One Night with Don Juan, the fifth concert in the 22/23 Masterworks Series, welcomes internationally celebrated pianist Alessio Bax to perform Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2, which will close the concert. The program begins with Richard Strauss’ virtuosic tone-poem Don Juan. The rolling national premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain Suite will serve as the evening’s centerpiece.

Pianist Alessio Bax is now a familiar face on five continents, not only as a recitalist and chamber musician, but also as a concerto soloist who has appeared with more than 150 orchestras, including the London, Royal, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestras, the New York, Boston, Dallas, Cincinnati, Seattle, Sydney, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras, and the NHK Symphony in Japan, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Marin Alsop, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis, Fabio Luisi, Sir Simon Rattle, Yuri Temirkanov, and Jaap van Zweden.

Bax appeared with the South Carolina Philharmonic in 2014 when he performed Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor. Bax and Music Director Morihiko Nakahara made an informal pact that the pianist would return to Columbia to perform Brahms’ second piano concerto, and they have finally made good on that agreement as Bax prepares to take the Koger Center Stage once again in 2023.