“Perhaps the most important part of music making is listening,” Shai Wosner once said in an interview with the online magazine Tokafi. “Before you produce any sound, you listen to the silence. Then, you listen to the sound and, [if you’re performing chamber music], the sounds that other people make. . . . Knowing how to listen is one of the most important and useful things in life, and music can teach you that.”
This summer, you can listen to Wosner’s own extraordinary music making when the award-winning pianist—who’s been praised for his “uncommonly delicate and beautiful” playing by The New York Times and called “one of the greats” by All Things Considered—returns to the Festival for the first time since 2019.
Wosner appears on two programs, and the first one, performed on Sunday, August 3, and Monday, August 4, sees him join forces with two-time Grammy-nominated violinist Jennifer Frautschi for Bartók’s Second Violin and Piano Sonata, an intoxicating and wholly individual work that helped build the Hungarian composer’s international reputation.
The second program, on Tuesday, August 5, is a solo recital that features beloved works by Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven—including the revolutionary Appassionata Sonata, which Beethoven referred to as one of his finest piano sonatas—plus leading English composer George Benjamin’s Relativity Rag, a short but surprising take on the infectious rag form.
Wosner was born and raised in Israel, and at the age of 21 he moved to the United States to attend The Juilliard School, where he studied with the renowned pianist Emanuel Ax and where he now serves as a member of the faculty. Wosner has received several honors throughout his career, including being named a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and winning Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award for up-and-coming talents, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award.
In addition to performing with the world’s leading ensembles—like the Los Angeles and Vienna philharmonics, BBC and Chicago symphony orchestras, Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, and Staatskapelle Berlin, to name just a few—Wosner is acclaimed for his musical arrangements, including ones of Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6 that Ax, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and violinist Leonidas Kavakos recorded as part of their Beethoven for Three series on the Sony Classical label. This season, Wosner, clarinetist Martin Fröst, and violist Antoine Tamestit play Wosner’s arrangements of music by Dvořák, Brahms, Bizet, and more on a tour to parts of Canada and the US.
Additional highlights for Wosner this season include a tour through Europe with violinist Joshua Bell; appearances with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; performances with violinist Pinchas Zukerman and cellist Amanda Forsyth as the Zukerman Trio; a collaboration on the Music Mondays series in New York City with the JACK Quartet (who makes their Festival debut on August 1 & 2); and, also in New York City, a recital with baritone Benjamin Appl at The Town Hall presented by the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, where Wosner is artist-in-residence.
Tickets for the Festival’s 2025 season are on sale now. Explore our 2025 calendar here, and purchase your tickets either online or through our Box Office at 505-982-1890.