A renaissance artist for modern times, Lera Auerbach is a widely recognized conductor, pianist, and composer. She is also an award-winning poet and an exhibited visual artist. All of her work is interconnected as part of a cohesive and comprehensive artistic worldview.

Lera Auerbach has become one of today’s most sought-after and exciting creative voices. Her performances and music are featured in the world’s leading stages – from Vienna’s Musikverein and London’s Royal Albert Hall to New York’s Carnegie Hall and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center.

Auerbach’s exquisitely crafted, emotional, and boldly imaginative music reached global audiences. Orchestral collaborations include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Munich’s Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Staatskapelle Dresden, and Vienna’s ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester, among many others. Auerbach’s works for orchestra are performed by the world’s leading conductors, including Manfred Honeck, Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Charles Dutoit, Andris Nelsons, Osmo Vänskä, Hannu Lintu, and Marin Alsop, to mention only a few.

During the 22-23 season, Lera Auerbach performed concerts with Hilary Hahn at Wigmore Hall in London and Boulez Saal in Berlin. She also conducted Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony with Enescu Philharmonic in the subscription series, as well as played and conducted Mozart’s Piano Concerto K466. 

Other recent season highlights also included WienModern’s 3.5-hour production of Demons & Angels with Auerbach as conductor. Washington D.C.’s National Symphony premiered her 4th Symphony “ARCTICA” – a work commissioned by the National Geographic Society. Also, her Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra “Diary of a Madman”  commissioned by the Munich Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, received its global premieres with cellist Gautier Capuçon.

Her 4th Violin Concerto “NYx: Fractured Dreams” was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic with Alan Gilbert and Leonidas Kavakos, and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra premiered her symphonic poem Eve’s Lament with Marin Alsop. In 2022, the Nuremberg State Philharmonic presented the world premiere of Symphony No. 5 “Paradise Lost” conducted by Joana Mallwitz, and her Symphony No. 6 ‘Vessels of Light,’ a commission of Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, was unveiled in Lithuania as part of the city’s Cultural Capital of Europe celebrations and received its American premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 19, 2023.

Amare at the Hague presented a two-week Auerbach Festival in October 2023, including all aspects of her artistic offerings, conducting, piano performance, composition, poetry, and visual art.

Her music is championed and recorded by today’s most prominent classical performers, including violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Daniel Hope, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Gerhardt, David Finckel; violists Kim Kashkashian, Nobuko Imai, and Lawrence Power, and many others.

Auerbach is equally prolific in literature and the visual arts. She incorporates these forms into her professional creative process, often simultaneously expressing ideas visually, in words, and through music. She has published three books of poetry in Russian, and her first English-language book, Excess of Being – in which she explores the rare form of aphorisms. Her next book, an illustrated work for children, A is for Oboe, published by Penguin Random House, won Audiofile Best Audiobook 2022. She is the recipient of the 2021 Marsh Hawk Press – Robert Creely Memorial Award for her English poetry manuscript “Morning Music.

Auerbach has been drawing and painting all her life as part of her creative process. Her visual art is exhibited regularly, included in private collections, and represented by leading galleries.

Lera Auerbach holds multiple degrees from the Juilliard School in New York and the Hannover University of Music, Drama, and Media in Germany. Her teachers include Milton Babbitt, Rosalyn Tureck, Joseph Kalichstein, and Einar Steen-Nøkleberg. The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, selected her in 2007 as a Young Global Leader, and since 2014, she has served as a Cultural Leader.  Boosey and Hawkes / Sikorski publish her music, and recordings are available on ECM, Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Sony Classical, Alpha Classics, BIS, Cedille, and many other labels.

Lera Auerbach: Twenty-Four Preludes for Violoncello and Piano Op. 47

Commissioned by Tom and Vivian Waldeck in association with the Caramoor International Music Festival.

Dedicated to John Neumeier

“Re-establishing the value and expressive possibilities of all major and minor tonalities is as valid at the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was during Bach's time, especially if we consider the esthetics of Western music and its travels in regard – or disregard - to tonality during the last century. The Twenty-Four Preludes for Violoncello and Piano follow the circle of fifths, thus covering the entire western tonal spectrum.

By writing this work, I wished to create a continuum that would allow these short movements to be united as one single composition. Looking at something familiar yet from an unexpected perspective is one of the peculiar characteristics of these pieces - they are often not what they appear to be at first glance.

When I think of these violoncello and piano preludes, I compare them to the lake Inyshka in the Urals Mountains, where my family would vacation during the summers of my childhood. The lake looked peaceful, but I knew it was dangerous as it had a double bottom. According to the legend, Emelian Pugachev buried his treasures in this lake, but everything was lost, as the treasures sank into the deep hidden level below the visible ground.

A musical gesture that may seem simple - becomes multi-layered, not quite real or even grotesque because of its surrounding. I employ different musical styles, but this poly-stylism is not a goal in itself but rather an attempt to explore our own kaleidoscopic time full of contradictions, with its madness, loneliness, brutality and aching nostalgia for lost innocence.

At the end of the last prelude, themes from each of the twenty-four preludes are presented as a continuous stream of consciousness, as if combined in a quick glance, and tonality is once again lost in this mad run, surrounded by the apocalyptic chords of the piano.

The Twenty-Four Preludes for Violoncello and Piano, in their full concert version, received their world premiere at the Caramoor Music Festival in the summer of 2008, almost nine years from their inception. Throughout these nine years, these preludes have gone through various transformations and individual preludes from this cycle have been performed in concert halls around the world. Preludes were also choreographed, in a slightly different order and with some additional music, by John Neumeier - to whom they are dedicated, - and performed by the Hamburg State Ballet for the ballet production ‘Preludes CV’ in Hamburg and Baden-Baden.”