George Hanson and Pinchas Zukerman’s career trajectories cross paths Tuesday as both men close major chapters in their musical lives.
Tuesday is Hanson’s last time with the baton as Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s music director, ending a 19-year Tucson career. The violinist/conductor Zukerman in June closes out his 16-year career as music director with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada.
On Tuesday, the pair will meet for the first time in a special TSO concert that also features Zukerman’s wife, NACO’s outgoing principal cellist Amanda Forsyth, performing Brahms’ Double Concerto.
“He and I have shaken hands, but never worked together. I have been an admirer for years and years,” said Hanson, calling from Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, on Monday as he was preparing to guest conduct the Filharmonica de Sonora Thursday night. “Mr. Zukerman’s style and approach to the instrument are so beautifully suited to the music of Brahms that I think we can expect this to be a very special treat.”
It will be the first time Hanson has conducted the Brahms since the TSO performed it in 2001.
The Tel Aviv-born Zukerman, in a phone interview in late February, described the Brahms as a “remarkable piece … with such depth.”
“It’s a cellist’s concerto by Brahms. The cello is the main voice that you hear,” he said, which, he added, was a good thing.
“All the attention will be on my wife, which is good. She is beautiful,” said Zukerman, 66, a celebrated violinist who has played the Brahms Double with Forsyth around the world for the past seven or eight years. Their most recent performance was with their Ottawa orchestra in February, something of a going-away gift to the orchestra and community.
His post-Ottawa career includes a heavy tour schedule that took him to San Diego last week, to Europe in April and to China in May.
Hanson has yet to announce what he will do after Tucson. He returns this August to Oregon for the Sunriver Music Festival — he has been its music director since 2011.
In addition to the Brahms, the TSO will perform Beethoven’s regal Symphony No. 8 and the overture to Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro.”
