Backstage: Alexander Ullman becomes latest rising star Curtis Institute of Music brings to NJSO stages

By Victoria McCabe 

For the past 13 seasons, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has annually presented one of the Curtis Institute of Music’s finest student musicians as a guest artist on a classical subscription program. The partnership between the Orchestra and the lauded conservatory has not only given some phenomenal talents their first opportunity to perform with a major symphony orchestra but also created some revelatory moments for NJSO concertgoers.

Attendees of a certain classical program in the NJSO’s 1999–2000 season may not remember specifically that the musician who dazzled in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto was the student pianist who appeared as the NJSO’s first Curtis Artist, but they likely remember that young pianist’s name—Lang Lang.

Next month, 21-year-old pianist Alexander Ullman becomes the 14th Curtis Artist; he performs Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 with the NJSO on the Orchestra’s “Vienna: From Mozart to Strauss” program October 12–14 in Trenton, Red Bank and Englewood.

The England native is already building an impressive resume. He has won top prizes in international competitions, including first prizes in the International Piano Competition in Memoriam Ferenc Liszt, Eighth Annual Thousand Islands International Piano Competition for Young People and Marlow Music Festival’s 2006 Computers in Personnel concerto competition, among others. He has performed in major concert halls in the United Kingdom and the United States, and in a few weeks, New Jersey audiences at three different venues will have a chance to hear an artist who, like his Curtis Artist predecessors Lang Lang, Yuja Wang and Brittany Sklar, could become a household name to classical fans across the state, the country or even the world.

Curtis Artistic Chair of Performance Studies David Ludwig—himself a classmate of Lang Lang in the institute’s 2001 graduating class—reflects on his school’s key relationship with the NJSO. (He can personally attest to the importance a student’s access to a major symphony orchestra, and particularly the NJSO, can have—when he was a student, the NJSO performed one of his pieces at NJPAC as part of a composers’ initiative. To hear his work performed by a professional orchestra was, he says, “such an awesome experience.”)

He was still a student at Curtis when the NJSO and Curtis took their relationship further: “[Pianist and then-Curtis President] Gary Graffman knew [then-NJSO Music Director] Zdenek Macal very well, and they came to an arrangement to benefit both parties. [Through the partnership], the Orchestra gets a preview of the stars of tomorrow—when you look at the list of students who have played [with the NJSO], it’s pretty impressive. Of course, Curtis gets enormous benefits, because our students get the incredible opportunity to play with a high-level professional orchestra in professional venues outside the walls of the school. That experience is golden, and it’s invaluable.

“Our philosophy at this school is to learn by doing,” he says. “The experience our students get doesn’t come out of books—it comes out of actually being on stage. [The annual NJSO performance allows] our students to develop, to feel a sense of responsibility towards the music and the audience. And for some of these students, it’s really their first chance to do this. It gives them a taste of what their future careers can look like if they’re lucky.”

Curtis is a small institution with a current enrollment of 167 students, all of whom receive a full-tuition merit-based scholarship, and the school has a thorough process for selecting the Curtis Artist . “We’re a very collaborative institution,” Ludwig says. “[Curtis President Roberto Díaz], the dean, a number of other people and I confer to pick the student who we think would be most suited [to the NJSO opportunity] and would most benefit from the experience. We want to pick someone who will be an outstanding performer for the Orchestra and who also stands to benefit a lot from the experience of performing.”

Ludwig and his colleagues selected Ullman as this season’s Curtis Artist. What makes Ullman stand out as the perfect choice for the NJSO opportunity, Ludwig says, is his approach to his art. “Alex is intelligent and thoughtful, and he brings lot of artistry to the piano. His technique is flawless, but he’s a musician,” Ludwig emphasizes, “not just an instrumentalist. There are a lot of technicians out there, but Alex is a performer. I’ve heard great things from him over the years he’s been at school, and he’s progressed enormously. He’s a fun person as well—he’s wonderful to talk to, and he has a wicked sense of humor.

“Alex is an amazingly mature young pianist. He has a very broad view of the repertoire, so he’s very at home playing Liszt (winning first prize at the Liszt competition in Budapest led to engagements across Europe and China last year), and he has also performed with our contemporary-music ensemble. He is very diverse in his approach.” 

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Q&A with pianist Alexander Ullman

Backstage: What opportunities has the Curtis Institute of Music afforded you?

Alexander Ullman: I was first made aware of Curtis after playing for [former Curtis President] Gary Graffman when I was 14. He told me all about [the school] and [said] I should audition, so of course the dream of attending this elite and unique institution was instilled in me then. I heard a master class given by [pianist and former Curtis faculty member] Leon Fleisher three years later on Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto in London, in which I was able to witness firsthand his profound insights and extraordinary musicianship; this is what drove me to give the audition a shot. Since I started studying at Curtis, I have been shown an unprecedented level of support with concert opportunities including performances with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra.

