Reviews:

Toronto Star

Young  string diva is breathtaking

By John Terauds

Published: November 30, 2007

People say that, of all instruments, the cello most resembles the human voice. If that's true, then 25-year-old cellist Alisa Weilerstein would be Tina Turner in her prime.

Weilerstein plays classical music, but with the depth of soul and raw emotional energy of a diehard rocker. She also has a classic poise and elegance on stage that make her welcome among the starched white ties on a traditional symphony stage.

The young string diva already qualifies as a veteran, having grown up with musician parents, with whom she played regularly as part of the Weilerstein Trio, based in Boston. She made her orchestral solo debut in Cleveland at age 13 and has worked steadily ever since while completing her music studies and even getting a degree in Russian History from Columbia University in 2004.

She has performed around the world with major orchestras and top-name venues, so her Toronto Symphony Orchestra debut last night came not a moment too soon. Roy Thomson Hall was nearly at capacity in honour of her appearance on stage.

The wait until the second half of the program was worth every minute. Her rendition of Antonin Dvorak's and one grand and intimate Cello Concerto from 1895 was a treat from start to finish.

Weilerstein has a magical control over her bow, giving the sound of her cello seemingly infinite degrees of expression. She even has a way of turning a simple vibrato into a breathless flutter that she deployed to great effect in quieter sections of the first movement.

This concerto is late-Romantic music that can take a great deal of dynamic contrasts. Weilerstein always pushed towards the limits of both loud and soft, but never without justifying her actions with clear, purposeful musical phrases.

The Toronto Symphony players were in fine form, with maestro Peter Oundjian coaxing an equally rich backup performance.

People came for Weilerstein and likely left with smiles as the cello piece faded into memory...Thank goodness there was Alisa Weilerstein to make us see warmth, light and life all over again after intermission.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Cellist Weilerstein impresses with interpretation of Haydn By Andrew Druckenbrod

Published: November 3, 2007

If not musical royalty, cellist Alisa Weilerstein at least comes from the noble class.

Her parents, Donald and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, are celebrated musicians who immersed their daughter in music from an early age. For years they have performed as the Weilerstein Trio.

Last night with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the 25-year-old cellist indeed played as if she were born to the rank, performing, as it were, a work fit for a prince, Haydn's Cello Concerto in D major. Haydn wrote it for Prince Esterhazy, the Hungarian nobleman in the 18th century.

Weilerstein impressed here two years ago, performing Dvorak's Cello Concerto, but she has improved. Rather than burn out in the crucible of the solo circuit, the experience seems to have steeled her to trust herself. She unleashed a robust and winning tone throughout the concerto; lines were put forward with the confidence of an attorney's argument.

I wonder, too, if Weilerstein isn't being more confident about the somewhat unorthodox way in which she holds her cello. Perhaps I just didn't notice it two seasons ago, but last night at Heinz Hall she held the neck of the instrument well away from her body, whereas most cellists rest it on their shoulder. It was almost as if she were playing a double bass. This position allowed Weilerstein to support her left hand with solid weight on the fingerboard, causing a resounding mahogany timbre to leap out.

The hallmarks of her phrasing were precision and intelligence, something you'd expect from a virtuoso who graduated from Columbia University (with a degree in Russian history, no less!). But her playing was far from academic, even tapping into some energetic, rock-inspired bowing in the finale.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Cellist embraces Saint-Saens Concerto

By Valerie Scher

Published: October 29, 2007

French composer Camille Saint-Saens wrote his Cello Concerto in A Minor in 1872.

But cellist Alisa Weilerstein played the piece as if it had recently been created just for her.

EARNIE GRAFTON / Union-Tribune Alisa Weilerstein played Saint-Saens' Cello Concerto in A Minor as if it were created just for her.

On Friday, during the first of the weekend's three San Diego Symphony concerts at downtown's Copley Symphony Hall, the 25-year-old native of Rochester, N.Y., took possession of the concerto so completely that it hardly mattered that it was composed 110 years before she was born.

She gave urgency to the opening whirlwind of eighth notes. She brought sweet-toned intensity to the delicate Allegretto. She was so persuasive that even the finale's overwrought romanticism seemed fitting.

Weilerstein made this a concerto that wasn't merely played but was also deeply felt. As one watched her, it was possible to forget San Diego's fiery tragedy, at least for a little while.

Like pianist Lang Lang and violinist Joshua Bell, Weilerstein represents the group of classical music soloists whose effusive style draws audiences into their performances. With eyes half closed and head thrown back, she favored rapture over refinement, emotion more than elegance.

