internationally on Challenge Classics in January 2018. She will perform Bernstein’s Serenade at London’s Cadogan Hall on 31 May 2018.
Ferschtman’s next UK performance will be on Saturday 30 December, when she will give a recital at Wigmore Hall with the excellent pianist Roman Rabinovich. They’ll play sonatas by Brahms, Beethoven and Bartók, and Lutoslawski’s Subito. For more details visit https://wigmore-hall.org.uk/
More details about Liza Ferschtman and full international calendar are available at: http://lizaferschtman.com/