56 | SEPTEMBER 21 • 2023
M
onths before Inon
Barnatan performs
on the concert
piano he helped choose in
2021 for the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra, the pianist will
devote a week to Ann Arbor.
He will appear before audienc-
es and work with students in
programming sponsored by the
University Musical Society.
In a Sept. 28 appearance in
Hill Auditorium, Barnatan will
be part of a two-person show
with Grammy-winning sopra-
no Renée Fleming. The two
will present classical, romantic
and contemporary selections in
the concert titled “The Voice of
Nature.”
On Oct. 5, Barnatan
will be with the Jerusalem
String Quartet in Rackham
Auditorium. The quartet will
play works by Franz Joseph
Haydn and Paul Ben-Haim
and be joined by Barnatan to
present an Antonin Dvorák
Quintet for Piano and Strings in
A Major, Op. 81.
In between the two appear-
ances are residency activities
that include performance.
“The program with Renée
is very wide-ranging, and
some of it is derived from an
album Renée recorded,” said
Barnatan, 44, who was born in
Israel, schooled in England and
moved to the United States in
2006.
“The film element in the
program is a new experience,
but we have played a lot of
those pieces before. We just did
a recital with a lot of that music
in the summer, and we will be
doing it a few more times this
season.”
Barnatan, whose Michigan
performances from the past
are counted among his many
worldwide presentations, is
returning from his summer as
music director of the month-
long La Jolla Music Society
SummerFest in California.
“The festival is the chance to
really create the kind of musi-
cal experiences I would want
to have if I were an audience
member,” Barnatan said. “It’s a
beautiful sound box in which
I can invite whomever I want
and have them play to create
something that’s more than a
one-night experience.“
The reach of Barnatan’s
many engagements goes
from places as distant as
the British Broadcasting
Corporation in England
to the Tokyo Metropolitan
Symphony Orchestra to the
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic
Orchestra and to major orches-
tras across the United States.
Playing by ear at a home
piano at the age of 3 was the
start of Barnatan’s instrumental
interests, and lessons began
the next year. After being sent
to attend the Royal Academy
of Music in London, he had a
dramatic experience with the
Jerusalem String Quartet that
helped develop their friend-
ship.
It had to do with a heavy
rain in temperatures that cov-
ered the urban streets with ice.
“The entire city was com-
pletely paralyzed,” Barnatan
said. ”People couldn’t get out of
Israeli Pianist
Comes to Ann Arbor
ARTS&LIFE
MUSIC
Inon Barnatan will devote a week to performances
and students.
continued on page 57
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Inon
Barnatan
PHOTOS BY MARCO BORGGREVE