Anthony de Mare LIAISONS Re-Imagining SONDHEIM From The Piano

Conceived by acclaimed concert pianist Anthony de Mare, LIAISONS is a landmark commissioning and concert project based on the songs of legendary musical theater composer Stephen Sondheim. The Project invited 36 of the world’s foremost contemporary composers to choose a song by Sondheim and re-imagine it as a solo piano piece.
Both an homage and a celebration, LIAISONS makes the case for Sondheim as one of the 20th century's most influential composers - as at home in the concert hall as on the Broadway stage. It is also an expression of de Mare’s versatility and renowned commitment to contemporary composers: the Project’s roster spans the worlds of classical, jazz, opera, pop, musical theater and film. Composers hail from seven different countries and range in age from 30 to 75, representing more than 34 Pulitzers, Grammys, Tonys and Academy Awards.

 Since 2011 de Mare has performed over 30 different LIAISONS concerts to full houses across the U.S. and Canada, including San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago and Minneapolis among others. The first 32 pieces received their New York premieres over a series of two sold-out concerts at Symphony Space in 2012 and 2013, which also featured special onstage interviews of Mr. Sondheim by Mark Horowitz.
This fall, in celebration of the release of LIAISONS on the prestigious ECM New Series label, de Mare will play the entire collection across a three-concert series at Birdland, the Sheen Center and Symphony Space, where the project will come full circle with the final four NY premieres. We hope you will join us!

“To hear composers take my work and take it seriously... it’s a thrill.”
– Stephen Sondheim

Hardenberger / Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Eötvös GRUBER Aerial - EÖTVÖS Jet Stream - TURNAGE From the Wreckage

Virtuoso trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger's skills are prodigious and seem made to order for the three cutting-edge concertos presented on this 2006 Deutsche Grammophon release. These are not the flashy crowd-pleasers that most players trot out, but serious modern works that derive equally from the avant-garde and neo-Romanticism, as well as from jazz and popular music. Furthermore, Heinz Karl Gruber, Peter Eötvös, and Mark-Anthony Turnage are not generally noted for writing accessible, easily digested music, yet only the most hardened conservative will resist their colorful, dramatic, and highly expressive pieces. The first movement of Gruber's Aerial (1998-1999) has the melancholy feeling of a jazz nocturne, and Hardenberger's sweetly soulful playing makes it an atmospheric reverie. The melodically angular, rhythmically irregular second movement is edgy and perhaps a little difficult to follow in its lopsided activity, but its quirkiness and charm carry the work to an ebullient conclusion. Eötvös' Jet Stream (2002) is decidedly darker in mood and harmonically denser, and the trumpet has to penetrate rather thick textures; yet Hardenberger soars above the roiling orchestration undaunted, and makes the frequently segmented line cohere through his intensely focused tone. From the Wreckage (2004-2005), a violent tour de force by Turnage, was composed specifically for Hardenberger, and features a progression from flügelhorn to trumpet to piccolo trumpet, showing off this musician's fluid ease in all registers and his wide range of effects. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, under Eötvös' acute direction, provides a vivid and responsive accompaniment, and the high level of excitement in the playing is apparent in all three performances, but seems even greater in From the Wreckage, where the ensemble has the most material to work with. The reproduction is first rate, with realistic presence and clear separation of the trumpet from the orchestra. (Blair Sanderson)