Cellist s upcoming appearance with the is starting to look like a residency.
Hes here for three performances of the TSOs Beethovens Pastoral Masterworks concert this weekend at Catalina Foothills High School and will stick around through Monday to record a pair of works by retired University of Arizona composer .
Hes also doing a masterclass with former TSO cellist , who now teaches cello at the UA School of Music, where he also is founding director of the UA String Project.
Its turning into this kind of residency, Schwarz said last week during a phone call from his Virginia home. Its really cool.
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Schwarz returns to the TSO for the first time since performing the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 in his 2018 debut.
This weekend, hes soloing on two works: Bruchs Kol Nidrei and Tchaikovskys Variations on a Rococo Theme. Schwarz has a long relationship with both works, but the Bruch is perhaps his calling card.
He was just 8 or 9 when he made his public debut with the work in a Jewish synagogue in his native Seattle, where his father, Gerard Schwarz, was the longtime music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
That was the first piece I performed and I have performed the Koi Nidrei every single year since, he said, including his annual performance in early October at New York Citys Central Synagogue on the eve of Yom Kippur. That concert is live-streamed to more than a million viewers.
Bruch, a Protestant, composed his Koi Nidrei for cello and orchestra inspired by the melody he heard from a cantor reciting the traditional Aramaic Yom Kippur prayer. The piece, completed in 1881, is intrinsically linked to the holiest day of the year for Jews.
In the 1930s, the song was banned by the Nazis who mistook Bruch as Jewish.
Schwarz was first introduced to Variations on a Rococo Theme when he toured with the Moscow Radio Symphony in 2010; it was his first major U.S. tour.
Thats really when I first ... started to get reviews in major cities, and that became a piece that Ive performed a lot because orchestras have asked me to play it, he said.
By his count, hes performed the Tchaikovsky more than 50 times.
Its fun because it has the classical theme that is developed into very romantic variations, he said. So you get this classical elegance while maintaining the real passion of Tchaikovskys language.
Schwarz said he envisions the Tchaikovsky Variations like one of the Russian composers famous ballets, with all of the twirls and leaps and jumps that are very balletic.
And Im on pointe for about 60% of it, he joked.
These are pieces that are very dear to my heart, added Schwarz, who teaches at the Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia, where he lives with his pianist wife Marika Bournaki and their 5-month-old son Ludwig.
Beethovens Pastoral, with guest conductor , is bookended by William Grant Stills Mother and Child and Beethovens Symphony No. 6 Pastoral. The orchestra will perform the concert at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9, at Catalina Foothills High School, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive.
Tickets are $51.85-$94.65 through
Schwarzs 做厙勛圖 visit comes two years after he was last here in October 2023 as part of the UAs annual Music + Festival.
The event was the finale of a series created and curated by now-retired UA professor and composer Asia.
Asia had tapped Schwarz to perform his 1997 Cello Concerto with the Arizona Symphony; it was the first time the work had been performed since it was premiered in 1998.
Schwarz will record Asias Solo Cello Suite, which Schwarz performed at a conference two years ago, and the composers 2001 work A Lament. The one-movement elegy, originally transcribed from Asias Cello Concerto, was written for victims of the Holocaust.
Schwarz will also record Joshua Nichols Suite for Solo Cello. Nichols was a student of Asia.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Bluesky @Starburch
Cathalena E. Burch
Reporter
