PASADENA — The Pasadena Symphony and Pops presents “Beethoven Emperor” on Saturday, Jan. 27, at 2 and 8 p.m. at the Ambassador Auditorium, 131 S. St. John Ave., Pasadena.
Kensho Watanabe, conductor; George Li, piano. Program: Jessica Hunt, “Climb”; Kodály, “Dances of Galánta”; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor.”
Praised by The Washington Post for combining “staggering technical prowess, a sense of command and depth of expression,” Li possesses an effortless grace, poised authority, and brilliant virtuosity far beyond his years. Since winning the Silver Medal at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition, he has rapidly established a major international reputation and performs regularly with some of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, such as Dudamel, Gaffigan, Gergiev, Gimeno, Honeck, Orozco-Estrada, Petrenko, Robertson, Slatkin, Temirkanov, Tilson Thomas, Long Yu, and Xian Zhang.
Highlights for the 2022-2023 season include concerto engagements with The Cleveland Orchestra in Miami, Dallas, Detroit, Kansas City, New Jersey, Indianapolis, Portland (Maine), Arkansas, Pacific, Fairfax, and Modesto Symphonies, and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège in Belgium. In recital, Li returns to Carnegie Hall and appears in El Cajon, Santa Rosa, and Carmel (Calif.), Richmond (Va.), New Orleans (La.), Rochester (N.Y.), Middlebury (Ind.), Williamstown (Mass.), and Chapel Hill (N.C.).
Emerging onto the international stage, Watanabe is fast becoming one of the most exciting and versatile young conductors to come out of the U.S. Recently recognized as a recipient of a Career Assistance Award by the Solti Foundation U.S., he held the position of assistant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 2016 to 2019. During this time, he made his critically acclaimed subscription debut with the orchestra and pianist Daniil Trifonov, taking over from his mentor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
He would continue on to conduct four subscription concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2019, in addition to debuts at the Bravo! Vail Festival and numerous concerts at the Mann and Saratoga Performing Arts Centres. Watanabe has previously been an inaugural conducting fellow of the Curtis Institute of Music from 2013 to 2015, under the mentorship of Nézet-Séguin.
The 2022-23 season saw Watanabe give debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony, and Pasadena Symphony Orchestras. He will also return to the Philadelphia Orchestra for subscription concerts, as well as to the Rhode Island Philharmonic and RTE Concert Orchestra.
Hunt has been commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra (“Climb”), the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra (“The Eagle Tree”), the Gaudete Brass Quintet (“seven works”), Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, The Michigan Lighthouse Landmark Legacy Project, Access Contemporary Music, and many others; has served as the 2018 Boontling Community Fellow at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music and as the 2017-18 Young Composer in Residence with the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings; and was awarded a Regents Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where she completed her doctoral studies in 2019.
In her work as a composer, Hunt’s primary goal is to seek emotional resonance in the rhetorical dialogue between herself, the audience, and the performer by creating eclectic works that explore the aural and syntactical intersections between theatre, narrative, sound, truth and fiction. As such, she has a particular focus on works engaging with the interpretation of text and identity, ranging from her opera-in-progress “Thurso’s Landing,” based on the lengthy narrative poem by Robinson Jeffers, to recently premiered “Climb” (Philadelphia Orchestra commission), which explores her physical experiences with disability and chronic illness.
Tickets/info: (626) 531-1401, BoxOffice@PasadenaSymphony-Pops.org, https://pasadenasymphony-pops.org/concert/beethoven-emperor