Cellist Wendy Warner soared to international acclaim, winning the international Rostropovich Cello Competition top prize at age eighteen. Her career took off with concerts conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich and debuts in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Köln, Düsseldorf, Berlin and New York at Carnegie Hall. Strings magazine hailed her “youthful, surging playing, natural stage presence and almost frightening technique.”
From a musical Chicago family, Warner studied with Rostropovich at the Curtis Institute of Music from which she graduated. Collaborators have included conductors Vladimir Spivakov, Christoph Eschenbach, Andre Previn, Jesús López Cobos and Michael Tilson Thomas. She has appeared with leading U.S. orchestras and internationally—from Paris and London to Serbia and Russia.
Recent season highlights include appearances with the Wichita, Columbus (Georgia), Wyoming and Alabama Symphonies and return engagements with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional (Peru) and the Xiamen Philharmonic (China). This season she will be featured with the Hartford and Santa Fe Symphony Orchestras and, joining violinist Vadim Gluzman in the Brahms Double Concerto, the Austin Symphony Orchestra. In 2020 she will return to the prestigious Piatigorsky International Cello Festival.
Warner played the 2009 world premiere of a newly discovered Beethoven piano trio. With pianist Irina Nuzova she performed the complete Beethoven Cello Sonatas on tour and by invitation at the U.S. Supreme Court. Other collaborators have included Anne Sophie Mutter, Gidon Kremer, the Fine Arts Quartet and Chicago Chamber Musicians. She has given recitals in Milan and Tokyo and is a frequent guest on WFMT in Chicago.
Wendy Warner's Cedille CDs include Haydn & Myslivecek; Russian Music for Cello & Piano; Popper & Piatigorsky; The Beethoven Project Trio; Double Play with Rachel Barton Pine; and Eclipse. On other labels she has recorded Hindemith's chamber works; Barber's Cello Concerto; and compositions by Dalit Warshaw. A CD of Edgar Valcárcel’s Cello Concerto with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional (Peru) will be released soon. An Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, Warner holds the Leah D. Hamer Distinguished Faculty Chair at the Schwob School of Music, Columbus State University. She plays a 1772 Joseph Gagliano cello.
June 2019
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