11.09.24
2024/25 Season Highlights
Combining solo works with piano transcriptions of songs by composers from Schubert, Schumann, and Rachmaninoff to Harold Arlen, Charles Trenet, and Armenian folk hero Komitas, Sergei Babayan’s thoughtfully curated new solo program, “Songs,” explores the evolution of lieder, folksong, and the elusive art of melody. “Songs” figures prominently in Babayan’s 2024-25 lineup, with recitals at Tulane University in New Orleans (Feb 27), at London’s state-of-the-art new venue Bechstein Hall (March 15), and in Madrid (May 21), Málaga (June 7), and both Pinerolo (Oct 8) and Pistola (Jan 13) in Italy.
This season, Babayan performs Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto with Naples’s Orchestra del Teatro di San Carlo (May 4) and the same composer’s Third with five different orchestras: Maryland’s National Philharmonic at Strathmore (Sep 14), Belgium’s Antwerp Symphony, led by its Chief Conductor, Elim Chan (Dec 13), Germany’s Hagen Philharmonic (March 11), and both the Orchestre symphonique de l’Opéra de Toulon (Sep 19) and Orchestre symphonique de Tours (Feb 1 & 2) in France. In the fall, Babayan’s recital schedule also takes him to Dortmund, Germany, for a performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Oct 31).
Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto is a profound and monumental work that dates from the composer’s maturity. Another work that features prominently in Babayan’s programming this season, this takes him to Poland for performances with the Baltic Philharmonic (Nov 22), Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic (Nov 8), and NFM Wrocław Philharmonic, with which he reprises the work in Dresden (May 10 & 11).
Next year marks the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth. To celebrate this milestone, Babayan joins the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano and conductor Emmanuel Tjeknavorian for accounts of the French composer’s two piano concertos, on a program that also features the pianist’s solo performance of Ravel’s Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn, written to commemorate an earlier anniversary: the centennial of the Viennese composer’s death (April 4 & 6). Tjeknavorian is also an accomplished violinist, whom Babayan partners with for a program of duo sonatas by Mozart, Prokofiev, and Janàček at the Auditorium di Milano (April 5).
Babayan completes his orchestral lineup with two Mozart concertos, performing the “Jeunehomme” with Lithuania’s Kremerata Baltica, first at the ensemble’s Vilnius home (Nov 26) and then on a tour of Italy (May 13–18), and the Concerto for Two Pianos at Switzerland’s Verbier Festival. There Babayan will be joined by his former student and frequent piano partner Daniil Trifonov, with Christoph Eschenbach leading the Verbier Festival Orchestra (July 22). A dedicated chamber artist, Babayan’s remaining engagement of the season is with violinist Mihaela Martin and cellist Truls Mørk, whom he joins for an evening of piano trios at Germany’s Kronberg Academy (Dec 6).