Occasionally, the effort was audible, as in the concerto's difficult sequence of trills. Yet Weilerstein – who displayed her skills in chamber music at La Jolla Music Society SummerFest in August – was pretty sensational in Saint-Saens, whether soaring through high notes or plunging into sonic depths. Enhancing the performance was the attentive accompaniment of music director Jahja Ling and the San Diego Symphony, who were careful not to overpower her playing.

The New York Times

Innovation and a Jolt Jump-Start a Festival

On Tuesday night at Avery Fisher Hall, as the immensely gifted young cellist Alisa Weilerstein played the volatile solo part in the New York premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s mesmerizing “Azul” for cello and orchestra, conducted by the dynamic Louis Langrée, it was hard not to pinch yourself and wonder whether this really was the opening concert of the 41st Mostly Mozart Festival.

Jennifer Taylor for The New York Times

Alisa Weilerstein played a Kodaly sonata at the Kaplan Penthouse.

The piece, true to Mr. Golijov’s aesthetic, unabashedly combines elemental contemporary sonorities, soulful cello outpourings, ritualistic stretches of obsessively repeated riffs and melodic fragments, and South American folk music introduced by solo players on ethnic percussion instruments — all of it enhanced with subtle electronics. Even Avery Fisher Hall looked hipper. Continuing an experiment started two seasons ago, a makeshift platform atop the first 11 rows of seats created a temporary thrust stage, bringing the players closer into the hall and giving more boost and immediacy to the acoustics.

Back in the 1990s the festival was stuck in dreary routine. A typical idea for freshening up a program was to begin with, say, excerpts from Handel’s “Water Music” Suite before turning to the requisite Mozart concerto and symphony. When the festival orchestra, in a bitter contract dispute with Lincoln Center, called a last-minute strike before the opening of the 2002 summer season, there was no wellspring of support from the public, to the players’ chagrin. The festival orchestra’s performances were canceled, and it looked as if the whole enterprise would go out of business. Or perhaps continue as a festival for visiting ensembles only.

Then came the wiry Frenchman Mr. Langrée, who re-energized the festival and won the trust of the players. His unlikely partner was Jane Moss, the vice president for programming at Lincoln Center, who for years had made no secret of wanting to scrap Mostly Mozart. Now, as artistic director of the festival, she has emboldened Mr. Langrée to take chances.

The opening-night concert was typical of what awaits audiences this summer. A programmatic theme will explore spirituality in music, with sacred works by Mozart, Fauré and Rachmaninoff, among others. Mr. Golijov’s stylistically all-encompassing “Pasión Según San Marcos” will be performed, with a vibrant choral ensemble from Venezuela, as well as Monteverdi’s sublime Vespers of 1610, with the Swiss Radio Chorus of Lugano and the period-instrument ensemble I Barocchisti making their American debuts.

In keeping with the festival’s title, Tuesday night’s program began with Mozart: the Symphony No. 36 in C, the “Linz.” This actually was the least engaging performance of the evening. Though the musicians in the resident orchestra are experienced freelancers, this is not a crack period-instrument ensemble or a permanent one in which players perform together all the time.

Since taking charge Mr. Langrée has given a jolt to the orchestra’s music making and the playing of the “Linz” never fell below a level of solid professionalism. But there was sometimes a tentative quality, and in the Andante, not really a slow movement here but taken at a walking gait, the musicians seemed reined in by trying to maintain the steady tempo. Also, though Mr. Langrée comes from the early-music movement, his penchant for stylistic touches, like shaping lines so that phrases trail off at the end, can seem mannered.

In preparing “Azul” Ms. Weilerstein and the percussion soloists had a dicey rehearsal period because Mr. Golijov kept making last-minute changes to the score, which has been significantly revised since its 2006 premiere. I am still waiting to have my Golijov epiphany so that I can join his many admirers, a group that includes leading performers and smart critics.

Mr. Golijov indisputably has a keen ear for sonority and an exciting instinct for combining seemingly disparate materials. This score, more than others of his, abounds in purely musical intricacies that grabbed me, including weirdly astringent sustained harmonies and poignant passages where the ruminative cello was comforted by the plaintive, reedy sounds of an accordion. And it was impossible to resist the fervor of the performance, especially Ms. Weilerstein’s incisive, earthy and intense playing.

Then Ms. Weilerstein played Zoltan Kodaly’s 1915 Sonata for Solo Cello, a formidably difficult work of more than 30 minutes that is rather like “a free improvisation,” as she explained to the audience. Here Kodaly, much like his colleague Bartok, drew from Eastern European folk music to fashion an exploratory modern score. It probably runs on too long. But Kodaly was rightly indulging himself, giving full rein to his tormented and craggy vision, qualities fully conveyed in the tireless Ms. Weilerstein’s staggering performance.

