Alisa Weilerstein

“A young cellist whose emotionally resonant performances of both traditional and contemporary music have earned her international recognition, … Weilerstein is a consummate performer, combining technical precision with impassioned musicianship.” So stated the MacArthur Foundation when awarding Alisa Weilerstein a 2011 MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship, prompting the New York Times to respond: “Any fellowship that recognizes the vibrancy of an idealistic musician like Ms. Weilerstein … deserves a salute from everyone in classical music.” In performances marked by intensity, sensitivity and a wholehearted immersion in each of the works she interprets, the American cellist has long proven herself to be in possession of a distinctive musical voice.

In the 2017-2018 season Weilerstein gave two performances of Schumann’s Cello Concerto, with the Pittsburgh Symphony under Manfred Honeck and the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Christoph Eschenbach; two performances of the Barber Concerto, with the Chicago Symphony led by Jiří Bělohlávek and the Cleveland Orchestra under Alan Gilbert; and a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme with conductor Jeffrey Kahane leading the New York Philharmonic. She also played a series of duo recitals on tour with her regular recital partner, Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan, beginning at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and Carnegie Hall. Repertoire includes Mendelssohn’s Cello Sonata No. 2, the sole cello sonatas of Rachmaninoff and Britten, and a new work by Grammy-winning guitarist and composer Steven Mackey, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall.  Other concerto appearances include Shostakovich with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester and James Conlon; Prokofiev with the Dallas Symphony under Jaap van Zweden; tours of the UK with the Czech Philharmonic and Bělohlávek playing Shostakovich and Dvořák; and performances of Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto with the Indianapolis Symphony under the baton of Krzysztof Urbański.

For the 2016-2017 season, in a career first, she gave performances of Bach’s complete suites for unaccompanied cello; toured nine U.S. cities, capped by a Lincoln Center performance at Alice Tully Hall, with Barnatan and New York Philharmonic principal clarinetist Anthony McGill; and toured Europe with Barnatan, culminating with a return to London’s Wigmore Hall. In concerts around the globe she performed Britten’s Cello Symphony with Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony; Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto with the Netherlands Philharmonic and the National Symphony in both Washington, DC and Moscow; Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the Dallas Symphony; Schumann with the San Francisco Symphony and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the latter at Carnegie Hall and on tour in Italy and Spain; and Dvořák with the Minnesota Orchestra, Sydney Symphony and the Tokyo Symphony on a three-stop tour of Japan. The cellist also gave the world premiere of Matthias Pintscher’s Cello Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which co-commissioned the piece for her.

In recent years, Weilerstein recorded the Elgar and Elliott Carter cello concertos with Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. The disc was named “Recording of the Year 2013” by BBC Music, which featured the cellist on the cover of its May 2014 issue. Her next release, on which she plays Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic, topped the U.S. classical chart. Her third album, a compilation of unaccompanied 20th-century cello music titled Solo, was pronounced an “uncompromising and pertinent portrait of the cello repertoire of our time” (ResMusica, France). Solo’s centerpiece is the Kodály sonata, a signature work that Weilerstein revisits on the soundtrack of If I Stay, a 2014 feature film starring Chloë Grace Moretz in which the cellist makes a cameo appearance as herself. In 2015 she released a recording of sonatas by Chopin and Rachmaninoff, marking her duo album debut with Inon Barnatan, which earned praise from Voix des Arts as “a ravishing recording of fantastic music.”

Weilerstein has appeared with all the foremost orchestras of the United States and Europe, collaborating with conductors including Marin Alsop, Sir Andrew Davis and Gustavo Dudamel. Her major career milestones include an emotionally tumultuous account of Elgar’s concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Daniel Barenboim in Oxford, England, for the orchestra’s 2010 European Concert, which was televised live to an audience of millions worldwide. She and Barenboim reunited in 2012-2013 to play Elliott Carter’s concerto on a German tour with the Berlin Staatskapelle. In 2009, she was one of four artists invited by Michelle Obama to participate in a widely celebrated and high profile classical music event at the White House, featuring student workshops hosted by the First Lady, and performances in front of an audience that included President Obama and the First Family. A month later, Weilerstein toured Venezuela as soloist with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra under Gustavo Dudamel. Other highlights of recent seasons include her debut at the BBC Proms in 2010, and with England’s Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, which she joined in 2013 for a 16-city U.S. tour.

Committed to expanding the cello repertoire, Weilerstein is an ardent champion of new music. Two seasons ago she gave the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s Outscape, which she performed with the co-commissioning Chicago Symphony before giving its first European performances with the Stuttgart and Paris Opera Orchestras; this past season she premiered Matthias Pintscher’s Cello Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She gave the New York premiere of Pintscher’s Reflections on Narcissus under the composer’s own direction during the New York Philharmonic’s inaugural 2014 Biennial, and subsequently the two also performed the work at the BBC Proms. Joseph Hallman, a 2014 Grammy Award nominee, has also written multiple works for Weilerstein, including a cello concerto that she premiered with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in 2008, and a trio that she premiered on tour with Inon Barnatan and clarinetist Anthony McGill last season.

Born in 1982, Weilerstein discovered her love for the cello at just two and a half, when her grandmother assembled a makeshift set of instruments from cereal boxes to entertain her while she was ill with chicken pox. Although immediately drawn to the Rice Krispies box cello, Weilerstein soon grew frustrated that it didn’t produce any sound. After persuading her parents to buy her a real cello at the age of four, she developed her natural affinity for the instrument and gave her first public performance six months later. At 13, in October 1995, she played Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo” Variations for her Cleveland Orchestra debut, and in March 1997 she made her first Carnegie Hall appearance with the New York Youth Symphony. A graduate of the Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Richard Weiss, the cellist also holds a degree in history from Columbia University, from which she graduated in May 2004. In November 2008, Weilerstein, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was nine, became a Celebrity Advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.