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Orli Shaham: pianist, educator, curator, radio host, and mother

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by Mike Telin

“I’ve been on kind of a crusade to get the Schumann Concerto programmed as much as possible,” pianist Orli Shaham said during a telephone conversation. It’s a piece that I absolutely adore.” Although she performed the piece many times early in her career, she said that for many years orchestras were not interested in programming the concerto. “Just before the pandemic I was finally scheduled to play it and sure enough, that concert was canceled.”

Lucky for her, that concert was moved to this season, “so I had my chance to play it this past fall.” On Thursday, March 10 at 7:30 pm in Stambaugh Auditorium, Shaham will have another opportunity to play Schumann’s Concerto when she joins the   Youngstown Symphony Orchestra under the direction of André Raphel. The program also includes  Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. Tickets are available online. [Read more…]

CD Review —
Ginastera: One Hundred

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by Jeremy Reynolds

ginastera-one-hundred-cdYolanda Kondonassis, harp, Gil Shaham, violin, Orli Shaham, piano, Jason Vieaux, guitar, and the Oberlin Orchestra (Oberlin Music).

In a newly released all-Ginastera album, a single element unifies four distinct compositions, four different instrumental groupings, and four different decades of Ginastera’s creative output: the gaucho chord. Gauchos are Argentine cultural figures, South American cowboys renowned for their skill with a guitar. Their namesake chord is a nontraditional harmonic construction: it comprises only perfect fourths instead of major and minor thirds, just like a strummed gaucho guitar. [Read more…]

Pianist Orli Shaham to perform at CityMusic Cleveland benefit

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by Mike Telin

SHAHAM-Orli“What a genius this guy was,” pianist Orli Shaham said about Mozart and his Piano Concerto No. 12 in A, K. 414. “He just could not run out of ideas. In all of the traditional places in this piece where you would expect a certain theme to show up, he always puts in a different theme — it could be based on the same premise, but somehow it sounds new. For any other composer, just one theme would have been enough to make the entire piece.”

On Friday, May 6 at 6:30 pm at Shaker Heights Country Club, CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra will hold a benefit con cert under the direction of Avner Dorman. The program will feature Orli Shaham in a performance Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12, as well as Dorman’s After Brahms — 3 Intermezzos for Piano. [Read more…]

CD Review: American Grace — Orli Shaham, piano

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by Daniel Hautzinger

american-graceOf all instrumentalists, pianists seem to commission and perform new works the least often. The repertoire for the piano is already so vast and worthy that many performers see no need to add to it. Why even play pieces from the past half-century, when there is so much great, neglected, earlier music?

Luckily, not all pianists think this way. Take Orli Shaham, whose album American Grace, released in February on Canary Classics, features attractive works written since 1975 by John Adams and Steven Mackey, as well as two world premiere recordings. One of those pieces, Steven Mackey’s concerto Stumble to Grace, was commissioned for Shaham by a consortium of orchestras as a result of her own initiative.

Stumble to Grace (2011), performed here with the responsive Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Shaham’s husband, David Robertson, is Mackey’s first major work for piano. [Read more…]

Preview: Violinist Gil Shaham talks about playing Tchaikovsky at Blossom and about his new CD, Nigunim

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by Mike Telin

Shaham,-Gil---by-Christian-Steiner“We are so lucky to have this Tchaikovsky violin concerto, it’s one of the great inspirations,” says violinist Gil Shaham. “And I think Tchaikovsky felt the same way about it.” On Saturday, August 3 beginning at 8:00 pm at Blossom Music Center, Gil Shaham will perform Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece with The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Kirill Karabits. In addition to the Tchaikovsky, the all-Russian program also includes Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5.

In addition to his superb musicianship, Gil Shaham is thoroughly entertaining on stage and never leaves one wondering if he is having fun. “I do find a lot of joy in playing these days and I think I enjoy it now more then ever before,” he told us by telephone from Aspen, Colorado. “Maybe it is not such a good thing because I think that our job is very similar to the job of an actor. We have the ideal that the composer wrote for us, often dealing with very serious subjects…and the most extreme conditions of human experience. But I have to say that I really do enjoy it. When you are playing some of these great masterpieces like the Tchaikovsky, I feel very lucky to be there and to be playing it, and my gosh, to be able to play it with an orchestra like the Cleveland Orchestra!” [Read more…]

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