Bourgie Hall presents
Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas & Gilles Vonsattel
Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas and Gilles Vonsattel, two musicians with brilliant careers as soloists and chamber musicians, propose a selection of works for cello and piano inspired by cultural belonging.
Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas, cello
A cellist of exceptional ability, Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas is one of the great figures of current Spanish music, with “one of the most incredibly attractive tones currently heard in the world”.
Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas was born in Munich of Spanish parents, where he first studied piano. At the age of 14, he began playing the cello; he graduated from the Reina Sofia School of Music and participated in master courses with cellists as János Starker and Ralph Kirshbaum. He received decisive impulses from Bernard Greenhouse, cellist of the legendary Beaux-Art-Trio and from Gary Hoffman. In 2012, he was awarded the Maurice Ravel prize of the Ravel Academy in Ciboure as soloist and chamber musician and began his international career.
Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas has performed at major venues all over the world, such as the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, the Ford Theatre in Los Angeles and the Palau de la Música in Barcelona.
He also is a devoted chamber musician and has appeared at festivals like the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Mendelssohn Festival of the Gewandhaus Leipzig, the Festival Música y Danza Granada, the Ravinia Festival and the Montreal Symphony Summer Festival with partners like Josu de Solaun, Gilles Vonsattel, Christopher Park and Alissa Margulis.
Recent highlights include concerts with Philharmonisches Orchester Vorpommern, the Orquesta de Córdoba, and at the Festival Internacional de Música ClasClás.
Gilles Vonsattel, piano
A “wanderer between worlds” (Lucerne Festival), “immensely talented” and “quietly powerful pianist” (New York Times), Swiss-born American Gilles Vonsattel is an artist of extraordinary versatility and originality.
Recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, laureate of the Honens, Cleveland, and Dublin competitions, and winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions as well as the 2016 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, he has appeared with the Boston Symphony, Tanglewood, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, while performing recitals and chamber music at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Ravinia, Tokyo’s Musashino Hall, Wigmore Hall, Bravo! Vail, Music@Menlo, the Gilmore festival, the Lucerne festival, and the Munich Gasteig. His 2014 New York solo recital was hailed as “tightly conceived and passionately performed…a study in intensity” by The New York Times.
As a soloist he has also appeared with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Calgary Philharmonic, Edmonton Symphony, l’Orchestre Symphonique du Québec, Boston Pops, Nashville Symphony, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Staatskapelle Halle, and L’orchestre de chambre de Genève.
Recent highlights include a performance of Carlos Chávez’s Piano Concerto in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium with The Orchestra Now, a debut at Mainly Mozart in San Diego, a critically acclaimed recording of music by Richard Strauss and Kurt Leimer with The Bern Symphony Orchestra and Mario Venzago for the Schweizer Fonogramm label. In 2025, Vonsattel begins a three year complete Beethoven piano sonatas cycle for Camerata Pacifica. He will perform the entire cycle over the 2026-7 season for both Music@Menlo and at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Mr. Vonsattel received his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and his master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal. He is Professor of Piano at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Program
R. SCHUMANN Fantasiestücke, Op. 73
GRIEG Cello Sonata in A Minor, Op. 36
RACHMANINOFF Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19
BLOCH From Jewish Life, B. 54
Friday, April 11, 2025 at 7:30pm
To purchase your tickets, please visit: www.mbam.qc.ca/en/bourgie-hall/
