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Guest Artists
Guest Artists
Robert Edward Thies, pianist
Rhapsody in Blue & The Planets
The Auburn Symphony Returns
to the Mondavi Center
March 29, 2009, Sunday – 3:00 p.m.
Mondavi Center, Univ. of Calif., Davis
www.mondavicenter.org
Gershwin: Cuban Overture
Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, with soloist Robert Thies Holst: The Planets
A pianist of “unerring, warm-toned refinement, revealing judicious glimmers of power,” [Los Angeles Times] Robert Edward Thies is an artist renowned for his consummate musicianship and poetic temperament. He first captured worldwide attention in 1995 when he won the Gold Medal at the Second International Prokofiev Competition in St. Petersburg, Russia. With this victory, Thies became the only American pianist to win first prize in a Russian piano competition since Van Cliburn’s famed triumph in Moscow in 1958.
Praised for his “thoughtful and intensely moving interpretations” Thies enjoys a diverse career as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. His concerto repertoire includes over thirty-five works, and in one season alone he performed thirteen different concertos, garnering consistent critical acclaim. He has appeared with such orchestras as the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, Liepāja Symphony (Latvia), Mexico City Philharmonic, the National Symphony of Mexico, Auckland Philharmonia (New Zealand), Fort Worth Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, and the Naples Philharmonic. His concerts have been broadcast throughout the United States, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Bolivia, Hungary, Mexico, and New Zealand.
Mr. Thies is a frequent recitalist in the United States and abroad, and he is known for his genuine interpretations of intriguing and delicately balanced programs. He made his South American debut in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2002, and followed this with a European tour. Under the sponsorship of Community Concerts, he completed a forty-city
tour of the United States in 2001. In May 1999, he was honored with a special invitation to perform in the Hermitage Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, a small theater originally built for the private use of Empress Catherine the Great.
A dedicated chamber musician, Thies is highly sought after as a collaborator, and he has shared the stage with many esteemed musicians. He has appeared with established ensembles such as the Angeles, Calder, and New Hollywood String Quartets, and has also performed on the chamber series of Camerata Pacifica, Mladi, Dilijan and Jacaranda. He is founder and artistic director of The Thies Consort which performs a wide range of works of varying instrumentation and size, thus allowing for innovative programming with musical continuity based on a style, composer, or other concept.
Thies’s “grace and unsurpassed lyricism” are in high demand at festivals and special celebrations. In 2002, in conjunction with the Hollywood premiere of Roman Polanski’s film The Pianist, he performed Wladislaw Szpilman’s Concertino for Piano and Orchestra with the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony. That same year Thies earned national
recognition for his collaboration with noted cultural historian and author, Joseph Horowitz, in the Pacific Symphony’s Dvořák in America festival. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg’s death, Thies was invited to Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2001 to perform the composer’s seldom-heard Piano Concerto with the National Symphony of Mexico. During the fall of 1997 Mr. Thies worked alongside distinguished Polish composer Henryk Górecki in the United States premiere of his Sonata for Piano. Thies has performed at the music festivals of Ravinia, Aspen, Sedona, Cape May, Music Academy of the West, as well as the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival.
In Los Angeles, Thies has worked and recorded with many of the top studio musicians, and has also worked with film composers James Newton Howard, James Horner, Mychael Danna, Danny Elfman, and Lalo Schifrin. Thies’s recordings can be found on the Centaur, Albany, and Golden Tone labels. Recently, a chamber music recording Common Ground, was released, which features works by Los Angeles composer, Gernot Wolfgang. In February 2006 Robert released his debut solo recording Live in Recital. In June 2006, he recorded a collaborative CD Difference with the Croatian flutist, Damjan Krajacic. This CD is a compilation of original compositions that Robert had a strong hand in arranging, and the music integrates classical and jazz styles with improvisation and world music influences.
Mr. Thies is also sought after as a master class teacher, chamber music coach, lecturer, and adjudicator across the globe. In 2003, he joined the faculty of the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, to teach beside his former mentor, Harold Heiberg, an authority on German art song. There Thies has been coaching singers and pianists, preparing them for a Liederabend—the culminating event of the six-week festival.
Born in New Jersey in 1971, Thies resides in Los Angeles. His teachers have included Robert Turner and Daniel Pollack, both protégés of the legendary Russian pedagogue Madame Rosina Lhevinne, and the great pianist Josef Lhevinne. Mr. Thies is a Steinway Artist. To know more, visit Mr. Thies online at: www.robertthies.org.