Lang Lang & Sophie Shao - Howard Shore: Two Concerti (2017)

This album consists of specially commissioned concertos in celebration of Chopin’s music, by one of today’s most renowned film composers, Howard Shore.

The first concerto, titled 'Ruin & Memory' was written for Lang Lang in 2010 for Chopin’s 200th anniversary year and was commissioned by Beijing Music Festival Arts Foundation and artistically supported by Long Yu, Chairman of artistic committee of Beijing Music Festival. The concerto has romantic touches, including a cadenza in the third movement, but its musical forces owe much to the classical era.

Mythic Gardens follows and this Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (2012) is written for Sophie Shao and sits as a companion piece to ‘Ruin & Memory’. Sophie Shao is winner of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and top prizes at the Rostropovich and Tchaikovsky competitions in recent years.
Shore was inspired when writing this piece by the architecture of three classic Italian Gardens: Cimbrone, Medici and Visconti Borromeo Litta. It is commissioned by the American Symphony Orchestra and funded by a generous gift from Linda and Stuart Nelson.

Howard Shore's is one of today’s most prolific and accomplished composers - his compositions are performed in concert halls around the world by the most prestigious orchestras and his numerous film scores are heard in cinemas across the globe.
Most renowned for his score for the "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "The Hobbit" series, these scores have garnered him three Academy Awards, four Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, as well as numerous critic’s and festival Awards.
He has scored fifteen films by David Cronenberg (including “Maps to the Stars”, “The Fly”, “Dead Ringers”, and “Crash”) and six films by Martin Scorsese. Shore is an Officier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la France and the recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award in Canada.

His off-screen accomplishments include: an opera of “The Fly” premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and at Los Angeles Opera and has recently completed a successful production in Germany at Theatre Trier; A song cycle A Palace Upon the Ruins featuring mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano (2014), and Fanfare for the Wanamaker Organ and Brass in Philadelphia (2008).