This week Paul Jacobs returns to the Chicago Symphony for Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 led by Emmanuel Krivine.
Two weekends ago Paul was the featured soloist at the final concert of the Cleveland Orchestra’s weeklong festival exploring ecstasy in music playing Liszt’s “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” Fantasy and Fugue — his second engagement with Cleveland this season, following a subscription week in November for performances of Stephen Paulus’ “Grand Concerto” for Organ and Orchestra (2004) with Giancarlo Guererro.
“Still, if anything pushed Saturday over the top, near the “ecstatic” realm, it was the presence at night’s end of organist Paul Jacobs. Playing the Norton Memorial Organ (with pipes partially exposed by the set of “Tristan and Isolde”), the virtuoso held the house in the palm of his hand with an epic Fantasy and Fugue by Liszt.”
– Zachary Lewis, THE PLAIN DEALER, April 30, 2018
“Masterfully mixing the registers of the E.M. Skinner organ and making subtle stop changes as the piece went on, Jacobs finally shifted into overdrive, and flicking a fingernail across the organ’s row of coupler tabs to command its full power, brought Liszt’s fantasy to an exultant conclusion.”
– Daniel Hathaway, CLEVELAND CLASSICAL, May 1, 2018
Jacobs closes out this season when he joins forces once again with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin on tour to Luxembourg, Brussels and Hamburg’s recently opened Elbphilharmonie playing Wayne Oquin’s Resilience — a work they performed together in Philadelphia to open the season, followed by a subscription week in January when Paul played the mammoth, witty, challenging Scotch Bestiary by Sir James Macmillan as part of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s British Isles Festival.
Coming up next season, Pau plays the world premiere of John Harbison’s What Do We Make of Bach? for Orchestra and Obbligato Organ with the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä; returns for a week to the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst for the US premiere of Okeanos by Bernd Richard Deutsch, and performs and records Barber’s Toccata Festiva with the Lucerne Symphony led by James Gaffigan. He also performs the Barber for the opening night of Phoenix Symphony‘s 18/19 season and with the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, as well as numerous recitals, including a return to the Walt Disney Concert Hall to play the “Hurricane Mama” organ presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.