As always the Kaplan Penthouse proved a wonderfully intimate setting for chamber music. With people seated at round tables and sipping complimentary wine amid views of the skyline, the penthouse is the closest New York has to an inviting nightclub for classical music. Yet, encouraged by the festival, these two principled artists chose to play uncompromisingly serious and difficult works. They reasoned that an informal, late-night atmosphere is exactly the setting to challenge audiences, not pander to them.

Challenge audiences? Yes, the Mostly Mozart Festival has certainly changed.

The New York Times

A High-Wire Act Shows Up, With Feet on the Ground

The cellist Alisa Weilerstein with the New York Philharmonic in an Avery Fisher Hall performance conducted by Zubin Mehta.

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI Published: January 13, 2007

One of the main reasons that the conductor Kurt Masur, a Teutonic taskmaster, was brought to the New York Philharmonic in 1991 was to instill much-needed discipline after Zubin Mehta ’s erratic 13-year tenure as music director. Mr. Mehta, a dynamo on the podium, was capable of brilliance. But too often, his performances back then were all flash and no substance. The consensus was that the playing of the Philharmonic had grown careless and coarse during the Mehta era.

Yet you do not attain the international prominence of a Zubin Mehta without having formidable gifts. Perhaps at 70, he has developed calm authority and greater depth. Perhaps he just had a good night. Whatever the reason, the New York Philharmonic’s concert on Thursday at Avery Fisher Hall was a rewarding surprise, especially Mr. Mehta’s distinguished account of Bruckner’s magisterial Symphony No. 7 in E.

The program began with Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with the exciting 24-year-old American cellist Alisa Weilerstein as soloist. The demoralized Elgar, then in his early 60s, felt like a relic of the Victorian age when he composed this work in 1918-19. The modernist advances of Stravinsky and Schoenberg made Elgar’s fastidious tonal compositions seem irrelevant. And he was devastated by the brutality of World War I.

But in time this concerto was embraced as a deeply personal and subtly original masterpiece. Its richly chromatic harmonic language may be bound to late-Romantic models. Still, the way Elgar somehow combines ruminative lyricism with striking economy of expression is very distinctive.

From the opening statement, a quasirecitative for solo cello that leads subtly into the poignant theme of the first movement, Ms. Weilerstein played with rich sound, lyrical freedom and technical command. During the scherzo movement, which is like an étude for repeated notes on the cello, she nimbly dispatched the challenges while conveying the wistfulness of this music.

She was just as compelling in the anguished slow movement and the deceptively jaunty finale. Mr. Mehta proved a discerning and respectful collaborator, drawing elegant playing from the orchestra.

Any thought that Mr. Mehta was bent on proving his profundity by weighing in on Bruckner’s monumental 70-minute symphony quickly faded when he began the performance, conducting from memory with unfailing attentiveness and stamina. In fact, what I most admired was that Mr. Mehta seemed not out to prove anything. There was no interpretive agenda. No novel approach for the sake of novelty.

The elemental first movement, the mournful Adagio, the weighty scherzo and the elusive finale all emerged as parts of an overall architectonic conception of the work. Climaxes were never forced; brassy outbursts were radiant, not blaring; the chorales that run through this score had Bachian nobility; the Wagnerian evocations were vibrant yet tasteful.

No doubt Mr. Mehta’s task was made easier by the hard work his two successors have done in bringing the Philharmonic to its present top-notch technical state. Mr. Mehta was free to concentrate on music-making. That he did on this surprising night.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Strong, delicate and dramatic

By Peter Dobrin, January 15, 2007

By the heart-on-sleeve-wearing standards set by Yo-Yo Ma and Jacqueline du Pré, the young cellist Alisa Weilerstein might appear to occupy an artistic place of quieter ideas. Not so. Weilerstein, 24, who played the Elgar Concerto on Friday night with the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta at Verizon Hall, is a strong personality, though a complex one. What she managed to say in the most hushed moments of the concerto (when the cough-stricken audience allowed it) could have changed listeners' view of the piece, especially those of us who first twigged onto the Elgar through du Pré's recordings.

Bow and hair do not fly when Weilerstein is playing. She accepts applause in the most unextravagant manner imaginable. And it's true, she modulates the work's enormous dramatic possibilities so that a climax really means something when she gets to it. Not every powerful moment grows volcanic.

The third movement, "Adagio," was a small miracle of delicacy. Has a cellist ever played so securely and quietly at the same time? She adjusted her tone as she went, overlaying a suggestion of vocal writing. Was Mehta aware of the magic?

