January 24, 2003
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Portland, Ore. … Guest Conductor Pavel Kogan returns to conduct the Oregon Symphony in Mussorgsky’s popular “Pictures at an Exhibition” in a concert that also features pianist Max Levinson performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major on Feb. 22, 23 and 24 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. This concert is funded by a grant from the E. Nakamichi Foundation and the Jackson Foundation, with media support provided by The Oregonian.
Kogan, the current music director of the Moscow State Symphony, first conducted the Oregon Symphony in Feb. 2001 and was well-received by both critics and musicians. The Oregonian described him as “athletic…with an intense physical vocabulary…and fearless when it came to unleashing the full might of the strings to breathtaking effect.” He made his North American debut in 1997 and since then has appeared with a number of ensembles, including the Vancouver Symphony, Houston Symphony, Toronto Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Kansas City Symphony and the Utah Symphony, where he is the principal guest conductor.
Pianist Max Levinson makes his Symphony debut to launch a Beethoven Concerto Cycle with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major. The Beethoven Concerto Cycle will feature all five Beethoven piano concertos performed (in the order they were composed) by different guest artists. Levinson, whom the Los Angeles Times calls “a pianist sophisticated beyond his years,” has performed across America and Europe with some of today’s finest orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony and the Boston Pops. This year he will perform with the Colorado Symphony and tour with the Tokyo String Quartet.
Kogan and the Symphony open the concert with Grieg’s “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1,” inspired by Ibsen’s play of the same name. This suite contains such recognizable works as “Morning” and “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” about a band of trolls. Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” rounds out the second half of the concert. Originally composed for piano and later masterfully orchestrated by Ravel, “Pictures at an Exhibition” is Mussorgsky’s much-loved musical depiction of visual artworks, and remains an audience favorite with its brilliant colors and evocative timbres.
Oregon Symphony Classical concerts regularly include additional opportunities for listeners to learn more about the music and the orchestra. These activities include:
Conducting Assistant Jonathan Pasternack will lead a discussion one hour before the concert of the works to be performed. Media support for “Pre-Concert Talks” is provided by Classical Millennium.
Guest Conductor Pavel Kogan will speak briefly from the podium in “Saturday Interactive.” Media support for “Saturday Interactive” is provided by KINKfm102.
Audience members are invited to stay for a 15-20 minute panel discussion with Symphony staff and guest artists. Media support for “Sunday Post-Concert Discussion” is provided by KBPS Classical 89.9 FM.
Performances are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 22 and 23 at 7:30 p.m. and Monday, Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Tickets range in price from $16 to $72 and may be purchased at the Oregon Symphony Ticket Office (923 S.W. Washington), Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or charged by phone at 503-228-1353 or (800) 228-7343. Tickets also may be purchased at all Ticketmaster outlets (503-790-ARTS) or through Ticketmaster Online, via the Symphony’s Web site at www.orsymphony.org. Service fees may apply.
Music Director of the Moscow State Symphony since 1990, Pavel Kogan made his conducting debut in 1974 with the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1997, Kogan made his triumphant North American debuts with the Utah Symphony and Milwaukee Symphony, and since 1998 has served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Utah Symphony.
Since making his North America debut in 1997, Kogan has made guest appearances with the Vancouver Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and the Kansas City Symphony in addition to carrying out his duties in Utah. In the 2001/2002 season, as well as serving as Principal Guest Conductor in Utah, Pavel Kogan returned to the Milwaukee Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, and the Oregon Symphony, and appeared with the New Jersey Symphony and the Florida Orchestra. He led the Moscow State Symphony in a cross-country tour of the U.S., with the orchestra making its New York debut at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. In 2002/2003 Kogan opens and closes the Florida Orchestra’s season and returns to the Oregon Symphony for the third time in three years. He will conduct the Utah Symphony in four subscription weeks during this season as well.
From 1988 to 1990, Pavel Kogan served as Principal Conductor of the Zagreb Philharmonic. His first concert as Music Director of the Moscow State Symphony was recorded live by RCA. Maestro Kogan's other recordings include the complete Tchaikovsky symphonies and Prokofiev's Symphonies Nos. 1, 5 and 6. A top conductor of the New Commonwealth of Independent States, he regularly conducts orchestras throughout Europe. Equally at home in the opera house, Maestro Kogan opened the 1988-89 season of the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow with an acclaimed production of Verdi's “La Traviata.”
During his tenure with the Moscow State Symphony, Pavel Kogan has expanded the orchestra's repertoire to include not only the traditional Russian works, but also the masterpieces of the great German, Austrian, French and American composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the fall of 1996 the Orchestra, under Maestro Kogan, performed the complete cycle of Mahler symphonies. He has also toured extensively with this Orchestra during the last eight years, appearing throughout Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere.
