Summer Travels - Peter Anderegg, Acting Principal Cellist

Despite having ten weeks “off” over the summer, July and August are some of the busiest months of the year for me. I am currently in Boulder, Colorado playing at the Colorado Music Festival with Michael Christie and a few other TPS musicians. We recently performed a Brahms mini-festival featuring all of his symphonies and concertos (let’s hope Maestro Christie brings that festival to Phoenix in the future!) and next week will be performing Wagner selections with Jane Eaglen in the same program that opened the 2009/10 Phoenix Symphony season.

I also have been busy with chamber music, performing quartets in Boulder and at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. The Stanley is a beautiful location for classical music – where else can you play Beethoven quartets with a view of a 14,000-foot mountain from one side of the hall and a herd of elk from the other?

In August I will be trading one set of mountains for another as I go to Switzerland to play in the Lucerne Festival Academy, which focuses on contemporary music. My twin sister, Francesca, has played violin in this festival for a few years, and I’m very much looking forward to performing with her there, as 2010 is the first year that the Lucerne Festival doesn’t overlap with the Phoenix Symphony opening night!

Meanwhile, as the Acting Principal Cellist in Phoenix starting in September, I’ve been busy preparing music and putting in bowings for the upcoming Symphony season. I’m especially looking forward to the one- and two-week festivals Maestro Christie has planned in Phoenix this year – the piano concerto festival, which we present in May, was a huge success in Colorado last summer, and the Brandenburg Concerto festival in January will give us the opportunity to survey some of my favorite Bach works. I’m also excited about the Brahms violin concerto with Augustin Hadelich, who is a fast-rising classical star.

After a busy summer, it will be a busy and exciting season in Phoenix, and I can’t wait to see all of our colleagues and audience members again in September.

Peter Anderegg
Acting Principal Cellist