Newsday

A Prodigy Who's Aged Into Greatness

By Justin Davidson, January 13, 2007

The cellist Alisa Weilerstein, two years out of college and a decade into a major performing career, is just beginning to slide into the spotlight she deserves. She has played with every major American orchestra, but made only cautious appearances in New York, and Thursday was her regular season debut with the New York Philharmonic. From the outside at least, her life looks like an object lesson in how to manage the treacherous transition from prodigy to pro.

The daughter of a pianist and the longtime first violinist of the now defunct Cleveland Quartet, Weilerstein was born into musical nobility. Her parents are also her chamber music partners; together they tour as the Weilerstein Trio. But that bit of lineage could now be trimmed from her official bio. Hers is a personality that projects itself with the very first notes she plays.

On Thursday, that note was the opening sigh of the Elgar Cello Concerto, one of those peculiarly Edwardian mixtures of reticence and sentiment. It takes time to take possession of this work, with its fragile lacework of orchestration and its elliptical poetry made of eloquent "ahems." Weilerstein has reached the age when she can at least project the bruised wisdom of age.

Jacqueline du Pré, who died around the time that little Alisa began bonding with her cello, played Elgar's concerto urgently, incandescently, as if a life depended on stripping its secrets. Weilerstein is more relaxed but no less luminous.

She glided through the score with a ravishing, auburn sound and the confidence not to sell it too hard. She savored its subtle, low-light pleasures. She gave it a vocal utterance, never predictable and never eccentric, always reassuring, controlled, welcoming and warm. To hear her play is to experience the serenity of being in a master's hands.

Her podium partner for the occasion was the Philharmonic's old music director Zubin Mehta, who followed up the Elgar with a thick hunk of Bruckner, his Symphony No. 7.

The New York Sun

Light or Dark, Rich or Tart:  A Stunning Performance

By Jay Nordlinger, January 15, 2007

Every now and then, you are privileged — truly privileged — to attend some performance. And that was the case on Thursday night, when Alisa Weilerstein played the Elgar Cello Concerto with the New York Philharmonic guest-conducted by its former music director, Zubin Mehta. Ms. Weilerstein is 24 years old, the daughter of two celebrated music teachers. There are two important 24-year-old cellists in the world: Ms. Weilerstein and the Koreanborn Han-Na Chang.

And how old was Jacqueline du Pré when she made her famous recording of the Elgar Concerto? But 20. Of course, Sir John Barbirolli, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, had something to do with the greatness of that recording, too.

Elgar begins his concerto with the cello alone, and Ms. Weilerstein tucked into the music with abandon — yet a controlled abandon, if you will allow that. She made a beautiful sound, and that sound proved variable: It was lighter or darker, richer or tarter, depending on the needs of the music. Ms. Weilerstein sang and sighed on her cello, using a judicious amount of portamento. She also used a judicious amount of rubato.

Musical instincts such as these cannot be taught; they are part of her makeup, lucky girl (and lucky audiences).

You did not need to give any thought to technique, as Ms. Weilerstein's fingers were absolutely sure. This allowed us, and her, to concentrate solely on the music. She gelled with the conductor, Mr. Mehta, looking at him almost constantly — certainly more than any orchestra player did!

The second movement featured the right shuddering and shimmering, and the third movement — Adagio — was a wonderful song: breathed with utter naturalness. The final movement was marked by what I must call an elegant savagery, or a savage elegance, if you like — exactly what is necessary. Ms. Weilerstein managed to impart a feeling of improvisation, as though the notes were just occurring to her to play.

Throughout the concerto, she played with extreme freshness and musical love. May she never lose this approach — this mindset — as the years roll by.

I must tell something on myself: When Ms. Weilerstein was finished, the audience clapped heartily, but stayed seated. So did I — and I felt like a heel for not standing. This was a performance that one should have acknowledged on one's feet.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Cellist Wrestles with Shostakovich

By David Patrick Stearns, November 27, 2006

Too bad the words shock and awe have become forever glued to an increasingly regretted military event of recent years, because they can also describe Friday's Philadelphia Orchestra debut of the much-discussed young cellist Alisa Weilerstein. In Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1, she seemed to battle her cello as much as she played it, in a performance that was constantly striving - admirably but sometimes in vain - for something bigger, bolder and more all-encompassing.

In a program that also included Mahler's Symphony No. 4, it wasn't enough - seemingly - for her to deliver ironic/earnest notes that were evidence of Shostakovich's difficult life under the Soviet regime. Earlier this season, the great Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey played with no-questions-asked devotion to this score, whose layers become a labyrinthine game of hide-and-seek.

But no, Weilerstein wasn't about to stop at that. She often seemed to reflect the years of horror under Joseph Stalin plus the national rage and pessimism that came after. And yes, this was from a smallish 24-year-old who looks less than 18 onstage.

