Alex Amsel, conductor
Shlomo Mintz, violin
Shlomo Mintz, one of the most celebrated violin virtuosi of our time, joins The Phoenix Symphony to perform Jean Sibelius’s epic Violin Concerto. A work brimming with poignancy, tenderness, and symphonic scope, the Violin Concerto in D minor is the only concerto written by Sibelius. Sibelius is one of the first composers who wrote nationalistic music (music that contains motifs and ideas that are identified with a specific country, region or ethnicity). Finlandia is a celebration of the Finnish spirit and resilience despite its tsarist Russian rule at the time. The performance closes with Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. The premiere took place in Moscow on February 22, 1878. Tchaikovsky dedicated the Symphony to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, whom the composer described as “my best friend.” He opens the symphony with a fanfare in the brass and winds that depicts the power of Fate. It is one of the most dramatic openings in all of symphonic literature.
Concert Repertoire
Sibelius: Finlandia
Sibelius: Concerto in D minor for Violin & Orchestra
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F minor
Shlomo Mintz, violin
Shlomo Mintz is considered by colleagues, audiences, and critics one of the foremost violinists of our time, esteemed for his impeccable musicianship, stylistic versatility, and commanding technique. He has long been acclaimed as a celebrated guest artist with many of the great orchestras and conductors on the international stage and continues to enchant audiences with his playing.
Awarded with many prestigious international prizes including the Premio Internazionale Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the Diapason D’Or, the Grand Prix du Disque, the Gramophone Award, the Edison Award and the Cremona Music Award, in 2006 he received an Honorary Degree from the Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba (Israel) and in 2022 was named Honorary Fellow of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (Israel).
Born in Moscow and immigrated at 2 years old to Israel, he studied with Ilona Feher who introduced Mintz to Isaac Stern becoming his mentor. He was also a student of Dorothy DeLay in New York.
Along his career, he has collaborated with famous artists like Stern, Rostropovich, Zukerman, Perlman, Mehta, Abbado, Giulini, Muti, Temirkanov, Ida Haendel and Ivry Gitlis, among many others, and played with the best orchestras in the world.
Regularly invited by the most prestigious international competitions, Mintz has served as a jury member of the most prestigious competitions in the world (Tchaikovsky in Moscow, the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels and the Henryk Wieniawski in Poland). He was also invited to be jury president of the Munetsugu Angel Violin Competition in Japan, for several years. From 2002 to 2011, he was jury president of the Sion Valais-International Violin Competition, Switzerland and from 2012 to 2018, the Artistic Director of Crans-Montana Classics.
