Celloquy Lera Auerbach

• 1 No. 1 in C Major - Andante 03:05
• 2 No. 2 in A Minor - Allegro 00:47
• 3 No. 3 in G Major - Andante misterioso 01:59
• 4 No. 4 in E minor - Allegro ossessivo 00:43
• 5 No. 5 in D Major - Moderato 01:49
• 6 No. 6 in B Minor - Tragico 02:18
• 7 No. 7 in A Major - Vivo ma non troppo 01:13
• 8 No. 8 in F-Sharp Minor - Grave 01:52
• 9 No. 9 in E Major - Vivace 00:58
• 10 No. 10 in C-Sharp Minor - Adagio sognando 01:37
• 11 No. 11 in B Major - Allegro 00:52
• 12 No. 12 in G-Sharp Minor - Adagio 04:59
• 13 No. 13 in G flat major - Andantino grazioso 02:09
• 14 No. 14 in E flat minor - Allegretto scherzando 01:19
• 15 No. 15 in D-Flat Major - Allegro con brio 01:00
• 16 No. 16 in B flat minor - Tempo di valzer 03:19
• 17 No. 17 in A-Flat Major - Allegro ritmico 02:45
• 18 No. 18 in F Minor - Andantino 01:28
• 19 No. 19 in E-Flat Major - Allegro appassionato 01:08
• 20 No. 20 in C Minor - Giocoso 01:15
• 21 No. 21 in B-Flat Major - Dialogo 02:49
• 22 No. 22 in G Minor - Andante nostalgico 03:29
• 23 No. 23 in F Major - Adagio sognando 02:40
• 24 No. 24 in D Minor - Vivo 04:34
• Cello Sonata, Op. 69
• 25 I. Allegro moderato 07:07
• 26 II. Lament - Adagio 05:53
• 27 III. Allegro assai 03:01
• 28 IV. Con estrema intensita 05:59
• Postlude for Cello and Piano
• 29 No. 12 in G-Sharp Minor - Adagio 03:11
• Total Runtime 01:15:18

Info for Celloquy

Lera Auerbachs 24 Preludes for violoncello and piano (1999) receives its world-premiere recording on Celloquy in a performance by Ani Aznavoorian, an award-winning American cellist of international stature, and Auerbach, a Russian-born virtuoso pianist and one of the most widely-performed composers of the new generation.

Auerbach is the youngest composer on the roster of Hamburgs prestigious international music publishing company Hans Sikorski, home to Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Schnittke. Her music is lyrical, passionate, and often seems to straddle the past and present, observed the host of a recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program devoted to Auerbachs multi-faceted career.

Celloquy is cellist Aznavoorians first recording as featured soloist. Her previous recordings, as a member of New York-based string orchestra Sejong Soloists, include the Mendelssohn Octet with violinist Gil Shaham on Canary Classics. She is principal cellist of Southern Californias Camerata Pacifica.

'The performances are of just staggering quality. Lera Auerbach at the piano is as effective a performer of her music as you can imagine, but the real surprise is cellist Ani Aznavoorian… Playing on a cello built by her father, Aznavoorian delivers with emotional commitment that borders on eye-popping. Plus she seems never to be afraid of the music’s demands for exotic effects, microtonality, scraping, spooky harmonics that sound like Armenian wind instruments, vibrato that threatens to explode, and fiendish double-stopping. To paraphrase Nigel Tufnel, this cellist goes up to 11. She delivered the world premiere of the preludes, according to her bio, and she simply owns this music. Not that I hope she owns it for long; this is extraordinary cycle that belongs in the repertoire of many a cellist.' (Brian Reinhart, MusicWeb International)

'...the performances are sensational. Auerbach is a superb pianist, and she handles her own frequently virtuosic writing with aplomb. Ani Aznavoorian plays a mean cello, both here and in the Cello Sonata. Auerbach also makes evocative use of microtones both here and occasionally in the preludes as well. It’s an interesting addition to her expressive arsenal, particularly when they appear in a tonal context.'

'The sonics are gorgeous, with perfect balances and a very realistic perspective. Fans of good contemporary chamber music will want to own this; it repays repeated listening and reveals Auerbach as a true force in today’s music.' (David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday)

Ani Aznavoorian, cello
Lera Auerbach, piano

Lera Auerbach
Virtuoso pianist and composer Lera Auerbach is one of today’s most sought after and exciting creative voices. Her boldly imaginative and evocative compositions are championed by today's leading musicians, conductors, choreographers, and opera houses. Ms. Auerbach's uniquely personal interpretations of the standard keyboard repertoire are making her a favorite of audiences worldwide.