Backstage: What does it mean to you to be performing with major orchestras while completing your studies?

Ullman: Part of the ethos at Curtis is to learn by doing, and I strongly believe that this kind of exposure to playing in concerts is the best method [of] developing for an artist. It allows the necessary room for explorations in creativity which can only be achieved in the context of performance. Playing with an orchestra is the most thrilling experience I know, and each time I get the opportunity it means that I feel like the luckiest person alive. To have this now while I’m still studying is, of course, wonderful!

Backstage: You will perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 with the NJSO. What speaks to you about this piece?

Ullman: I think it is one of the more extraordinary Mozart concertos. It begins by stating the regal and magisterial nature of C major before transforming into a work that overflows with enchanting melodies full of light and vivacity in the major mode and at the same time darkness and contemplative melancholy in minor. There is one beautiful, lilting F major melody in the third movement that seems to come out of nowhere, which I think is the most wonderful moment in the whole concerto.

Backstage: Mozart is a crucial composer in the history of piano literature. With what mindset do you approach his music?

Ullman: There are a few things I believe in that are particularly significant for this type of music. For instance, I will try to remove any sense of pride and self-importance from the equation in order to relay the music in as pure and as unadulterated a fashion as possible. Generally I find that using certain “ideas” when approaching a piece of music can be dangerous—language only explains how we think and feel things in one sphere of expression, which is an inadequate means of describing something much subtler like music. I will be working on things that don’t really mean anything and can’t really be separated from one another, like musical gesture, sound, phrasing, direction and architecture. 

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NJSO and Curtis fans can get a taste of the dynamic pianist through competition video footage on YouTube, and they can expect the conservatory to continue to send New Jersey audiences exciting talents and future stars.

“One of the richest relationships we have is with the NJSO; it is very meaningful for the school,” Ludwig says. “This is a relationship we’ve had for longer, and in a more positive way, than our relationships with many other partners. It’s been really beneficial for us, and it’s a terrific platform for the students—many of whom will probably come back and play with the Orchestra as professionals.”

Indeed, several previous Curtis Artists have returned to the NJSO stage in subsequent seasons. Lang Lang has performed multiple engagements with the Orchestra, most recently in September 2010, and perhaps most memorably in a co-headlining performance with piano icon Herbie Hancock in August 2009. Wang, the 2004–05 Curtis Artist, gave critically acclaimed performances of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 in November 2010. Sklar—the 2008–09 Curtis Artist, who had previously appeared with the Orchestra as its 2007 Young Artists Auditions competition winner—has become an NJSO audience favorite who most recently performed with the Orchestra at its 14th annual UJA Benefit Concert in May 2011.

Season	Curtis Artist	Repertoire
1999–2000	Lang Lang, piano	Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1
2000–01	Daniel Lee, cello	Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations for Cello and Orchestra
2001-02	Marvin Moon, viola	Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante
2002-03	Jonah Kim, cello	Haydn: Cello Concerto in D Major
2003-04	Di Wu, violin	Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
2004-05	Yuja Wang, piano	Grieg: Piano Concerto in A Minor
2005-06	Jie Chen, piano	Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor
2006-07	Hye-Jin Kim, violin	Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 4, K. 218
2007-08	Haochen Zhang, piano	Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1
2008-09	Brittany Sklar, violin	Barber: Violin Concerto, Op. 14
2009-10	Christina and Michelle Naughton, piano	Poulenc: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra
2010-11	J’Nai Bridges, soprano	Elgar: Sea Pictures
2011-12	Michelle Cann, piano	Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, Foster selections
2012-13	Alexander Ullman, piano	Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25

 

And as they have in years past, members of the Curtis community will take advantage of the proximity of the institution to the NJSO’s New Jersey venues as they come out to support Ullman’s burgeoning career. “The location of the concerts is really ideal for Curtis,” Ludwig says. “We’re neighbors, and so in a way it’s local, but it’s also just outside of our radius, so we’re able to both bring current friends to these performances and make new ones.

“We’re really happy to be able to share what we’re doing at the school with an orchestra that has Curtis graduates and friends of the school in it. It’s a really successful partnership with another meaningful arts organization, and that’s a great thing.”

Curtis Artist Alexander Ullman performs Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 with the NJSO on its “Vienna: From Mozart to Strauss” program under the baton of Thomas Wilkins. Performances take place on Friday, October 12, (7:30 p.m.) at the Patriots Theater at the War Memorial in Trenton, Saturday, October 13, (8 p.m.) at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank and Sunday, October 14, (3 p.m.) at bergenPAC in Englewood. Classical Conversations begin one hour before the performances on October 13 and 14 and are free to ticketholders. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.

“Vienna: From Mozart to Strauss” is sponsored by Herbert & Evelyn Axelrod and made possible in part through the generous support of the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation. The Horizon Foundation for New Jersey is Concert Sponsor of the October 13 performance.