TWO TEEN VIOLINISTS TO PLAY THIS WEEKEND IN SALT LAKE CITY

Two teenaged violinists will be performing in Salt Lake City in separate concerts this weekend:

Fumiaki Miura (Photo © S. Takehana)

Utah Symphony: Nineteen-year-old Fumiaki Miura will make his Utah Symphony debut playing Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy.

Miura was born into a musical family and began playing the violin at age three. He has won several competitions in his native Japan and abroad. His biggest win to date was first prize at the International Joseph Joachim Violin Competition in Hannover, Germany, in 2009. He was the competition’s youngest gold medalist, and in addition to taking top honors Miura also won the Music Critics’ Prize and the Audience Prize.

Despite his young age, Miura has already appeared with a number of orchestras in Japan and Europe, including the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic and the Nagoya Philharmonic.

This season he will return to the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and make his debut with the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, Germany.

Miura’s Utah Symphony engagement is his first in the United States.

Also on this weekend’s Utah Symphony program, which will be conducted by music director Thierry Fischer, is Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 3; Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, Scottish; and Claude Debussy’s Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire.

The concerts take place this Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Abravanel Hall.

Tickets are $18-$53 and available by phone at 801-355-2787 or 888-451-2787 or online at www.utahsymphony.org. Ticket prices will increase $5 when purchased on the day of performance. For concertgoers 30 and under, the Utah Symphony will be offering $10 single tickets.

Simone Porter (Photo Credit: Philip Pirolo)

Virtuoso Series: On Friday, 16-year-old violinist Simone Porter will give a recital in Libby Gardner Concert Hall as part of the Virtuoso Series.

The Seattle teen made her professional debut at age 10 with the Seattle Symphony. Three years later she made her London debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. And this past summer she appeared for the first time at the Aspen Music Festival.

The young virtuoso has appeared twice on the nationally syndicated program From the Top, both on radio and on television, and was featured in the 2008 documentary The World’s Greatest Musical Prodigies, where she soloed with the Northern Sinfonia.

Porter also performed at a ceremony honoring the Dalai Lama on his visit to Seattle.

For her recital Porter has chosen a varied program: Fritz Kreisler’s Variations on a Theme by Corelli; Edvard Grieg’s Sonata No. 3; Arvo Pärt’s Fratres; Ernest Bloch’s Nigun (Baal Shem); and Pablo de Sarasate’s Malagueña and Zapateado. She’ll be accompanied at the piano by Anton Smirnov.

The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $18 general, $13 seniors, $8 students and free for University of Utah students. Tickets can be purchased online at http://kingsburyhall.utah.edu/venues/gardner-hall.

This entry was posted in Concert Previews by Edward Reichel. Bookmark the permalink.

About Edward Reichel

Edward Reichel, author, writer and composer, has been covering the classical music scene in Utah since 1997. For many years he served as the primary music critic for the Deseret News. He has also written for a number of publications, including Chamber Music Magazine, OPERA Magazine, 15 Bytes, Park City Magazine and Salt Lake Magazine. He holds a Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He can be reached at ed.reichel@gmail.com. Reichel Recommends is also on Twitter @ReichelArts.

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