Live with Carnegie Hall: New York String Orchestra

Thursday, December 24, 2020 at 7:30pm

It’s a holiday tradition reimagined for 2020! For more than 50 years, the New York String Orchestra has dazzled audiences every Christmas Eve with concerts that feature some of the country’s most talented young musicians alongside celebrated guest artists. Revisit past performances and go behind the scenes with conductor Jaime Laredo and frequent guest pianist Emanuel Ax as this year’s seminar goes online.

Jaime Laredo

For more than six decades, Jaime Laredo has excelled as solo violinist, conductor, recitalist, pedagogue, and chamber musician. Since his orchestral debut with the San Francisco Symphony at the age of 11, he has won the admiration and respect of audiences, critics, and fellow musicians with his passionate and polished performances. At the age of 17, he won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium, launching his rise to international prominence.

In the 2019–2020 season, Mr. Laredo tours the United States as a conductor, soloist, and member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. This season with his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson, Mr. Laredo performs Pas de Deux, Chris Brubeck’s double concerto for violin and cello, which was commissioned specifically for the duo. He also performs Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the New World Symphony in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday.

Other conducting and performance highlights include the Chicago, Boston, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras; San Francisco Symphony; Los Angeles and New York philharmonics; The Cleveland Orchestra; and The Philadelphia Orchestra, among many others. Abroad, Mr. Laredo has appeared with the London and BBC symphony orchestras; Scottish Chamber Orchestra (with whom he made numerous best-selling recordings); and orchestras in France, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Mr. Laredo has recorded nearly 100 albums, including a Grammy Award–winning disc of Brahms piano quartets with Emanuel Ax, Isaac Stern, and Yo-Yo Ma. His recordings range from the complete Bach sonatas with Glenn Gould (Sony Classical) to recent premiere recordings of double concertos with violinist Jennifer Koh (Two x Four on Cedille Records) and Ms. Robinson (Triple Doubles on Bridge Records), and award-winning recordings with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio.

Mr. Laredo’s stewardships of the New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall (which he has conducted for 26 years) and the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis have become beloved educational pillars of the music community. This year is Mr. Laredo’s eighth at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati’s Linton Chamber Music. He was artistic director of the Chamber Music at 92Y series in New York for 40 years.

Born in Bolivia, Mr. Laredo resides in Guilford, Vermont, and Cleveland, Ohio.

Emanuel Ax

Born in modern day Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His studies at the Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award. Additionally, he attended Columbia University where he majored in French. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists followed four years later by the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.

Highlights of the 2019/20 season include a European summer festivals tour with the Vienna Philharmonic and long-time collaborative partner Bernard Haitink, an Asian tour with the London Symphony and Sir Simon Rattle, US concerts with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Lahav Shani in addition to three concerts with regular partners Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall in March 2020.

A Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987, recent releases include Brahms Trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Leonidas Kavakos, Mendelssohn Trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, Strauss’ Enoch Arden narrated by Patrick Stewart, and discs of two-piano music by Brahms and Rachmaninoff with Yefim Bronfman. Mr. Ax has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano.

A frequent and committed partner for chamber music, he has worked regularly with such artists as Young Uck Kim, Cho-Liang Lin, Mr. Ma, Edgar Meyer, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo, and the late Isaac Stern.

Mr. Ax resides in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki. They have two children together, Joseph and Sarah. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, Yale University, and Columbia University.

Enjoy the performance at www.carnegiehall.org/Explore/Watch-and-Listen/Live-with-Carnegie-Hall