Wednesday, March 29, 8 p.m.

Katherine M. Elfers Hall, The Esther Eastman Music Center, The Hotchkiss School, 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville, CT

The Hotchkiss School is pleased to welcome world-class violinist Daniel Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra for a special concert featuring works by Vaughan Williams, Ukrainian composer Valentyn Silvestrov, Mendelssohn, and Tchaikovsky on Wednesday, March 29, at 8 p.m. This event is the culmination of their residency at Hotchkiss, which includes masterclasses with students.

The exciting concert will feature Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending, Felix Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto in D minor, Valentin Silvestrov – Silent Music for String Orchestra, and Tchaikovsky – Serenade for Strings, op. 48. 

It is free and open to the public; no ticket reservations are necessary. Seating is first-come, first-served.

Daniel Hope, Violin

British violinist Daniel Hope has enjoyed a thriving international solo career for more than 30 years. Celebrated for his musical versatility and dedication to humanitarian causes, he has been recognized with a string of honors including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the 2015 European Culture Prize for Music. Besides undertaking solo recitals, chamber concerts and concerto collaborations with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, Hope directs many ensembles from the violin, succeeding Roger Norrington as music director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra in 2016 and becoming music director of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra two years later. An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2007, he has an award-winning discography and is also a popular radio and television host who recently anchored the TV and streaming series Hope@Home. In 2019 he completed his 16th and final season as associate artistic director of Georgia’s Savannah Music Festival, as well as becoming artistic director of Dresden’s Frauenkirche Cathedral. Since 2020, following in the distinguished footsteps of Kurt Masur and Joseph Joachim, Hope started his tenure as president of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn.

Hope first drew notice as the youngest member of the Beaux Arts Trio, giving more than 400 performances with the esteemed ensemble during its final six seasons. Today he is a familiar face at the most prestigious international venues and festivals, from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and from Aspen and Tanglewood to Salzburg, Schleswig-Holstein and London’s BBC Proms. He works with conductors including Valery Gergiev, Kurt Masur, Simon Rattle, Vladimir Jurowski, Leonard Slatkin and Christian Thielemann, and with the world’s foremost ensembles, including the symphony orchestras of Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo. It was Hope who premiered and made the first recording of the critically revised version of Berg’s Violin Concerto. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, he has also commissioned more than 30 new works, collaborating closely with such prominent composers as Harrison Birtwistle, Sofia Gubaidulina, GyörgyKurtág, Max Richter, Mark-Anthony Turnage and the late Peter Maxwell-Davies, Krzysztof Penderecki, Tōru Takemitsu and Alfred Schnittke, whose music for violin and piano was the focus of Hope’s first album release of 2021. 

One of today’s most prolific classical recording artists, Hope already has more than 30 albums to his name. Recognized with awards including the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, the Diapason d’Or of the Year, the Edison Classical Award and the Prix Caecilia, his discography features recordings of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Octet with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, named one of the best of the year by The New York Times; Berg’s Violin Concerto, voted the “top choice of all available recordings” by Gramophone magazine; Belle Epoque, which combines popular music and classical rarities from Europe before World War I; Journey to Mozart, on which Hope pairs the composer’s Third Concerto with examples by his predecessors and contemporaries; Spheres, which comprises the world premiere recordings of four works written for the violinist; Escape to Paradise, which draws on his extensive research into the European composers who shaped the Hollywood sound; and Max Richter’s Vivaldi Recomposed, which topped the charts in 22 countries and remains one of the bestselling classical releases of recent times. Recorded during the pandemic, his album Hope features new arrangements of Ariel Ramírez’s Misa Criolla and timeless classics by Schubert, Elgar and Pärt.

An artist who uses his platform to engage in many spheres, Hope has penned four bestselling books, all published by Germany’s Rowohlt Verlag. He contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal and has written scripts for collaborative performances with the actors Klaus Maria Brandauer and Mia Farrow. In Germany he presents a weekly radio show for the WDR3 Channel and curates and hosts Hope@9pm, a salon-style music and talk event with cultural and political guests at the Berlin Konzerthaus. As he recounted in a full-page Guardian feature, during the pandemic, he created and hosted Hope@Home, a livestreamed series conceived as “DIY TV” for socially distanced times. Professionally produced for the German/French ARTE TV network, the daily TV and streaming series combined high-quality audio with the intimacy and immediacy of live, world-class home music-making, allowing the violinist and his numerous guests – Christoph Eschenbach, Sir Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann and Robert Wilson among them – to stay connected with their audiences from the safety of his Berlin living room. Together with its sequels, Hope@Home on Tour!, Hope@Home – Next Generation and Europe@Home, the show featured more than 400 musicians in 150 episodes that were streamed almost eleven million times, raising thousands of Euros for artists in need.

Daniel Hope was educated at London’s Highgate School and Royal Academy of Music, studying violin with Zakhar Bron, Itzhak Rashkovsky and Felix Andrievsky, besides working closely with his mentor Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he gave numerous concerts. Now living with his family in Berlin, Hope plays the 1742 “ex-Lipínski” Guarneri del Gesù, placed generously at his disposal by an anonymous German family. A documentary titled Daniel Hope – The Sound of Life was screened in movie theaters across North America, Australia and Europe in 2017.

The Zurich Chamber Orchestra

In the 1940s, music student Edmond de Stoutz used his free time to regularly meet with a number of friends and make music together. The joy of pursuing their creative ideals and the group’s shared passion for chamber music gave rise to the desire of forming a chamber orchestra. This led to the first public concert in Zurich in 1945. Seventy-six years later the Zurich Chamber Orchestra is one of the leading ensembles of its kind. For over 50 years, Edmond de Stoutz was inspiring and holding together the orchestra community. With his charismatic spirit he excited musicians and audience alike and helped establish a large supporting network around the orchestra. After his era, the conductors Howard Griffiths, MuhaiTang and Sir Roger Norrington shaped the sound and musical ideas of the ZCO. Since 2016, the orchestra is playing without a permanent conductor. Instead, Music Director Daniel Hope is leading the orchestra from his instrument, thereby following the dynamic principle of Play & Conduct.

The ZCO is a well-traveled orchestra. A few years after its foundation, the ZCO already started giving concerts abroad. Today, the ZCO regularly visits international festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival or Odessa Classics. Guest performances in leading concert halls, tours through European countries, America, Asia and South Africa as well as numerous critically acclaimed CD releases testify to the worldwide renown of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.

The repertoire is broadly based, extending from the Baroque through the Classical and Romantic eras to the present day. The orchestra is also notable for its work with musicians from other fields such as jazz, folk music and popular entertainment. The family concerts, outreach work with children and young people and encouragement of young instrumentalists are in every way as important to the Zurich Chamber Orchestra as its close and continuing collaboration with world-renowned soloists.