Pianist will play dual role during symphony concert

the vindicator

YOUNGSTOWN — Ignat Solzhenitsyn will join the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra in an evening that will parallel a historic concert that took place more than a hundred years ago.

Solzhenitsyn, a pianist, will be the soloist Saturday when the YSO, with Randall Craig Fleischer conducting, performs Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2.

After the intermission, Solzhenitsyn will mount the podium to conduct the orchestra in Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 6.

At the premiere performance of concerto in 1881, Brahms was the soloist. In the second part of that concert at the Redonten Saal in Budapest, Brahms conducted the orchestra.

Solzhenitzyn is music director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and has appeared as guest conductor with many American orchestras. In recent seasons, his extensive touring schedule in the United States and Europe has included concerto performances with major orchestras and collaborations with many distinguished conductors.

In addition to his recital appearances at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, St. Paul’s Ordway Theatre and San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, Solzhenitsyn has also given recitals in Europe and the Far East.

An avid chamber musician, Solzhenitsyn has collaborated with the Emerson, Borodin, Brentano, St. Petersburg and Lydian String Quartets and in four-hand recital with Mitsuko Uchida. A winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Solzhenitsyn is a member of the piano faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music.