46 2014 Program Notes, Book 6
Friday, July 18 and Saturday, July 19, 2014
HUGHWOLFF
, Music Director of the Grant Park Music Festival
from 1994 to 1997, is among the leading conductors of his
generation. He has appeared with the major North American
and European orchestras, including those of Chicago, New
York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Cleveland, Toronto, Montreal, London, Paris, Berlin, Munich,
Prague and Israel. He is also a regular guest conductor with
orchestras in Japan, Scandinavia and Australia and at such
prestigious summer music festivals as Aspen, Tanglewood and
Ravinia. Mr. Wolff has also served as Music Director of the New
Jersey Symphony (1986-1993), Principal Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra
(1997-2006) and Music Director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (1988-2000),
with whom he recorded twenty discs and toured the United States, Europe and
Japan. His extensive discography includes a complete set of Beethoven symphonies
with the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, music from the Baroque to the present, and new
works of John Corigliano, John Harbison, Aaron Kernis, Edgar Meyer and Mark-
Anthony Turnage. He has collaborated on recordings with Mstislav Rostropovich,
Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Larmore, Jean-Yves
Thibaudet and jazz guitarist John Scofield. Born in Paris in 1953 to American parents,
Hugh Wolff spent his early years in London and Washington, D.C. After graduating
from Harvard, he returned on a fellowship to Paris, where he studied conducting
with Charles Bruck and composition with Olivier Messiaen, and continued his piano
studies with Leon Fleisher.
STEPHEN HOUGH
combines a distinguished career as a
concert pianist with those of composer and writer. Named by
The Economist
as one of “20 Living Polymaths,” he was the
first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Born in northwest England, Stephen Hough launched
his career when he won First Prize at the 1983 Naumburg
Competition in New York. He has since performed with many
of the world’s major orchestras and given recitals at the most
prestigious concert halls. He is a regular guest at festivals
such as Salzburg, Mostly Mozart, Tanglewood, Edinburgh and
BBC Proms, where he has made over twenty concerto appearances. In 2010, he
was named winner of the UK’s Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award. As
a composer, he has been commissioned by Wigmore Hall, Musée du Louvre,
Australia’s Musica Viva, members of the Berlin Philharmonic, Indianapolis
Symphony, London’s National Gallery, Westminster Abbey and Westminster
Cathedral. As a writer, Stephen Hough has been published by
The Guardian
,
The Times
and
The Telegraph
, where he is author of a popular cultural blog. In
October 2012, the Broadbent Gallery in London hosted the first exhibition of Mr.
Hough’s paintings. He was appointed a Governor of the Royal Ballet Companies
in 2012. A London resident, Stephen Hough is Visiting Professor at the Royal
Academy of Music and holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma
mater, the Royal Northern College of Music. He was made a Commander of the
Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2014 New Year’s Honours List.
