Schwantner, Gershwin and the Firebird

Tuesday, March 14 at 8 p.m.  

The Kravis Center for the Performing Arts

Maestro Gerard Schwarz and the Palm Beach Symphony are joined by pianist Misha Dichter, one of America’s most popular artists. Dichter performs a beloved work by one of America’s greatest composers with Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F Major and its uplifting fusion of jazz and dance rhythms. In a highlight of the season, the Symphony presents the world premiere of a work it commissioned from Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Schwantner, one of the most prominent American composers today. The program also features Stravinsky’s beloved celebration of Russian folklore with The Firebird.

‍

Now in the sixth decade of a distinguished global career, Dichter has performed and recorded with some of the most illustrious conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries, among them Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Colin Davis, Lawrence Foster, Valery Gergiev, Carlo Maria Guilini, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Kiril Kondrashin, Erich Leinsdorf, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti, Eugene Ormandy, Carlos Prieto, André Previn, Simon Rattle, Gerard Schwarz, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, William Steinberg, Michael Tilson Thomas, Hans Vonk, Edo de Waart, David Zinman and Pinchas Zukerman, while notable chamber music collaborations have included violinists Itzhak Perlman, Mark Peskanov and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, cellists Lynn Harrell and Yo-Yo Ma and the American, Argus, Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, Harlem, St. Petersburg and Tokyo string quartets. Misha Dichter’s discography on the Philips, RCA, MusicMasters and Koch Classics labels are legendary, iconic and musically omnivorous, encompassing the major scores of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Gershwin, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Schubert, Schumann, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. The Los Angeles Times reported, “The pianist commands a wide dynamic and emotional range, finds nuances as well as new insights in all the music he plays, and places his details carefully. Dichter’s tremendous authority at the keyboard is the result of a comprehensive technique combined with an astute musicality.”