The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has handily published this wonderfully detailed data about the concerts played in the 2014–2015 season by the top 21 US orchestras. The reason, they say, is that ‘numbers can occasionally provide context for ongoing conversations in classical music or highlight trends’. As they point out, there are obvious trends about the lack of female composers, which must be addressed. But for our string-nerd purposes, I’ve looked at the soloist column of the sheet, to see how string players are faring this season.
In the violin camp, we see that there’s a fairly healthy spread of names, pleasingly split exactly 50/50 male to female. Hilary Hahn tops the list with seven appearances, although she has had to pull out of concerts recently, which leaves Augustin Hadelich and Gil Shaham the busiest players, with six appearances each. The usual suspects are mainly there, although one might expect to see more activity from some of the bigger European names, who only appear once. There’s a good range of ages up to the 40ish mark, but as ever, performers seem to drop off a ledge at that age, with only Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman representing the grey of hair. The cello situation seems less healthy, with a smaller pool of players, and three players dominating at the top with five concerts each – Yo-Yo Ma, Alisa Weilerstein and Gautier Capuçon. And sadly I couldn't find a single viola or double bass solo appearance with orchestra.
Anyway, here is a list of names, with the number of concerts they have played or will play with the 21 orchestras researched. If you find anything I've missed, please let me know:
Violinists
Hilary Hahn 7
Augustin Hadelich 6
Gil Shaham 6
Christian Tetzlaff 5
Leila Josefowicz 5
Lisa Batiashvili 5
Alina Ibragimova 3
Anne-Sophie Mutter 3
Baiba Skride 3
Itzhak Perlman 3
Jame Ehnes 3
Jennifer Koh 3
Joshua Bell 3
Leonidas Kavakos 3
Midori 3
Sarah Chang 3
Alexander Barantschik 2
Frank Peter Zimmerman 2
Julian Rachlin 2
Karen Gomyo 2
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg 2
Nicola Benedetti 2
Pinchas Zukerman 2
Valeriy Sokolov 2
Violinists who are playing one concert each:
Alexander Kerr
Alina Pogostkina
Arabella Steinbacher
Benjamin Beilman
Carolin Widmann
Daniel Hope
Elena Urioste
Erin Schreiber
Eva Kozma
Frank Almond
Frank Huang
Fumiaki Miura
Ilana Setapen
Isabelle Faust
Janine Jansen
Julia Fischer
Martin Chalifour
Nikolaj Znaider
Noah Bendix-Balgley
Pekka Kuusisto
Philippe Quint
Rainer Honeck
Ray Chen
Silvian Iticovici
Simone Lamsma
Vadim Gluzman
Vadim Repin
Veronika Eberle
Vilde Frang
William Preucil
Cellists
Alisa Weilerstein 5
Gautier Capuçon 5
Yo-Yo Ma 5
Claudio Bohórquez 2
Lynn Harrell 2
Cellists who are appearing once in the season:
Alban Gerhardt
Amanda Forsythe
Anthony Ross
Brinton Averil Smith
James Czyzewski
Johannes Moser
Joshua Roman
Narek Hakhnazaryan
Sol Gabetta