a conductor who faces the audience
“Conductor Ian Niederhoffer has accomplished two impressive feats by the age of 25. First, he has established Parlando, a chamber orchestra, and secondly, he has found an audience… he is charismatic, enthusiastic and articulate, which together with his undeniable skills as a musician, makes for a winning combination.”
“Niederhoffer makes good on [Parlando’s] motto, ‘Every concert tells a story.’ But smart, unusual programming on this level fosters a gripping narrative of its own, too.”
“The Grosse Fuge came across compellingly. It takes a certain amount of energy and articulation to keep 24 instrumentalists from simply sounding overly heavy and Niederhoffer achieved this, with the lyrical moments played with shape and character.”
Photo: Rebecca Fay
Praised for his elegance and dynamism on the podium, Ian Niederhoffer — the winner of three prizes at the 2021 Khachaturian International Conducting Competition — stands out as a “charismatic, enthusiastic and articulate” leader, which, “together with his undeniable skills as a musician, makes for a winning combination” (New York Classical Review).
Named a Rising Star in BBC Music Magazine’s January 2024 issue, he is a confident and expressive communicator of music, context, and ideas; writing about his performance with Parlando of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, arranged for string orchestra, The Strad praised “the lyrical moments, [which were] played with shape and character.”
“Ian Niederhoffer makes good on [Parlando’s] motto: ‘Every concert tells a story’,” wrote The New York Times about Parlando’s program that featured Kaija Saariaho’s stunning violin concerto Graal Théâtre. “But smart, unusual programming on this level fosters a gripping narrative of its own, too.”
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Censored Anthems
“The story of Soviet music is often told as one of individual repression, but I became entranced by the idea of Soviet music as cultural resilience.”
Parlando’s debut album, Censored Anthems, explores music’s power as a tool of cultural resilience in the face of Soviet censorship.
The album opens with a selection from Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, whose party-authored scathing review was the first high-profile instance of Soviet musical censorship.
Following is the Concertino for Violin and String Orchestra by Mieczysław Weinberg, whose career was shaped by persecution during Stalin’s anti-cosmopolitan campaign. The American violinist Aubree Oliverson, acclaimed as a “masterful” soloist (San Diego Story), and celebrated for her evocative lyricism and joyful, genuine approach, is the featured soloist.
Armenian Composer Edvard Mirzoyan’s Symphony for String Orchestra closes the album, a testament to the resilience of the Armenian people in spite of Soviet cultural erasure.
Inspired by Parlando’s mission of integrating performance with historical and cultural storytelling, Censored Anthems tells the story of Soviet censorship through speaking directly to audiences. The final three tracks on this album are narrated by conductor Ian Niederhoffer, a spoken program note underscored with the exact music it describes. These three narrated tracks add the weight of history to this wonderful music and paint a more vivid, complete picture of the story of Soviet censorship and cultural resilience.
