Photo by Stefan Hoderat
This month, Yuja Wang and clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer begin their Blue Hour summer tour traveling to France, Switzerland, Scotland, Croatia, and Montenegro. Marking their first recording together, Yuja joined forces with Mr. Ottensamer to recorded a Romantic era album, Blue Hour, with the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Mariss Jansons. The album features arrangements by Ottensamer himself of Mendelssohn and Brahms piano pieces, and one of Brahms’s songs, as well as Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1 and his virtuoso Grand Duo Concertant. Released by Deutsche Grammophon in March this year, Blue Hour has since been nominated in five categories for the 2019 Opus Klassik Awards.
The tour will begin on July 28 at the Menton Music Festival, with additional performances including July 31 at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival; August 3 at the Edinburgh International Festival; August 6 in Dubrovnik, Croatia; August 7 in Luštica Bay and August 9 at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Kotor, part of the KotorArt festival. In addition to the works featured on the album, Ms. Wang and Mr. Ottensamer will perform Debussy’s Première rhapsodie, Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat Major, and Horovitz’s Sonatina for clarinet and piano.
More information and purchase links for Blue Hour are available at yujawang.com/listen/.