Biography

Matt Haimovitz is renowned as a musician who “never turns in a predictable performance” (the New Yorker) and who ‘brings his megawatt sound and uncommon expressive gifts to a vast variety of styles’ (New York Times). He has inspired countless listeners by bringing his artistry to concert halls, clubs, outdoor festivals, and intimate coffee houses. In addition to a busy touring schedule, he is Associate Professor of Strings at McGill University. Haimovitz made his debut in 1984 at the age of 13 as soloist with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, and at 17 he made his first recording with the Chicago Symphony. In 2000 Haimovitz undertook a highly acclaimed Bach “Listening-Room” Tour, in which he played the six Bach solo cello suites in clubs across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. Multiple prize-winning Canadian pianist Meagan Milatz has performed with numerous musicians of international acclaim, including violinist Jinjoo Cho and hornist Stefan Dohr. LMMC return engagement.

Notes

The first and third composers on Matt Haimovitz’ recital today are American women born in the latter half of the twentieth century and now living in New York. Both of their pieces, for cello alone, were composed just this year for Haimovitz. Lisa Bielawa takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. Missa Primavera is one of a series of short cello works that serve as “companion pieces” to painter Charline von Heyl’s “reimagining” of Botticelli’s famous painting La Primavera.

Missy Mazzoli describes herself as “a delinquent tap dancer turned insomniac composer whose influences range from Beethoven to Balinese gamelan”. In Beyond the Order of Things, another work in the Primavera Project, the composer “replicated in music von Heyl’s technique of erasing and recontextualizing source material from the Renaissance”. Mazzoli transcribed a vocal motet of the same title by Botticelli’s contemporary Josquin des Prez, reworking, repeating, slicing and dicing the material into a new whole.

Between these two works from 2021 we hear music written a century earlier by another woman composer, the Parisian Nadia Boulanger, best known as one of the most influential composition teachers of the twentieth century. Her Trois Pièces were originally written for organ in 1911, transcribed by the composer for cello in 1914.

Four years earlier, the Czech Leoš Janáček wrote his Pohádka (A Fairy Tale), inspired by an epic poem of Vassily Zhukovsky.

Shostakovich’s cello sonata (1934) is one of the mainstays of a cellist’s repertory. The first movement is in sonata form, the second a sardonic waltz, the third a dark meditation, and the fourth a rondo blistering with technical fireworks.

Robert Markow