Laura Stricking stars in Schoenberg’s melodramatic, groundbreaking Pierrot Lunaire for soprano and five instruments. Schoenberg’s early style is on display in his Four Songs, and spirited works by Stravinsky and Villa-Lobos round out this program.
Nimrod David Pfeffer is a conductor at The Metropolitan Opera, and Music Director of the Lyric Opera Company of Guatemala.
His recent conducting engagements include The Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, The Juilliard Opera, and the Israeli Opera.
This season he will make his Metropolitan Opera conducting debut with Le Nozze di Figaro, sharing the performances with the Met’s Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Earlier this season he conducted the Israeli Opera’s opening production of Die Zauberflöte.
In 2020/21 he was scheduled to make his original Met conducting debut, in Franco Zeffirelli’s production of La Bohème; his Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducting debut with Pinchas Zukerman as soloist; and his Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra conducting debut with Peter Frankel as soloist. These performances were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2016 Mr. Pfeffer was named Music Director of the Lyric Opera Company of Guatemala, after conducting the company’s inaugural production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. In the following seasons he conducted in Guatemala new productions of L’Elisir d’Amore, La Bohème, and La Traviata.
Mr. Pfeffer is also a concert pianist, who performs regularly as soloist with orchestra, recitalist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. His piano career highlights include his debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill recital Hall in 2008; performances of the music of Chopin on the stage of The Metropolitan Opera in American Ballet Theatre’s production of The Lady of the Camellias in 2010; a live solo recital broadcast from the Russian Kremlin in 2007; and his solo debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008, playing the World Premiere of Aharon Harlap’s Second Piano Concerto, which resulted in a dedication to him of Mr. Harlap’s Symphonic Dances for Piano and Orchestra in 2015.
Mr. Pfeffer graduated from the Juilliard School’s Orchestral Conducting Program as a student of Alan Gilbert, and is a graduate of Mannes College of Music and The Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. He studied with Pnina Salzman, Gideon Hatzor, Vadim Monastyrski, Michael Wolpe, André Hajdu, Victor Rosenbaum, Byron Janis, David Hayes, Alan Gilbert, James Levine, and Richard Goode.
Laura Stricking stars in Schoenberg’s melodramatic, groundbreaking Pierrot Lunaire for soprano and five instruments. Schoenberg’s early style is on display in his Four Songs, and spirited works by Stravinsky and Villa-Lobos round out this program.