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Home   >   Stories   >   Bell, Denk, Isserlis set for Schaefer Center, as part of 'An Appalachian Summer Festival' / MountainTimes.com

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Bell, Denk, Isserlis set for Schaefer Center, as part of 'An Appalachian Summer Festival' / MountainTimes.com

Posted: July 17, 2024

MountainTimes.com's JERRY SNOW writes….Violinist Joshua Bell, pianist Jeremy Denk and cellist Steven Isserlis will perform together at the Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, July 18 starting at 7 p.m. as part of An Appalachian Summer Festival.

It is a Broyhill Classic Concert Series and is sponsored by the Broyhill Family Foundation and Campus Store.It is considered to be a “dream team of performers” by Strings Magazine.

Bell is a GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist and has performed with virtually every major orchestra. He has been nominated for six GRAMMY’s.
Denk is one America’s foremost pianists, according to appsummer.org, and is regarded by The New York Times as an artist “you want to hear no matter what he performs.” Denk is also a New York Times bestselling author, winner of both the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Denk has performed at Carnegie Hall and worked with the orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra.

Isserlis, a British cellist, enjoys an international career as a soloist, chamber musician, author, educator and broadcaster.

Equally at home in music from baroque to the present day, he performs with the world’s greatest orchestras, according to appsummer.org, including period ensembles.

His vast award-winning discography includes most of the cello repertoire, including the JS Bach suites (Gramophone Instrumental Album of the Year), Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano, the Brahms double concerto with Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Grammy-nominated recordings of Haydn and Martinu.


From PR…….The trio reunites for Sony Classical’s new recording of the piano trios of Felix Mendelssohn, available now digitally and on CD on October 25.  The new recording follows a unique all-Brahms collection For the Love of Brahms – released by Sony Classical in 2018 – that was also a collaboration of Bell, Isserlis and Denk.

Of the new Mendelssohn Piano Trio recording, Joshua Bell notes: “Steven Isserlis and Jeremy Denk have been my most cherished chamber music partners for decades.  They bring seemingly limitless imaginations and uncanny musical intelligence to every work I have had the privilege of exploring with them. It is my hope that our mutual joy for playing chamber music and, in particular, our shared deep love for the genius of Felix Mendelssohn comes through in this recording of these Piano Trios. I am forever grateful for having the opportunity to make this album.”

The two Mendelssohn trios – No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49 (1839) and No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 66 (1845) – are regarded as being among the composer’s masterpieces.

In his liner notes for the new recording, Isserlis quotes Robert Schumann’s belief – written shortly after the premiere of his friend’s Piano Trio No. 1 – that “Mendelssohn… has soared so high, that we may venture to say that he is the Mozart of the nineteenth century, the brightest among musicians, the one who looks most clearly of all through the contradictions of the time and reconciles us to them.”

Interestingly, the writing of first trio tested even Mendelssohn’s genius, as the second would, as well.

With that in mind, listeners to this recording will find a revelatory bonus track – the original version of the song-like second movement (Andante con moto tranquillo) of Piano Trio No. 1.


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