Hans Graf returns to Houston for 29th Texas Music Festival
This June, Maestro Hans Graf will return for his first Houston conducting appearance since winning a Grammy Award earlier this year. He will present an allShostakovich program Saturday, June 30, for the grand finale of the 29th Annual Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival, an international music residency that brings 95 of classical music’s rising stars to the University of Houston Moores School of Music to study and perform with world-class conductors, soloists and faculty artists June 5 - July 1.
“We’re honored to welcome Maestro Graf back to our stage to conduct Shostakovich: First and Last, featuring three works by one of his favorite composers,” said Alan Austin, TMF general and artistic director. The festival is made possible by a gift from the Immanuel and Helen B. Olshan Foundation and support from the UH MSM, a part of UH Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts.
The TMF Orchestra Series will open Saturday, June 9, with Cosmic Beginnings, a soaring double feature of Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30, and Holst: The Planets, under the baton of TMF music director and chief conductor Franz Anton Krager.
For TMF Week 2, Saturday, June 16, piano soloist Timothy Hester will perform Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 with Horst Foerster conducting. A graduate of The Juilliard School, Hester is UH MSM professor of piano and director of the Keyboard Collaborative Arts program. Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 “Pathétique” will complete the bill.
TMF Week 3’s Dancing the Night Away will offer fanciful works Friday, June 22, 8 p.m., (Woodlands Pavilion - free) and Saturday, June 23, 7:30 p.m. (Moores Opera House), including Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, plus the student winner of the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Young Artist Competition as soloist. Carlos Spierer will conduct.
Graf ’s Shostakovich program, Week 4 Saturday, June 30, will include the Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarotti, Op. 145a with bass soloist Nikolay Didenko, a Houston Grand Opera Studio alumnus.
Pre-concert programs of TMF Orchestra Series will include performances by members of Virtuosi of Houston and Settling the Score lectures. TMF will showcase the talents of its faculty artists on four faculty chamber music concerts for its Perspectives Series Tuesdays, 7:30 p.m., June 5, 12, 19, 26 at UH Dudley Recital Hall.
Saturday TMF Orchestra Series performances are general seating and parking is free at the UH Moores Opera House, UH Main Campus, I-45 at Cullen Boulevard, Entrance #16.
For packages and senior, group and individual ticket information and purchases, go to www.tmf.uh.edu or call the UH College of the Arts Box Office 713-7433388.