Gloria Cheng
Pianist Gloria Cheng is acclaimed as a discerning artist devoted to tapping the expressive core of contemporary music. In recitals that explore significant interconnections amongst composers, Cheng has been presented by the Ojai Festival, Chicago Humanities Festival, William Kapell Festival, and the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. She has appeared on leading concert series including Carnegie Hall’s Making Music, Cal Performances, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Engine408, Stanford Lively Arts, and at (le) Poisson Rouge.
In recital and on recording, Cheng celebrates the kinships that exist amongst contemporary composers. About her Grammy-winning 2008 disc, Piano Music of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Steven Stucky, and Witold Lutosławski, The New York Times noted: “It’s not just that Ms. Cheng plays these daunting pieces with such commanding technique, color and imagination. She has brought together works that fascinatingly complement one another.” Such juxtapositions have guided each of her recordings from her 1997 Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley on Telarc, to her Grammy-nominated 2012 release, The Edge of Light: Messiaen/Saariaho, with contributions from the Calder Quartet and director Peter Sellars.
In 2015 Cheng launched MONTAGE, a recording and documentary film featuring works composed for her by today’s greatest film composers. The film includes interviews with Bruce Broughton, Don Davis, Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giacchino, Randy Newman, and John Williams, along with footage from the concert premiere and composer-led recording sessions. The film premiered in various venues beginning February 2015, to coincide with the CD release by Harmonia mundi.
BBC Music Magazine has declared, “Cheng is a winner (no wonder one of her greatest fans is Boulez).” It was Pierre Boulez who personally invited her as soloist in Olivier Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques during the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s historic final concerts in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Cheng’s concerto debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic was in 1998 under the direction of Zubin Mehta. Other concerto engagements have included appearances with the Louisville Orchestra, Indianapolis, Shanghai, Pasadena, Long Beach, and Pacific symphonies.
Ralph van Raat
Ralph van Raat has been completely fascinated by contemporary classical music since the age of 14. Although his repertoire ranges from Bach up to and far beyond Boulez, his primary focus has always been on composers dating from Debussy, Bartók and Ives to present day international masters. His passion is to convince audiences of the immense beauty and diversity in the music of our own time through solo recitals, lecture-recitals, concerto performances, CD-releases, media appearances and special, cross-medial projects.
Van Raat helps audiences identify with modern day composers by adhering to a classical approach: he firmly believes that a strong sense of classical structure as well as a refinement of tone is essential in conveying the logic and poetry of any music, certainly including his repertoire of choice.
Van Raat regularly appears as a recitalist around the world, in Europe, the Middle East, Australia and Asia as well as in the United States. Contemporary classical music is his repertoire of choice and dedication. His concerts are regularly broadcast by radio and television networks. He has been engaged for his own radio series on contemporary classical music by Dutch national broadcasting and has been honored with his own concert series by a.o. the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam and De Doelen in Rotterdam.
Van Raat has often performed as a soloist with orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Frankfurt, the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the Dortmunder Philharmoniker, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and the China National Symphony Orchestra. Van Raat was Artist-in-Residence of The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra in 2010. He has worked closely with conductors including Valery Gergiev, JoAnn Falletta, Susanna Mälkki, David Robertson, Peter Eötvös, Stefan Asbury, Ludovic Morlot, Tönu Kaljuste, Jeffrey Milarsky, Thierry Fischer and Otto Tausk.
He has performed as a soloist at important festivals such as at the symphonic openings concert of the Gergiev Festival, the BBC Proms, the Hong Kong Arts Festival (as part of the prestigious Credit Suisse Emerging Artist Series), the Festival International de Musique de Besançon, the Holland Festival, the Time of Music festival in Viitasaari, Finland, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK, the Berliner Festspiele and the Tanglewood Summer Festival in the United States.
Van Raat has had an exclusive contract with the international record label Naxos since December 2006. His first recording for Naxos, the complete piano works by John Adams, received top ratings in several magazines: Chicago Time Out (6/6 stars), Le Monde de la Musique (4/4 stars) and monthly magazine Luister (10/10 score). It was highlighted as a CD of the month in Gramophone. His second CD, with Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated was labelled a Benchmark CD in BBC Music Magazine, and Highly Recommended by Gramophone. In December 2010, within a month after its release, Van Raat’s CD with Hans Otte: Das Buch der Klänge (The Book of Sounds) was chosen as CD of the Week by Dutch public radio. Van Raat’s recording of Arvo Pärt’s piano music received a 5/5 star rating in BBC Music Magazine. His piano duo release with works by Debussy and Messiaen (Naxos 8.572472) has been nominated for the Spellemannsprisen 2012, the Norwegian equivalent to the Grammy.
In 2009, an Artist Portrait CD-box was released, with Van Raat’s complete Naxos recordings to date. In 2017, Naxos issued a press release worldwide: Celebrating Ralph van Raat. In May 2020, Naxos will present his most recent recording: a treasure trove of unknown French repertoire by a.o. Debussy, Ravel and Pierre Boulez.
Upcoming concerts with Celebrating Pierre Boulez
Celebrating Pierre Boulez
Music by Boulez, Feldman, Gibson, Lindburg, Stravinsky and Zappa Pianists Gloria Cheng and Ralph van Raat …
View Event - Celebrating Pierre Boulez