Nicholas McGegan Leads Seattle Symphony

Nicholas McGegan

Nicholas McGegan is one of the world’s leading authorities on Baroque and Classical repertoire. He has worked for 20 years with the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, which was named Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year for 2004; has been the Artistic Director of the International Handel-Festival Gottingen since 1990; and is the Founder and Director of the period-instrument chamber music ensemble, The Arcadian Academy. McGegan has conducted more than two dozen Handel operas, all the major Mozart stage works, and repertoire ranging from Monteverdi to Stravinsky.

He has appeared with the Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Toronto symphony orchestras; New World Symphony; the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; the Sydney, Melbourne and West Australian symphonies; orchestras in Lithuania, Hungary, Austria and Italy. Born in England, McGegan studied at Cambridge and Oxford universities and holds an honorary degree from the Royal College of Music in London.

Ani Kavafian

In recent years, Ani Kavafian has premiered and recorded numerous works written for her, including Henri Lazarof’s Divertimento for Violin and String Orchestra, Todd Machover’s concerto Forever and Ever, for computerized violin and orchestra; and Michelle Ekizian’s Red Harvest. In addition, she gave the West Coast premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’ Double Concerto for Violin and Guitar with guitarist Sharon Isbin and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. She has appeared with the New York Philharmonic; Cleveland, Minnesota, Los Angeles Chamber and Philadelphia orchestras; the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Delaware, Detroit, Rochester, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and Utah; and in recital at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

She frequently collaborates with her sister, violist Ida Kavafian, in both recordings and as soloists with orchestras of Cincinnati, Colorado, Detroit, San Antonio and Tuscon; as an Artist-Member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York; as a member of the daSalo String Trio, among others. Among her various awards, she has received the Avery Fisher Prize and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. Kavafian began her musical studies on the piano at age 3, and the violin at age 9. She studied with Ivan Galamian at The Juilliard School, where she received her master’s degree. She currently serves on the faculties of both Yale and Stony Brook Universities and as guest concertmaster with Seattle Symphony

Program

Johann Sebastian Bach’s popular Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C major opens with a festive “French” Overture and is followed by a sequence of rhythmically distinct and catchy dance-derived numbers.

Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni wrote voluminously, especially in opera but also in various instrumental genres. The Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major boasts activating first and third movements around an expressive Adagio.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, oldest son of Johann Sebastian, found creative freedom when he left the employ of Frederick the Great. His “Hamburg” Symphony in E major revels in harmonic and rhythmic twists as it sails forward between the twin pillars of his illustrious father’s High Baroque mentality, and emerging Classicism.

The suite from Jean Marie Leclair’s opera Scylla et Glaucus derives from the popular dances of mid-18th-century France, though the originals came from all over the continent. -- www.seattlesymphony.org