"I want listeners to feel free, to let their own imagination run wild and to draw from their own dreams and memories." Lera Auerbach was born in the Urals in 1973 and has lived in the United States since 1991. She wrote her first opera at the age of 12, and has since composed over 100 works. She does not limit herself to music, but is also creative as a poet and visual artist. Often, extra-musical inspirations serve as triggers for a composition.
The Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, together with the Prague Philharmonic Choir, will perform her Symphony No. 6, "Vessels of Light," commissioned by Yad Vashem, the International Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem and the American Society for Yad Vashem (NOV 11). Also featured is her cello concerto "Diary of a Madman" with Gautier Capuçon, who also premiered it with the Munich Philharmonic in 2022 (MAY 11). The Collenbusch Quartet performs their String Quartet No. 3 "Cetera Desunt" (APR 7), and the Dresden Philharmonic Children's Choir joins the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet to perform their "Galgenlieder" after Christian Morgenstern (JUN 16).
Auerbach's published catalog includes more than 100 works for orchestra, opera, and ballet, as well as relevant works for choral and chamber ensembles. Auerbach's works are performed by leading artists such as violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Vadim Gluzman, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Repin, Daniel Hope, Julian Rachlin, violists Kim Kashkashian and David Aaron Carpenter; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Gerhardt and David Finckel; and singers Zoryana Kushpler, Natalia Ushakova, Martin Winkler, Nikita Storojev, Stella Grigorian and many others.
Auerbach's orchestral works have been performed by virtually all of the world's leading international conductors, including Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Vladimir Spivakov, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Charles Dutoit, Andris Nelsons, Andras Keller, and Osmo Vänskä on stages around the world.
Auerbach has accepted many invitations as artist in residence in numerous cities and music festivals, including the Rheingau Music Festival Germany and the Trans-Siberian Arts Festival. She has received similar invitations for guest artistic residencies from the Staatskapelle Dresden, Verbier Festival (Switzerland), Trondheim Festival (Norway), Musikfest Bremen (Germany), Lockenhaus Festival (Austria) and the Pacific Music Festival (Japan).
Comparably extensive to her work as a composer is Auerbach's activity in the fields of literature as well as the visual arts, especially painting and sculpture. These art forms are realized by Auerbach in her creative process in a timely manner, so that her ideas and concepts have materialized simultaneously in word, music, and image.
As a writer, Lera Auerbach has enjoyed a long-standing international reputation. As early as 1996, she was named Writer of the Year by the International Pushkin Society in New York City. Her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies as well as in textbooks. Auerbach is the author of several libretti and writes regularly for the blog "Best American Poetry," where she has her own column ("The Angry Clef").
Her paintings are often exhibited to coincide with performances of her musical works and have been reproduced in magazines, CD supplements, and in books.
In addition, she has given regular master classes on performance practice and composition at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute, the Open Society Institute in New York, Tokyo University, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Music Center in Budapest, Hungary, the Poetry Festival of West Cork, Ireland, and major festivals in Verbier, Aspen, Marlboro, Sapporo, and Trondheim, among others.
Auerbach has written two operas to date:Her opera Gogol, for which she wrote both the libretto and the music, was commissioned by the Theater an der Wien and was performed at a premiere in 2011 that was widely acclaimed by the press and the public. This was the first time that a major opera written by a woman was performed in Vienna.Her a cappella opera "The Blind Man," which also premiered in 2011, has been performed in productions in Germany, Norway, Russia, the United States and Austria.
Auerbach's collaboration with renowned American choreographer John Neumeier is of special significance. Together, the Auerbach/Neumeier duo created three highly successful ballets: "Tatiana," "The Little Mermaid," and "Preludes CV."The most recent of these, "Tatiana" (a ballet fantasy based on Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin"), was performed in 2014 in a co-production between the Hamburg State Theater and the Stanislavsky Theater in Moscow.
"The Little Mermaid" won the ECHO Klassik Award in the best music DVD category in 2012.
Lera Auerbach has received several prestigious awards and honors, including the Hindemith Prize, the Paul and Daisy Soros Scholarship, the German Radio Prize, and the ECHO Klassik, to name a few.
From 2007 to 2012, Auerbach was one of the "Young Global Leaders" of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Today, she represents the WEF as a cultural ambassador and gives lectures around the world on the topic of borderless creativity.The Lera Auerbach Foundation was established in 2015 with the aim of forming a modern scientific, informative and creative center with broad impact on the life and work of Auerbach.