Pavel Kogan, son of celebrated Russian artists Leonid Kogan and Elisaveta Gilels, began his musical studies at Moscow's Central Music School and continued at the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied violin with the renowned teacher Juri Yankelevio. In 1970, at the age of eighteen, he won First Prize and the Gold Medal at the Sibelius International Violin Competition in Helsinki. Before turning his full attention to the conductor's podium, he toured throughout Europe, Japan and the United States as a recitalist and guest violin soloist with many leading orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
American pianist Max Levinson is known as an intelligent and sensitive artist with a fearless technique. Levinson's career was launched when he won First Prize at the 1997 Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition, the first American to achieve this distinction. He received overwhelming critical acclaim for his two solo recordings on N2K Encoded Music, and was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in March 1999. Max Levinson has been hailed by critics for musical maturity beyond his years: “The questioning, conviction, and feeling in his playing invariably reminds us of the deep reasons why music is important to us, why we listen to it, why we care so much about it,” (The Boston Globe).
Max Levinson has performed as soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Boston Pops, San Antonio Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra and American Youth Symphony. He has worked with such conductors as Robert Spano, Neeve Järvi, Uriel Segal, Joseph Swensen, Jeffrey Kahane and Alasdair Neale. Recent recital appearances include Washington Performing Arts Society’s “Kreeger String & Hayes Piano Series” at the Kennedy Center, Tonhalle Orchester Zurich’s “Competition Winner Series,” Ravinia’s “Rising Stars,” Lincoln Center’s “What Makes it Great” and the FleetBank Boston “Emerging Artists Series.”
Max Levinson’s 2002-2003 season highlights include performances with the Colorado Symphony conducted by Pinchas Zukerman, Oregon Symphony, Richardson Symphony, and appearances with the Tokyo String Quartet in New York, Boston, Berkeley, Atlanta, Orange County, CA, Urbana-Champaign, IL, Saratoga, CA and Sun City, AZ. In addition, Mr. Levinson will make recital appearances in Seattle and Dayton, OH and will tour with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in the spring.
Last season, Mr. Levinson performed with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Florida Philharmonic, Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, and Florida West Coast Symphony. He collaborated with the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet at the Tisch Center for the Arts at New York’s 92nd Street Y. As an active chamber musician, Mr. Levinson has also collaborated with such renowned artists as Benita Valente, Richard Stoltzman, Young Uck Kim, Arnold Steinhardt, David Finckel, Daniel Phillips, Cynthia Phelps, Nathaniel Rosen, Carter Brey, Heiichiro Ohyama, Tokyo String Quartet and Marc Neikrug. Major music festival appearances include Mostly Mozart, Santa Fe, Marlboro, Tanglewood, La Jolla, The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Summer Music Festival, Vancouver and Switzerland’s Davos Festival.
Max Levinson's debut recitals in 1998 at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall and London's Wigmore Hall as the Guardian Competition winner were critical successes and received standing ovations. He performed ambitious programs, which included works by Bartók, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Schönberg, Schubert and Kirchner. Of the New York debut performance, The New York Times wrote that Levinson's “quietly eloquent conceptions, formidable technique and lovely touch left little else to be desired.”
Max Levinson garnered international accolades for his two solo recordings on N2K Encoded Music. “Max Levinson,” his debut recording released immediately following his triumph in Dublin, is an extraordinarily thoughtful program that traces the musical lineage between Brahms, Schumann, Schönberg and Kirchner. The Los Angeles Times deemed Mr. Levinson “a brilliant American pianist, musically mature and fully formed technically. More important, he uses his wide spectrum of pianistic mechanics for altogether poetic ends, touching the listener deeply and often.” American Record Guide declared Levinson's second disc, “Out of Doors: Piano Music of Béla Bartók,” “An important recording and a great one. The disc blew me out of my chair, and it has taken me a long time to get back up. Hearing performances as riveting as these produces a rare frisson; indeed, this is the most brilliant and exciting Bartók piano disc I have heard. On the basis of only two recordings, Mr. Levinson has created the myth of a pianist with everything.” He has also recorded the Brahms Horn Trio with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for the Stereophile label, and the violin sonatas of Debussy, Janácek, and Prokofiev with violinist Andrew Kohji Taylor for Warner Classics.
Strongly committed to nurturing young audiences, Max Levinson is an active participant in the Grammy-in-the-Schools program throughout the United States and in 2001 he joined the faculty of the Boston Conservatory. He has experimented with Internet broadcast, served as Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University's Lowell House for four years, and has been featured on National Public Radio's “Performance Today” and “A Note to You.” Mr. Levinson serves on the boards of the Aube Tzerko Piano Institute and AMRON (Artists Musicians Recital Opportunity Network). In 2000, he was asked by the Millennium Committee of Ireland to design a National Education Initiative, and gave a televised masterclass as part of the project. He has also taught master classes at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the Music Teacher’s Association of California annual convention and in various cities throughout the U.S. In 1997, he was named Best Debut Artist by The Boston Globe and was added to Steinway's distinguished roster of artists. Mr. Levinson is also co-artistic director of the “Janus 21” concert series in Boston.
Born in the Netherlands and raised in Los Angeles, Max Levinson began studying piano at age five. His first teachers were Bruce Sutherland and Aube Tzerko, and as a child he also studied cello, composition and conducting. He attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude with a degree in English Literature, and later completed his graduate studies with Patricia Zander at the New England Conservatory of Music, receiving an Artist Diploma and the Gunther Schuller Medal, an award given to the school’s top graduate student. Max Levinson currently lives in the Boston area with his wife, cellist Allison Eldredge.