The total experience was as eccentric and haunting as it was impressive and daring. The often-ghostly moments in the second movement had, in Weilerstein's hands, a tense line of logic, bone-rattle accents, and a brand of ambiguity in which the music almost sneeringly refused to say what it meant.

The heart of the concerto is the long cadenza, which she played almost like an unaccompanied cello sonata embedded in the middle of the concerto. Parts were played with despairing pianissimos and rhetorical pauses that few soloists in any concerto would try. Yet her logic was never obscure, even in the climax, which she played like an operatic mad scene, digging so hard into her cello that she crossed the line between anguish and bluster.

New York Times

Sensitivity Comes in Threes from Russia

By Steve Smith, October 16, 2006

Click here for full article and photo

The brisk cold winds that blew through Manhattan on Saturday provided a climate well suited to a program of Russian piano trios that evening at Carnegie Hall. The violinist Maxim Vengerov, the cellist Alisa Weilerstein and the pianist Lilya Zilberstein paired Tchaikovsky’s sole Piano Trio and Shostakovich’s Trio No. 2, works that have more in common than nationality. Each was written in response to the death of a friend.

Tchaikovsky’s trio, dedicated “to the memory of a great artist,” commemorated the passing of the pianist and conductor Nikolai Rubinstein, a close colleague and adviser, in 1881. Shostakovich, who had composed an earlier piano trio as a teenager, was shaken during the creation of his second by the sudden death of the musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky, an early and steadfast supporter, in 1944. Both works convey bereavement, yet neither dwells exclusively on lament.

The introduction of the Shostakovich piece, which opened the concert, is one of the most striking passages in the trio repertory. The cello begins alone with a keening flutelike melody. The violin slips in at midrange; the piano follows with rumbling bass notes. The security with which these musicians negotiated this spectral music set the tone for a collaboration of striking sympathy and balance, maintained through a slashing Allegro con brio, a funereal Largo and a sardonic Allegretto-Adagio.

Mr. Vengerov and Ms. Zilberstein have enjoyed international prominence for a while. Ms. Weilerstein, already an experienced musician at 24, is by comparison just getting started. Here she proved equal to her illustrious companions, her commanding technique matched by onstage assurance. An emphatically physical performer, Ms. Weilerstein swayed constantly, projecting expressive passages with dramatic head tosses and similar flourishes.

Her partners were scarcely shrinking violets. The opening movement of Tchaikovsky’s trio pays homage to Rubinstein with especially florid piano writing, which brought out Ms. Zilberstein’s most bravura playing. The finale, a rustic theme and variations, allowed Mr. Vengerov to demonstrate an exemplary range of temperaments and tones, from bristling to tender. A hush filled the hall for long moments after the grief-stricken final bars, shattered at length by thunderous approval.

Features:

W Magazine

World on a String

By Elisa Lipsky-Karasz

Published: December 1, 2007

Classical music insiders have called Alisa Weilerstein many things: "immensely gifted," "a force of nature," "brilliant." Yo-Yo Ma says she is "one of the most talented cellists of her generation." But there is one accolade the 25-year-old hates: prodigy. "There is such a terrible stigma attached to that word," says the cellist.   "I had a real childhood. Other kids did their extracurriculars-cello was just mine."

Truth be told, most children don't make their professional debut onstage with the Cleveland Orchestra at age 13. Nor do they take master classes with Ma (she met him when she was nine) or combine high school with study at the prestigious Cleveland Institute of Music.

But if music is in anyone's genes, it's in hers. Weilerstein's mother is an accomplished pianist, and her father, a violinist, was an original member of the legendary Cleveland Quartet. ("They were sort of the Beatles of classical music," she explains.) Since graduating from Columbia University in 2004, Weilerstein has become a regular at Carnegie Hall and has performed as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. This past summer she collaborated with composer of the moment Osvaldo Golijov at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center.

"She's going to be a big star. She's got all the goods," says New York Philharmonic executive director Zarin Mehta. Onstage, the five-foot-two musician is known for creating a surprisingly big and emotional sound and delivering a physical yet technically precise performance. "She still doesn't know how to fake it," says Golijov. "She is totally in the moment and giving of herself-like a rock 'n' roller."

Her performances are, if nothing else, intense-and she can't understand how some people describe classical music as "relaxing background music." "Nothing irks me more," Weilerstein says. "I don't find it relaxing!"

The New York Times

Concerto Retinkered (for Youthful Soloist)

By STEVE SMITH Published: July 31, 2007

The Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov smiled broadly as he burst into a spacious studio in the Jazz at Lincoln Center complex one night last week. Greeting everyone warmly, he scanned the room for one particular person: Alisa Weilerstein, the soloist of his cello concerto, ''Azul.'' It was more than mere courtesy. ''I still have some notes to give her,'' he confided with an impish grin.

