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Lera Auerbach Wikipedia

Image:Auerbach.jpg|thumb|Lera Auerbach

Lera Auerbach (lang-ru|???????? ??????????????; b. October 21, 1973 in Chelyabinsk, Russia) is one of the most widely performed composers of the new generation.

She was born in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Ural Mountains|Urals bordering Siberia. Auerbach continues the tradition of virtuoso pianist-composers of the Timeline of trends in music (1800-1899)|19th and 20th century classical music|20th centuries. She is the youngest composer on the roster of the prestigious international music publishing company Hans Sikorski well-known as a home to Sergei Prokofiev|Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich|Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke|Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina|Gubaidulina and Giya Kancheli|Kancheli. Auerbach's music is characterized by its stylistic freedom and juxtaposition of tonal and atonal musical language.

Auerbach made her Carnegie Hall debut in May 2002 performing her own Suite for Violin, Piano and Orchestra with Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. Ms. Auerbach's music has been presented at Carnegie Hall each season since then. In 2005, Lera Auerbach was awarded the prestigious Hindemith Prize by Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany.

Her compositions have been commissioned and performed by Gidon Kremer, the Royal Danish Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, David Finckel and Wu Han, Vadim Gluzman, Kremerata Baltica, and Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, among many others. She has appeared as Solo (music)|solo pianist at such prestigious venues as Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, Tokyo's Tokyo Opera City|Opera City, New York City|New York's Lincoln Center, Munich's Herkulessaal, Oslo's Konzerthaus, Chicago's Theodore Thomas Orchestra Hall|Symphony Hall and Washington, D.C.|Washington's John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts|Kennedy Center.

A new commission by The Royal Danish Ballet, to celebrate Hans Christian Andersen's bicentenary, was Lera Auerbach's second collaboration with Choreography|choreographer John Neumeier. The ballet is a modern rendition of the classic fairy tale 'The Little Mermaid' and was premiered successfully in April 2005.

Lera Auerbach is also a writer. She has published six volumes of poetry and prose in Russian.

Last Modified:   2005-12-19