Ravinia 2026 Issue 3

COURTESYBSO.ORG(BOSTON);CHARLOTTESMITH / A2SO(ANNARBOR) Left: Earl Lee backstage at Boston’s Symphony Hall with former BSO assistant conductors Ludovic Morlot and Moritz Gnann in 2022 (top) when he began the two-year post, the same year he became music director of the Ann Arbor Symphony (bottom) Above: Earl Lee playing cello in Beethoven’s “Archduke” Piano Trio with pianist Yue Chu and violinist Diana Cohen as a Steans Institute Piano & Strings Program fellow in 2007 Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin and the composer’s Romeo and Juliet -in- spired fantasy-overture. “The 1812 is quite substantial, and Romeo and Juliet is not a small piece by any means,” he said. “I think it’s a fun concert, and we can do a lot with it.” Conducting any orchestra for the first time is like a blind date, Lee said. Both parties may know a little about each other by reputation—among his past engagements and honors, Lee received the Sir Georg Solti Conduct- ing Award in 2022—but in person, “an orchestra has its own unique collective personality. That chemistry between people is discovered the first 20 or 25 minutes of rehearsal.” At first, he said, he will conduct minimally and then begin to express a little more. “It’s a little bit nerve-wracking,” he said, “because you don’t know which way it’s going to go.” With his soloist, however, Lee will be on familiar ground. He met Chen in 2022 when they both made their New York Philharmonic debuts on the orches- tra’s Lunar New Year Concert and Gala, and they have kept in touch since. “I love working with Stella,” he said. “She’s such a virtuoso, but she does a lot of chamber music, and that’s my background. It al- ways feels very organic, a lot of give and take. You can breathe together. There’s always room to dance around.” Chen, for her part, said, “I absolutely adore working with Earl. He is such a wonderfully genuine, brilliant, charis- matic, and playful person, and that spirit carries seamlessly from our friendship into our work together onstage.” Traditionally, the soloist and con- ductor get together before the first orchestral rehearsal to talk about the piece or play through it, but Lee and Chen were texting already in May. “She asked what I thought about cuts in the last movement, and I said we would do whatever she wanted,” he said. “A conductor’s job is to be a supporter and make the soloist’s concept of the piece come alive.” Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto is famous as a technical tour-de-force, but Chen is also concentrating on “the challenge of spinning all of its pyrotech- nics and technical madness into balletic beauty and delight.” She recently had the chance to dance with Mikhail Barysh- nikov, she said, “and it will forever be one of the greatest moments of my life. I am one of the clumsiest people alive, but thankfully that is no barrier to my musi- cal imagination. With this piece, I adore letting that imagination run wild.” Like Lee, Chen is also a Steans alum. She remembers her summers there in 2013 and 2014 as “[both] grueling and inspiring, spending every day think- ing about, discussing, rehearsing, and performing music from 7:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m., for five straight weeks.” But unlike Lee, she has come back multiple times in the intervening years as a solo- ist and chamber musician. “It feels very much like a summer home away from home,” she said, “and returning in this way is incredibly meaningful.” David Lewellen is a Milwaukee-based journalist who writes regularly for the Chicago Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, and other classical websites. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 25 COURTESYBSO.ORG(BOSTON);CHARLOTTESMITH / A2SO(ANNARBOR)