Occasionally, an event comes to Buffalo that is so special, it almost defies description. One of these events is the upcoming Schubert & Wagner program at The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) on Saturday, March 23, at 7:30 PM and Sunday, March 24 at 2:30 PM.
Schubert & Wagner will be conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Schwarz, an internationally recognized conductor, holds multiple prestigious positions and boasts an extensive discography with over 350 albums. Throughout his five-decade career, he has garnered numerous accolades and is celebrated for his interpretation of 19th-century repertoire and contemporary American composers. He currently serves as Music Director of the All-Star Orchestra, Eastern Music Festival, Palm Beach Symphony and Mozart Orchestra of New York, and is Conductor Laureate of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Conductor Emeritus of the Mostly Mozart Festival.
Schwarz will conduct a varied program at the BPO, that will include works by Schubert, Wagner, and Copland and the rarely heard Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in G minor, Op. 33, composed by Arthur Foote. Foote’s Concerto will be played by Gerard Schwarz son, Julian Schwarz. The two don’t appear on programs together often, about twice a year, and so the event at the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is extremely special.
“Every time you work with any artist, it’s always a different experience, and luckily I get to work with only people I really like,” shared Gerard Schwarz humorously. “It’s not always like that, but I’m very lucky in that way… [Julian}, in my opinion, is the greatest cellist in the world and I love every note that he plays. And it’s always very touching and moving for me, and the fact that he’s my son makes me very proud. But, other than that it’s a normal collaboration.”
Julian Schwarz, the son of Gerard Schwarz, is renowned for his exceptional cello talent, has toured globally since his debut at age 11 with the Seattle Symphony, collaborating with numerous orchestras and championing new music. Alongside his chamber music dedication, Schwarz serves as Associate Professor of Cello at Shenandoah Conservatory and on the artist faculty at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Music, nurturing his musical legacy with his esteemed Neapolitan cello.
“[Gerard], along with my mother, basically taught me everything I know about music,” said Julian , who went on to acknowledge his formal music education and teachers.
But, I’m really talking about how I knew how to play music, and how I knew how to listen to it, and absorb it and interpret it. It’s all my parents, so I have always felt a special kinship with my father’s way of music making. So it’s very, very natural for us to work together.
The varied program was originally discussed pre-pandemic, with the Foote Concerto and its subsequent recording, at the center of the evening. Gerard Schwarz shared that seemingly, a Foote piece has not been performed at the BPO since 1937, and referred to the concerto as an “unknown masterpiece.”
What makes the evening even more special is the work done by the Schwarz’s to resurrect the piece. “There’s no published edition of it. There is no commercial recording of it, and it was written the same year as the Dvořák Cello Concerto, which is the greatest cello concerto ever written,” said Julian Schwarz. He and his father tirelessly recreated the score from scratch from the handwritten version.
“I finally got the parts and the score from a public library, The Edwin Fleischer Collection in Philadelphia, and saw the piece, loved it, fell in love with it, tried to get it played for years and years and years, and it took until JoAnn [Falletta, Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic] said ‘Do you have any interesting projects? I know you can play this piece. I know you can play that piece and you can play 20 or 30 [different] concertos. But is there something interesting?’ And I said, ‘ I’ve got just the thing’ and we started to plan on doing it and the idea being to also make this commercial recording.”
Gerard Schwarz shared that “Every piece is special in its way, and the Foote is the most unusual, of course, and it’ll be the most startling, I think, because people will say, ‘Wow, what a remarkable piece that I’ve never heard before!’ Isn’t that exciting? I think that’s very exciting!”
Julian Schwarz championed the artistic vision of the BPO, and JoAnn Falletta’s leadership in saying, “I feel in this at this time when a lot of programming is driven by what other people are doing, Orchestras look at each other and say, ‘Oh, what are they doing? What are they doing and how do we measure up to them?’ adding,
It really takes a lot of courage for an orchestra or an artistic vision to be independent of those types of pressures. No one else in the country is really championing 19th century American Music, and we have an opportunity and I don’t want anyone to take that for granted you know because it’s really important.
The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) presents Schubert & Wagner on Saturday, March 23, at 7:30 PM and Sunday, March 24 at 2:30 PM. For those unable to attend this performance, tickets are still available for Mendelssohn’s Reformation, this Friday, March 15, at 10:30 AM, and Saturday, March 16 at 7:30 PM. This evening will feature Leon Botstein, conductor and Melissa White, violin.
