Event
The Planets
Naples Philharmonic
Naples Philharmonic Chorus Women
Masterworks Series
Hans Graf, conductor
James Cochran, chorus director
Stephen Hough, piano
Beethoven — Piano Concerto No. 3
Holst — The Planets
Prelude at 7pm
All Masterworks tickets include same-day admission to the Hayes Hall Galleries. In addition, the doors to Hayes Hall open 90 minutes prior to this performance. Arrive early to enjoy the Hayes Hall Galleries and light fare at the cafe. Thursday evening performance generously sponsored by George & Joyce Kempton. Saturday evening performance is supported by the Myra Janco Daniels Legacy Fund.
Tickets start at $29
Stephen Hough
Stephen Hough
Hailed by the Washington Post as “a virtuoso who begins where others leave off,” Stephen Hough is considered one of the most distinctive artists of his generation as a pianist, composer and writer. He began taking piano lessons at age five and, after much pleading from Hough, his parents bought him a second-hand piano from a local antique shop so he could play at home. Hough attended the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and, in 1978, he took first place in the piano section of the BBC Musician of the Year Competition. He also holds a master’s degree from the Juilliard School in New York, having studied there as the first ever recipient of the Julius Isserlis Scholarship for study abroad by the Royal Philharmonic Society.
Over the course of his career, Hough has earned himself a reputation as a uniquely insightful pianist, highly regarded for his mastery of the instrument and his inquisitive mind. He has appeared with most of the major European and North American orchestras and regularly plays recitals in music halls and concert series around the world. Included among his most recent engagements are performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic. Hough resides in London where he is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music and holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College of Music.
Hans Graf
Hans Graf
Hans Graf, music director of the Houston Symphony from 2001 until 2013 (and, since then, the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate), was also music director of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg (1984-94), the Basque National Orchestra in San Sebastián (1994-96), the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (1994-2002) and the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine (1998-2004).
He has conducted the leading American orchestras including The Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and the Pittsburgh, Dallas, Detroit and Washington symphony orchestras, among others, and he developed a long and close relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
In Europe, Graf led the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the DSO Berlin, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, and many other major orchestras.
He also appeared frequently at important European and American festivals in Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, Maggio Musicale, Tanglewood, Blossom, Aspen and others, and also at the Vienna State Opera and the opera houses in Munich, Paris, Rome and Zurich.
Graf’s discography includes the complete symphonies of Mozart and Schubert, the orchestral works of Henri Dutilleux and the premiere recording of Zemlinsky's opera Es war einmal.
With the Houston Symphony, he recorded Bartók, Zemlinsky, Mahler and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, which was awarded the ECHO Klassik prize 2017 and the 2018 Grammy for best opera recording.
Graf studied piano and conducting in Graz, Austria, and Siena, Italy, with Franco Ferrara; in Bologna, Italy, with Sergiu Celibidache; and in Leningrad, Russia, with Arvid Jansons.
From 2013, he was a professor of orchestral conducting at the University Mozarteum Salzburg.
