Answer:Weilerstein is a consummate performer, combining technical precision with impassioned musicianship.” So stated the MacArthur Foundation when awarding Alisa Weilerstein a 2011 MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship, prompting the New York Times to respond: “Any fellowship that recognizes the vibrancy of an idealistic musician like Ms. Weilerstein … deserves a salute from everyone in classical music.” In performances marked by intensity, sensitivity, and a wholehearted immersion in each of the works she interprets, the American cellist has long proven herself to be in possession of a distinctive musical voice.
Entering her second season as Artistic Partner with the Trondheim Soloists, Weilerstein joins the ensemble on two European tours this fall, including appearance in Norway, London, Munich and Bergen. Their first album together, 2018’s Transfigured Night released on Pentatone, features Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and both Haydn cello concertos. It attracted unanimous praise, with Gramphone magazine proclaiming, “you’d go far to find performances of the Haydn concertos that match Alisa Weilerstein’s mix of stylistic sensitivity, verve and spontaneous delight in discovery.”Weilerstein kicked off the 2018-19 season in collaboration with the Trondheim Soloists, before performing Dvořák’s Cello Concerto on a U.S. tour with the Czech Philharmonic, Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto with five orchestras (the Gothenburg Philharmonic, Orquesta Nacional de España, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and Toronto Symphony), Schumann’s Concerto with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and works by Saint-Saëns, Britten, Richard Strauss, and Bloch in cities from San Diego to Vienna. With the composer leading both Copenhagen’s DR SymfoniOrkestret and the Cincinnati Symphony, she reprised Matthias Pintscher’s new cello concerto Un despertar, a work written for her that she premiered in 2017. She also toured Europe and the U.S. with Barnatan, violinist Sergey Khachatryan, and percussionist Colin Currie, and rounded out the season with complete Bach cello suite performances in Beverly Hills, Berkeley, Boston’s Celebrity Series, Paris, and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie.
Weilerstein’s growing and celebrated discography includes a recording of the Elgar and Elliott Carter cello concertos with Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin that was named “Recording of the Year 2013” by BBC Music; the magazine also featured the cellist on the cover of its May 2014 issue. Her next release, on which she played Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic, topped the U.S. classical chart. Her third album, a compilation of unaccompanied 20th-century cello music titled Solo, was pronounced an “uncompromising and pertinent portrait of the cello repertoire of our time” (ResMusica, France). Solo’s centerpiece is the Kodály sonata, a signature work that Weilerstein revisits on the soundtrack of If I Stay, a 2014 feature film starring Chloë Grace Moretz in which the cellist makes a cameo appearance as herself. In 2015 she released a recording of sonatas by Chopin and Rachmaninoff, marking her duo album debut with Inon Barnatan, which earned praise from Voix des Arts as “a ravishing recording of fantastic music.” In 2016 she released a “powerful and even mesmerizing” recording (San Francisco Chronicle) of Shostakovich’s cello concertos with the Bavarian Radio Symphony and Pablo Heras-Casado.
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