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One of the most versatile, highly respected, and best-reviewed artists of her generation, pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, known especially for her brilliant interpretations of Classical and early Romantic repertoire, will be our featured soloist in Beethoven’s sublime First Piano Concerto. Music critics shower her with praise, one noting, “Anne-Marie McDermott plays with both technical virtuosity and evident joy. The music comes alive under her fingers.”
French Impressionist composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy were contemporaries who masterfully used the vehicle of an orchestra to create visionary soundscapes. Both composers were ever resistant to the confines of normal harmonic practice. Part symphony and part tone poem, Debussy’s innovative La mer (The Sea) is a rich and evocative depiction of the ocean. It is one of the most influential and imaginative works of in the symphonic literature that has remained an audience favorite since its premiere in 1905.
Ravel’s rhapsodic masterpiece Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2 is extracted for concert use from his “Choreographic Symphony in Three Parts” conceived for Ballet Russes with the most famous choreographer of the time, Sergei Diaghilev, who was also renowned for choreographing Stravinsky’s three famed Ballet Russes from this same era. Daphnis et Chloé, composed and revised from 1909-1912, employing the largest sized orchestra he would ever require. Ravel called it, “…a great choreographic symphony... a vast musical fresco.” This powerful season-ending program is not to be missed!
For over 25 years, Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals and chamber music in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe and Asia and has become one of the most versatile, respected, and best-reviewed artists of her generation. In addition to several highly successful Artistic Directorships of important festivals and series, Anne-Marie McDermott continues her tenure as Music and Artistic Director of the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, which hosts world-renowned artists and orchestras from around the world.
The breadth of Ms. McDermott’s repertoire reaches from Bach, Haydn and Beethoven to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Scriabin, to works by today’s most influential composers. She has recorded the complete Prokofiev Piano Sonatas, solo works by Chopin, Bach’s English Suites and Partitas (Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine), and Gershwin’s Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with the Dallas Symphony (also Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine). In 2013, she released a disc of Mozart Concerti with the Calder Quartet which was called “exceptional on every count” by Gramophone. She has recorded five Haydn piano sonatas and two Haydn Concertos with the Odense Philharmonic in Denmark including two cadenzas written by Charles Wuorinen. Ms. McDermott is currently in discussion to record the complete Beethoven Concerti.
In recent years, Ms. McDermott participated in the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s Silver Jubilee All Gershwin Program and embarked on a cycle of Beethoven Concertos at Santa Fe Pro Musica. She also premiered and recorded a new concerto by Poul Ruders with the Vancouver Symphony, alongside Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations, and returned to play Gershwin with the New York Philharmonic at the Bravo! Vail Festival. Other recent highlights include performing the Mozart Concerto, K. 595 with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Sir Donald Runnicles, the Bach D minor concerto with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the New York City-based Le Train Bleu. Anne-Marie McDermott began the 23/24 season with successful performances with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, both resulting in immediate re-engagements, and played Mozart with the New York Philharmonic at the McKnight Center in Stillwater, OK. Recent international highlights include recitals in France at the famed Toulouse Piano aux Jacobins, performing with The Sao Paolo Symphony at the Cartegena Festival, and an all-Haydn recital tour of China. Ms. McDermott will make her subscription debut with the Dallas Symphony in Fall 2024.
Ms. McDermott has and continues to perform with many leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, League of American Composers, Hong Kong Philharmonic, National Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the symphonies of Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Colorado, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Atlanta, San Diego, New Jersey, Columbus, and Baltimore. She has also toured with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow Virtuosi.
Ms. McDermott was a longtime member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with whom she still collaborates and performs. Highlights with CMS include the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas and a three-concert series of chamber music by Shostakovich. She studied at the Manhattan School of Music and was winner of the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women, the Young Concert Artists auditions, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Anne-Marie McDermott lives in New York City with her husband, Michael.
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