What’s on my desk today (and my iPod)?

After three trips to Europe in just six weeks, I can settle down now to a couple of months in the US with concerts in Boston and Los Angeles. I am enjoying Shostakovich's astonishing First Symphony written when he was all of nineteen years old, with Aaron Copland's massive Third Symphony lurking on the horizon. In between, I will open the Piatigorsky International Cello Festival in Los Angeles with an unusual program that features seven different cello soloists. My good friend Ralph Kirshbaum has done massive work putting this festival together. Cellists from all over the world will get together for a couple of weeks. I think cellists are somehow uniquely suited for this sort of thing - displaying more collegiality and less competitiveness than many other instrumentalists, and boasting sufficient numbers to make it a major event. And just think of all those airfares for the cellos themselves!

Recent Press

"Wolff's Shostakovich 10 was powerful, three-dimensional and devastating, and the Atlanta Symphony blossomed by his approach. Much of the opening movement builds to an unbearable tension. Wolff paced it tautly and meaningfully, with understated authority. When the music finally crossed that emotional threshold and plummeted into some dark netherworld of a broken psyche, Wolff did not, would not, relent... Credit Wolff with delivering the crucial essence of a harrowing masterpiece of the 20th century."

"Conductor Hugh Wolff presided over one of the Utah Symphony’s most high-spirited programs of the season on Friday. From Beethoven’s ever-popular "Leonore" Overture No. 3 to Saint-Saëns’ playful Cello Concerto No. 1 to Charles Ives’ invigorating Symphony No. 2, the concert was a sheer delight."

"The evening's strength was the conductor, Hugh Wolff, an urbane host who without undue Sturm und Drang made Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony, the composer's third, an absolute delight."

Click here to read the Washington Post review of Wolff's recent concerts with Joshua Bell and the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center