She regularly appears as soloist in the world’s great halls, and her published oeuvre includes more than 90 works of opera, ballet, symphonic and chamber music. Her creative output is interdisciplinary and encompasses music, literature, and visual art. She has published three volumes of poetry and prose in Russian, contributes regularly to the Best American Poetry blog, writes her own librettos, and has recently been working on a series of gesamtkunstwerk installations.

Theater performances scheduled for the 2012/13 season include "Préludes CV", a full-length ballet by John Neumeier - based on Lera Auerbach’s "24 Preludes for Violoncello and Piano" and "24 Preludes for Violin and Piano", to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Hamburg Ballett. There will also be world premieres of two new ballets – "Faust" by the Staatstheater Nürnberg, with choreography by Goyo Montero (which features Lera Auerbach as pianist on stage), and "Heroes" for the Munich State Ballet, choreographed by Terence Kohler. Auerbach's groundbreaking a-cappella opera "The Blind" will be staged at the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow.

Marking Lera Auerbach's achievement as one of today's most recognized composers, her full-length ballet "The Little Mermaid" is the recent winner of the 2012 ECHO Klassik award, and has already received over 150 performances worldwide. This season, the work will be staged by John Neumeier for the National Ballet of China in Beijing, the Hamburg Ballet, and the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow. Auerbach has recently collaborated with the Netherlands Dance Theatre and resident choreographers Sol León and Paul Lightfoot on "Shine a Light" ballet; with Aszur Barton and the National Ballet of Canada on "Watch Her"; with Goyo Montero and the Nuremberg State Ballet on "Don Juan"; with Tim Plegge on "Momo" for the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe; and with Terence Kohler on "Take Your Time" for the Chinese National Ballet, "11:11" for the Flanders National Ballet, and last season's full-length ballet "Cinderella" for the Finnish National Ballet. The 2012-13 season will also see the premiere of Auerbach's "String Quartet No. 6", commissioned by the Tokyo String Quartet for their farewell tour, and a new viola and piano work to be performed by Kim Kashkashian and Ms. Auerbach on tour.

Other premieres include a string symphony commissioned by the New Century Chamber Orchestra, a concerto for saxophone quartet and choir for the Raschér Saxophone Quartet, and two additional string quartets for the Borromeo String Quartet and Ying String Quartet. Bidding a fond farewell to her tenure as Composer-in-Residence of the Staatskapelle Dresden, Ms. Auerbach is currently Artist-in-Residence for BASF's highly regarded "Kunst und Kultur" program, now in its 91st season, as well as resident composer of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra, the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and the International Verbier Festival, which has commissioned her to write a new symphonic work to commemorate their 20th Anniversary. Recent career highlights include the critically acclaimed premiere of Auerbach's full-scale opera, "Gogol", based on her original stage play. The opera was commissioned by Vienna’s Theater an der Wien and premiered in November 2011. Her residency with the Staatskapelle Dresden in 2011-12 showcased the world premieres of "Requiem - Ode to Peace" conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, and "Post Silentium" conducted by Sakari Oramo. Auerbach's a-capella opera "The Blind" received its world premiere in October 2011 at the Konzerthaus Berlin with the Berliner Kammeroper and Vocalconsort Berlin.

Lera Auerbach's music has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, Staatskapelle Dresden, Dresdner Philharmoniker, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, Bamberger Symphoniker, and Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, among others, and by such choruses as St. Thomas Boys Choir in New York, St. Paul's Cathedral Boys Choir, Estonian Opera Boys Choir, the Latvian National Choir, and Vienna's Arnold Schoenberg Choir. She regularly collaborates with violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, and Julian Rachlin; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, David Finckel, Gautier Capuçon, and Ani Aznavoorian; violist Kim Kashkashian; and the Tokyo, Borromeo, Artemis, and Jasper string quartets.

Auerbach has been Composer-in-Residence at various international music festivals, including the Marlboro Music Festival, Verbier Festival, Musikfest Bremen, the Pacific Music Festival, Kammermusikfest Lockenhaus, and Les Muséiques Festival. She has also written works for the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Caramoor Music Festival, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, Lucerne Festival, Lincoln Center's White Light Festival, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and was Artist-in-Residence with the Deutschlandfunk Radio.

Lera Auerbach was born in the city of Chelyabinsk at the gateway to Siberia. After writing her first opera at twelve years of age, she was invited for a concert tour to the United States in 1991, where she decided to stay and continue her studies in piano and composition at the Juilliard School in New York. Auerbach has been awarded the prestigious Hindemith Prize by the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany, and Deutschlandfunk’s Förderpreis. She recieved a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship and recently was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

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