Mr. Golijov was not referring to pointers, but to actual pages of the score. Since its first performance, by Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood last summer, Mr. Golijov has thoroughly revised ''Azul.'' A little more than a week before its New York premiere, tonight at the Mostly Mozart Festival, he was still tweaking details.

Ms. Weilerstein soon arrived, and the rehearsal got under way. As Michael Ward-Bergeman squeezed out a low, steady ostinato on his hyper-accordion, a conventional acoustic instrument outfitted with electronic effects, Mr. Golijov sang rhythms to the percussionists Jamey Haddad and Cyro Baptista. Louis Langrée, the music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival, filled in orchestral parts on piano.

Petite and brimming with self-assurance, Ms. Weilerstein provided a center of calm amid the din. Over percussive rumbles, shakes and splatters, she played a long, radiant melody, its melancholy reflected in her intense expressions. Mr. Golijov beamed with satisfaction.

''This is very consistent with what he's done in the past,'' Ms. Weilerstein said in an interview earlier that evening. She had become intimately acquainted with Mr. Golijov's penchant for tinkering during collaborative sessions in Boston, where they both live, and at the Banff Summer Arts Festival in Canada earlier this month. ''These pieces are living things, so that makes it very exciting,'' she added. ''I'm getting changes every single day.''

Although ''Azul'' is billed as her Mostly Mozart debut, Ms. Weilerstein, the daughter of the violinist Donald Weilerstein and the pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, first appeared at the festival two seasons ago, playing a Bach solo suite in a preconcert recital. Now a seasoned performer at 25, Ms. Weilerstein made her subscription-series debut with the New York Philharmonic in January, and played with that orchestra again in Vail, Colo., on Friday. Her season has also included appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony, and tours with the violinists Maxim Vengerov and Gil Shaham.

Ms. Weilerstein's first encounter with Mr. Golijov came in 2005, initiated by mutual friends: the clarinetist Todd Palmer and members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet. She visited Mr. Golijov at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., where he is on the faculty, to get the scores for two chamber pieces, ''Mariel'' and ''Omaramor.''

''I was working on my Web site at the same time,'' Ms. Weilerstein said. (The address is alisaweilerstein.com.) ''He very generously suggested that I could record the video of the Kodaly solo sonata, which is on my Web site now, at Holy Cross.'' (She will play that work tonight, after the gala program, at the Kaplan Penthouse.) ''He set the whole thing up without really knowing me,'' she added. Ms. Weilerstein later sent Mr. Golijov a recording of her performance of ''Omaramor'' at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in 2006.  ''He wrote to me and said he loved it,'' she said. ''A couple of months later, I found out I was doing the concerto.''

The choice of Ms. Weilerstein was initially a matter of practicality: Mr. Ma, who played ''Azul'' at Tanglewood and Ravinia, was unavailable for Mostly Mozart, and Mr. Golijov put great stock in the opinion of the St. Lawrence players and Mr. Palmer, whom he called ''my soul mates in music.''

In an interview by cellphone from a Boston-bound train a few days after the rehearsal, Mr. Golijov explained: ''I was unhappy with some of the music in the concerto. I thought, 'She's local -- we could get together every afternoon for a month and try different things.' ''

Mr. Golijov has proved unusually willing to allow his major pieces to gestate in public. At its inception, ''Azul'' was a 26-minute expansion of themes from his ''Tenebrae,'' a 2002 work that had been inspired by the Baroque composer François Couperin's devotional ''Leçons de Ténèbres.''

''Originally the piece was very, very still all the time,'' Mr. Golijov said. Mr. Ma, he had reasoned, did not require an extravaganza to demonstrate his mettle. The tone of ''Azul,'' he added, stemmed partly from his experience of listening to concerts at Tanglewood while lying on the grass, staring at the sky.

For the enclosed space of Avery Fisher Hall, Mr. Golijov reconceived ''Azul'' to reflect Ms. Weilerstein's youthful vigor and passion. He replaced the first 10 minutes and extended the cadenza. Mr. Golijov also found new inspiration in Pablo Neruda's poem ''The Heights of Macchu Picchu,'' Ms. Weilerstein said.

''In the poem there's this person that's sort of floating in the air, then he reaches into the very inside of the earth and comes out again,'' she said. ''It's that sort of emotional journey that we're trying to get through the piece. It will end similarly to the old piece, I think, but you have to earn that ending.''

Ms. Weilerstein said Mr. Golijov conveyed his ideas to her as if he were a director coaching an actor. ''He'd say, 'You play so beautifully, but you sound like you're sure of where you're going, and I don't want you to sound sure,' '' she said. ''To have somebody talk like that was so refreshing.''

