Yefim Bronfman first performed as a soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1979, when he was just 21 years old; the acclaimed, Avery Fisher Prize-winning pianist last played with the ensemble in 2005, when he performed Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, popularly known as the Emperor Concerto.
In his return to Orchestra Hall, he will perform that composer’s Fourth Piano Concerto. Premiered publicly in 1807 by Beethoven himself, the work is considered a cornerstone of the piano concerto repertoire, and was recorded by the Minnesota Orchestra in 2009 with Yevgeny Sudbin as soloist.
The program will take place at Orchestra Hall in downtown Minneapolis on Friday, June 7, at 8 PM, and Saturday, June 8, at 7 PM, with ticket prices ranging from $31 to $106. Free tickets for all programs are available to young listeners ages 6 to 18 thanks to the Orchestra’s Hall Pass program. The performance on Friday, June 7, will be broadcast live on stations of YourClassical Minnesota Public Radio, including KSJN 99.5 FM in the Twin Cities.
David Robertson, the chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, will also return to Orchestra Hall for the first time in more than two decades. He will present symphonic works by two contemporary American composers, opening with the First Symphony of Adolphus Hailstork, the 82-year-old Albany, New York native who studied composition under French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Hailstork’s First Symphony utilizes a traditional symphonic format, but also brings an array of influences from varied cultural backgrounds—including subtle incorporations of music from Guyana, where he had recently studied.
The concerts will conclude with Doctor Atomic Symphony, which condenses and adapts selections from John Adams’ 2005 opera that tells the story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and explores the weeks leading up to the first test of the atomic bomb. Scored for orchestra without voices, the symphony depicts the lab’s tension, wartime panic and a countdown to the test. (Oppenheimer is also the central subject of director Christopher Nolan’s celebrated 2023 film named after him.) Robertson has long been a champion of Adams’ music and, in collaboration with the St. Louis Symphony, was honored with a 2014 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance for a recording of another of Adams’ compositions, “City Noir.”
