On the advice of her medical team, Hilary Hahn has had to cancel her participation in the concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko in Washington, New York and Ann Arbor. After a long break due to illness, she still has to avoid strenuous performances and travelling.
The solo part in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major op. 35 will instead be performed by Vilde Frang and Benjamin Beilman. Benjamin Beilman will be the soloist on 15 November at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, presented by Washington Performing Arts, and on 23 November at the Hill Auditorium in the university town of Ann Arbor in Michigan. These performances mark the American violinist’s debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker. The soloist at the concerts on 17 and 19 November at Carnegie Hall in New York will be Vilde Frang, who was recently acclaimed for her performance of the Korngold concerto at the Philharmonie Berlin.
The Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko are very grateful to Vilde Frang and Benjamin Beilman for being able to step in at such short notice, and wish Hilary Hahn all the best for her continued recovery. The concert programme of the tour remains unchanged.
Violinist Benjamin Beilman is celebrated as one of his generation’s leading artists, known for his passionate performances and distinctive tone, praised by The New York Times as “muscular with a glint of violence” and the Strad described as “pure poetry.”
In the 2024/25 season, Beilman returns to the Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, and Antwerp Symphony and debuts with the Belgian National Orchestra and Tokyo Metropolitain Symphony. He will also tour the U.S. with pianist Steven Osborne. Last season included his Chicago Symphony debut with Semyon Bychkov, a six-week European tour with performances in Vienna, Stuttgart, and his London Chamber Orchestra return.
Beilman has appeared with major orchestras like the Philadelphia Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Zurich Tonhalle, and is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music. He is dedicated to contemporary music, with new works by Frederic Rzewski, Gabriella Smith, and Jennifer Higdon, among others. Beilman performs on the 1740 “Ysaÿe” Guarneri del Gesù, on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.
Vilde Frang, wrote BR Klassik, is “technically polished, her intonation is utterly pure, and her upper register is secure.” In the British classical music magazine The Strad, she was hailed as the “most original” of the younger generation of violinists, and praised for her “musicality and extraordinary lyricism”. Born in Norway, Vilde Frang began her solo career at the age of twelve. At that time she was invited by Mariss Jansons to make her debut with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra under his direction. In 2012, she was honoured with the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award, subsequently performing with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink, at the Lucerne Festival.
Her highly-acclaimed debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2016 at the European Concert in Røros, Norway, was another important stage in Vilde Frang’s career; the following year she made her debut with the orchestra at the Berlin Philharmonie. Vilde Frang studied at the Barratt Due Musikkinstitutt in her native Oslo as well as with Kolja Blacher at the Hamburg University of Music and with Ana Chumachenco at Kronberg Academy. She received a scholarship from the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation. A winner of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, with a distinctive tone that has been described as both noble and velvety, she performs with the world’s leading orchestras and festivals, and has been an artistic board member of the Oslo Chamber Music Festival since 2020.