The admiration was mutual. At 46, Mr. Golijov is hardly an elder statesman. Still, Ms. Weilerstein's enthusiasm proved infectious. ''It's an incredible pleasure when you're the young one,'' he said. ''But for the first time I experienced, 'Well, now I am the old one,' and it's so good to be energized by her.''

Alisa Weilerstein and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra perform ''Azul'' tonight and tomorrow night at 8 at Avery Fisher Hall, and Ms. Weilerstein also plays tonight at 10:30 at the Kaplan Penthouse, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center; (212) 721-6500 or lincolncenter.org.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Cellist eager to hasten her Kimmel debut
By David Patrick Stearns

Inquirer Music Critic
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - No sensible up-and-coming cellist would make an important Philadelphia Orchestra debut under Alisa Weilerstein's circumstances.

For starters, she has been shuttling between two orchestral tours - the New York Philharmonic in Japan and the Moscow State Symphony in North America. Then, she was committed to playing with Maxim Vengerov in Paris (this week) and London (next). But the few days in between those European capitals coincided with cellist Truls Mork's cancellations Friday and Saturday in Philadelphia. And though long slated to make her Kimmel Center debut in January with the visiting New York Philharmonic, Weilerstein's reaction to the Philadelphia Orchestra offer went like this: "What? Philadelphia wants me? Great! And I get to play with Eschenbach?"

Classical musicians often jet around the world with schedules as intricate as crossword puzzles. However, the 24-year-old Weilerstein lives the way she plays - in a state of intense overdrive that, this week, has her crossing so many time zones her parents consult her Web site to see where she is.

Few cellists her age have so much to draw on - as became apparent during an intense, Pepsi-fueled conversation before her Moscow State Symphony date at New Brunswick's State Theatre. The repertoire for the Friday and Saturday Philadelphia concerts is no problem. Weilerstein has been playing Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 for years - for a while, it was the only thing she wanted to play - and has studied it with Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom it was written.

But what seems to drive her - aside from an ability to sleep on airplanes and an aspiration to deal with jetlag by simply resetting her watch - is the intensity of her musical imagination and her desire to share it.

Though she's often characterized as a growing-up child prodigy, Weilerstein's side of the story isn't about growing up with flashy fingers but with a simple, healthy desire, starting at age 4, to play the Dvorák Cello Concerto with full orchestra.

Now that she's doing so fairly regularly, the performances are deeply personal - or at least seem that way. In her opening Dvorák entrance, for example, she concludes with a unique tempo acceleration that makes jaws drop, even among those who barely know the piece. Where did she come up with that?

"He does say, 'Quasi improvisando,' " she says.

He? As in Dvorák? "I'm just doing what he said," she says with a gleeful laugh. "I don't want to sound self-vindicating, but the score can tell you a lot more than you think... . I read a nice quote by [composer] Ralph Vaughan Williams, that Odysseus would never have to be tied to the ship mast when the sirens were singing if they were just reading from the page."

Quite independently of the score, she conceives a piece of music employing visual imagery that she hesitates to talk about for fear of sounding trite, though that's hardly what the results are like. Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, a piece that can seem so lightweight as to induce instant amnesia, is to her a circus of tumblers and wire walkers, each in their own variation.  When she plays Shostakovich on Friday, chances are she'll have, in her mind's eye, the famous photo of the depressive composer sitting alone in an empty auditorium, his bespectacled face semi-buried in his hand. It doesn't stop there: "You have to appear like you don't care, but inside you're caring horribly," she says.

Weilerstein plays the concerto's famously long cadenza like a long simmering cauldron exploding in all directions. These are the things that she has trouble explaining, except maybe to say, "It's my instinct to be extreme."

How could she be anything less, considering how she grew up? Though her father, violinist Donald Weilerstein, seems shy and eccentric to outsiders, he was first violinist of the Cleveland Quartet during its most volcanic period in the 1970s, when the American chamber-music scene reflected the painful social and political changes in the air. Her mother, pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, is known to be a firebrand as well. (The three sometimes concertize as a trio.)

"My whole upbringing, I was raised to be myself... . They were always - I wouldn't say hands-off, but they let me breathe. They really did," she says. "I was the one who asked for the cello. I was the one who told them I wanted to be serious about it. I practice with my father a few hours a day. From ages 10 or 11 until I was 16, we worked together a ton."

Growing up in Cleveland, she worked with the Cleveland Orchestra's cellist, Richard Weiss, and later with the legendary pedagogue Dorothy DeLay, whose lessons were not easily described. "I learned most from her vibration. Not the words. She was incredibly encouraging, very kind, and said very little. I walked out of every lesson feeling great."

