MUSIC

The Houston Symphony presents Franck's Symphony in D Minor.  Friday-Sunday, April 16-18. 

Conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier:  Born into an intensely musical family, son of the late Paul Tortelier, he studied piano and violin from the age of four and at fourteen won first prize for violin at the Paris Conservatoire. Following general musical studies with Nadia Boulanger, Tortelier studied conducting with Franco Ferrara in Siena. Since then Yan Pascal Tortelier's career has included engagements with leading orchestras throughout Europe, North America, Japan and Australia.

In recognition of his outstanding work as Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic between 1992 and 2003, Yan Pascal Tortelier has been given the title of Conductor Laureate and continues to work with the orchestra regularly.

Yan Pascal Tortelier’s orchestration of Ravel's Piano Trio was premiered in 1992 and the following year received great critical acclaim at a highly successful London Proms performance with the BBC Philharmonic. A few seasons ago it was premiered at the Prague Spring Festival, in San Francisco, Tokyo and Melbourne. This work is now available on CD as part of Tortelier's Debussy/Ravel cycle.

During recent seasons Yan Pascal Tortelier has worked in Europe and the US with such orchestras as the London Symphony, Philharmonia and London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala Milan, the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore and Pittsburgh Symphony orchestras, Montreal Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Highlights of the current season include return visits to the Pittsburgh, Dallas and Houston Symphonies in the US and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and the Hong Kong and Malaysian Philharmonic orchestras in Asia. In the UK he will be working with the BBC Symphony and the Bournemouth Symphony orchestras as well as a project with the Royal Academy of Music. In addition, this season includes performances with the St Petersburg Philharmonic, the Valencia Symphony as well as several visits to the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra.

Between 2005 and 2008 Yan Pascal Tortelier was Principal Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. In March this year he took up the position of the Principal Conductor of the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra for three seasons.

Baiba Skride:  She was the winner of the renowned Queen Elisabeth Contest 2001, but even more: Baiba Skride inspired the jury of this highly coveted violin contest, which is actually obligated to keeping its emotional distance, to spontaneous applause. Such a rich, mature violin performance by a finalist had seldom been heard there before.

However, this first place in the name of Queen Elisabeth proved to be a distinguished intermediate plateau in the quickly accelerating career of Baiba Skride, born in Riga in 1981. In the meantime this exceptional violin talent is a popular guest for international and German orchestras; in the summer of 2004 she debuted at the Salzburg Festival. Following a guest appearance with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra,DIE ZEIT was enthusiastic, reporting Skride's Tchaikovsky performance with the words: "Then a girl enters the hall, walking as if on waves and plays so reflectively and refined, so analytically and forcefully, that all wild things in this arena are tamed"

Baiba Skride is now being presented exclusively by Sony Classical for the first time on CD.

Scheduled Program:
Berlioz: Le carnaval romain (Roman Carnival)
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2
Franck: Symphony in D minor

Artists:
Yan Pascal Tortelier, conductor
Baiba Skride, (pictured) violin