Rockport Chamber Music Festival: Inon Barnatan, piano

A renowned pianist who was the first Artist-in-Association with the New York Philharmonic and is now the Music Director of the La Jolla Summerfest. He regularly performs with BBC Symphony and the LA Philharmonic when he is not performing with his regular musical partner Renée Fleming.

PROGRAM
RAMEAU: Suite in G major, CTR 6
RAVEL: Valses Nobles et Sentimentales
STRAVINSKY/AGOSTI: Three Movements from The Firebird
RACHMANINOFF/BARNATAN: Symphonic Dances

INON BARNATAN, piano
Hailed as “one of the most admired pianists of his generation” by the New York Times, Inon Barnatan has received universal acclaim for his “uncommon sensitivity” (The New Yorker) and “impeccable musicality and phrasing” (Le Figaro).

As a soloist, Barnatan regularly performs with many of the world’s foremost orchestras and conductors. He was also the inaugural Artist-in-Association of the New York Philharmonic from 2014-17. In November 2023, Barnatan releases his album, Rachmaninoff Reflections, offering some of the composer’s most cherished piano works, including his Moments musicaux, Prelude in G-Sharp Minor, and Barnatan’s own arrangement of the Vocalise.

Equally at home as a curator and chamber musician, Barnatan is Music Director of La Jolla Music Society Summerfest in California, one of leading music festivals in the country. He regularly collaborates with world-class partners such as Renée Fleming and Alisa Weilerstein, and plays at major chamber music festivals across the United States. Barnatan was a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two) from 2006 to 2009, and continues to perform with CMS in New York and on tour.

Barnatan’s passion for contemporary music has resulted in commissions and performances of many living composers, including premieres of new works by Thomas Adès, Sebastian Currier, Andrew Norman and Matthias Pintscher, among others. As Artistic Director of the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, Barnatan has collaborated with Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, visionary director and visual artist Doug Fitch, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Garrick Ohlsson, Augustin Hadelich, Caroline Shaw, Carter Brey, Anthony Roth Costanzo and more.

Barnatan’s accolades include an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2009, Lincoln Center’s 2015 Martin E. Segal Award and the Andrew Wolf Memorial Award. Born in Tel Aviv in 1979, Inon Barnatan started playing the piano at the age of three, when his parents discovered his perfect pitch, and made his orchestral debut at eleven. His musical education connects him to some of the 20th century’s most illustrious pianists and teachers: he studied first with Professor Victor Derevianko, a student of the Russian master Heinrich Neuhaus, before moving to London in 1997 to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Christopher Elton and Maria Curcio, a student of the legendary Artur Schnabel. The late Leon Fleisher was also an influential teacher and mentor.

“a true poet of the keyboard: refined, searching, unfailingly communicative” The Evening Standard