Join us on April 9 for our final installment of a special concert series celebrating 25 years of Music on Park Avenue, the acclaimed performance series curated by Swedish pianist Per Tengstrand that has been with Scandinavia House since its inauguration in 2000. In honor of Scandinavia House’s silver anniversary year, Tengstrand has presented a program of chamber music performances featuring distinguished guest musicians.
The most popular piano concerto ever written, played in a way you never heard before! For the final performance of the series, Tengstrand will present Peter Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat mahor, Op. 23, and other works by the legendary composer. Students from Princeton University return to join Tengstrand in a version of this iconic work in an arrangement for piano and string quartet. We will also hear all the string players in solo pieces by Back, Frank and Bowen.
Thanks to a generous loan by Victor Borge’s grandson Finn, concerts will be performed on Victor Borge’s personal Steinway piano.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
PER TENGSTRAND, PIANO
Per Tengstrand was born in 1968 in Växjö, Sweden. He started playing the piano at the age of 6 with his mother as a teacher. At age 16, he went to the Malmö Conservatory of music and later the Conservatory of Paris, where the audience broke the 300-year ban to applaud at the graduation competition after his performance.
He was a prize-winner in international competitions in Paris, Brussels and Geneva, and after winning first prize in Cleveland’s International Piano Competition, he debuted at the Lincoln Center in New York in 1997. After that he has performed in venues such as the Kennedy Center, Weill Hall in Carnegie Hall, Musikverein, Gewandhaus in Leipzig, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. He has performed as soloist with the Detroit Symphony, National Symphony, Japan Philharmonic, Osaka Philharmonic, The Hague Resident Orchestra, Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, Singapore Symphony, the Nationals Symphony of Taiwan and Orchestre National de France.
Mr. Tengstrand’s career highlights include performing the Tchaikovsky Concerto in Suntory Hall with Japan Philharmonic, Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 during Neeme Järvi’s final subscription concerts with the New Jersey Philharmonic; performances with the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap; the Residentie Orkest in den Haag, under Neeme Järvi; the Royal Philharmonic in Stockholm, under Leonard Slatkin, and Stenhammar’s first PIano Concerto with Tonkünstler Orchestra Orchestra in Vienna’s Musikverein and Leipzig’s Gewandhaus under the baton of Kristjan Jarvi.
Per Tengstrand gave the last concert in the governor’s palace in Hong Kong under British rule, with Chris Patten and Margaret Thatcher in the audience. Together with the Deputy Secretary General of the UN, Jan Eliasson, he made a performance of music and talk at the UN Headquarters in New York.
Per Tengstrand is an artistic director of Music on Park Avenue at Scandinavia House, the Princeton Chamber Music Series, and he has a festival in his name in his birth town of Växjö. He is the recipient of the Royal Medal of Litterus and Artibus, which he received from the King of Sweden.
TIENNE YU, VIOLIN
Photo Credits
Tengstrand: Anders Bergön, Alex Fedorov (Talk)