The danger of Weilerstein's near-constant state of mobilization is losing her intuitional relationships with the surrounding world. But she still plays with her parents (and rehearsals can be ruthlessly direct). Her personal life recently stabilized, with a move to Boston to live with her longtime violinist boyfriend. Most important, she judges the success of any given concert not by conventional standards but by its "vibration."

"It's when I feel really inside the music and there's no outside circumstance that's hindering that. It's when there's feedback coming back at you, and not necessarily with applause. It's always a dialogue, even if the other persons are silent. I'm grateful for any audience at all, but it's extra-special when you feel like they're really engaged. And it inspires me to do better."

Strings Magazine:
The Graduate: 

Cello wunderkind Alisa Weilerstein prepares to enter the real world
By David Templeton, May, 2004

For 22 year old musician Alisa Weilerstein, enormous changes are looming ahead.  When her current school year comes to an end, the virtuoso cellist--she's been playing since she was four--will be graduating from Columbia University and stepping out into the world.  While this will certainly mean that new opportunities are opening up, Weilerstein realizes now, with a twinge of sadness, that a major chapter of her life will have come to a close.

"I've loved being in school," she says.  "I still love it!  My classes are fantastic.  It's always so amazing to be surrounded by interesting people from around the world, to participate in these incredible literary discussions, to meet brilliant people who've had unbelievable experiences.  It's been wonderful--and I'll miss everything about it.

"Well," she adds, with a laugh.  "I probably won't miss the exams."  

Weilerstein, who cut her debut album, Cello Recital, four years ago, has been in constant demand as a soloist and chamber player throughout her college years.  Along the way, she has won piles of awards, including the Avery Fisher Career Grant--while appearing with the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and numerous others, and becoming known for her impassioned playing, precision, and energetic physical presence.  Weilerstein's parents, Donald and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, [who play the violin and piano, respectively], are accomplished musicians as well.  The family sometimes performs together as the Weilerstein Trio.  

While at Columbia, Alisa has packed her school vacations with tours and appearances, managing to find time during the academic year for exactly 50 concerts.  "That's the absolute maximum I can do and still graduate on time," she says.  

None of it has been easy, balancing life as a full-time student with her emerging career as a musician, but Weilerstein--who pays a 1790 Forster cello, made in England--has somehow learned to make it all work.  "If Columbia has taught me anything, it's taught me how to practice efficiently," she explains.  "I can get done in an hour, now, what used to take me five.  It's about setting priorities, and becoming streamlined in my habits.  Also, I think it's about making sure that I love what I'm doing, that everything I spend time on is really worth the effort.  Otherwise, it's just toil for no reason."  

Weilerstein opted to forgo the conservatory route chosen by many of her contemporaries.  She's a history major, with a concentration on Eastern Europe and Russia in the 20th century.  As she explains it, she would have majored in Russian literature, but that's an especially strict course, which would have required her to study Russian every day.  Her demanding performance schedule ruled that out.   

Still, she says Russian history has been a satisfying course of study. 

"I have a very strong interest in Soviet history," she says, "partly because my ancestors came from that part of the world, and partly because Shostakovich and Prokofiev are two of my favorite composers."  An avid reader, she names Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as her favorite book.  

After graduation this month, Weilerstein plans to stay in New York.  Once she's free from her busy academic schedule, she plans to increase substantially the number of her yearly performances.  "I'm actually really looking forward to not having to turn any concerts down," she admits.  "I want to see what it's like to be a full-time musician.  And being able to practice completely, as much as I want to every day, that's something I'm really looking forward to. "  

Asked to give some advice for other young musicians balancing academia and music, she is precise and to the point.  "Stay really, really focused on what you want," she says.  

With a laugh, she adds, "And learn to get by on very little sleep."

New York Times
A Natural Comes of Age: (All of 18)
By Matthew Gurewitsch, January 28, 2001

"HER father, at the time the first violinist of the Cleveland Quartet, was on tour in Europe. Her mother, a pianist, had her own concert dates on the road. So it was most inconvenient of Alisa Weilerstein, at 2, to develop chickenpox. Thank heaven for the grandmother who hastened from Albany to Rochester, bearing a handmade set of toy string instruments: two violins, viola and cello.

The cello, a painted Rice Krispies box with a toothbrush for the end pin, was the one Alisa liked most. When her parents returned, she played along with their rehearsals on grandmother's cello. At 4, she began to clamor for a cello that would produce sound. It took several months for her parents to cave in. Her first instrument was a diminutive one-sixteenth size. ''You can imagine how nasal it sounded,'' Ms. Weilerstein says now, at 18..."

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