New: A dazzling display of piano artistry by Saleem Ashkar
There are so many young instrumental soloists endowed with prodigious technique breaking into the international concert circuit these days that it’s hard to keep up. Where concert pianists are concerned, the New Yorker recently ran rave pieces about Yuja Wang and Daniil Trifonov, two of the most heralded young artists currently making a big splash. On Friday evening, April 21, U.C. Berkeley’s Hertz Hall hosted a recital by another illustrious newcomer, Palestinian-Israeli pianist Saleem Ashkar, who performed four piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. Ashkar made his Carnegie Hall debut a few years ago at age 22, and since then he has performed with conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Muti, Ricardo Chailly, and Fabio Luisi, to name only a few. Ashkar’s current project is a complete Beethoven sonata cycle presented by Konzerthaus Berlin and performed in parallel in Prague, Osnabrück, and Israel. Here at Hertz Hall, under the auspices of Cal Performances, Ashkar performed Beethoven’s Sonata No. 7 in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3; Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, Appassionata; Sonata No. 26 in E-flat Major, Op. 81a, Les Adieux; and Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110. -more-