Cellist Alisa Weilerstein is one of the world’s most promising, up-and-coming musicians under 30. To miss her performance next week in San Francisco would be to miss out on seeing someone often called the heir apparent to Yo-Yo Ma.
Interestingly, similar things can be said of the musician she’ll be playing with at Herbst Theatre, Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan. He, too, is highly acclaimed, with similarly sterling reviews.
Indeed, Weilerstein and Barnatan — who will join forces in the San Francisco performance hall at 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11 — have much in common.
Both musicians are Jewish and have achieved critical acclaim at a young age (Weilerstein is 26, Barnatan is 29). They began playing music back when their instruments of choice dwarfed their 4-year-old selves. They were quickly pegged as prodigies, making their debuts with major symphonies at age 11 (Barnatan) and 13 (Weilerstein).
And now they periodically perform as a duo.
“We clicked immediately, musically and personally, which is rare,” Weilerstein said by phone from her home in New York City. “We now play together a lot. We’re also very good friends. It’s a really nice partnership.”
The admiration is mutual. In an e-mail from Amsterdam, Barnatan wrote: “From the first moment we sat down to read music together I felt an immediate connection. It is such a joy to play with someone who can play with so much passion and visceral intensity … So often we are forced to choose between the ‘thinking artist’ and the ‘feeling artist,’ and with Alisa one does to need to make that choice.”
Weilerstein has developed a reputation for boisterous, passionate performances — her whole body seems to dance with her bow. A Boston Globe reporter wrote that “the energy in her playing is unflagging.” The New York Times gushed that “watching Ms. Weilerstein can feel a bit like spying on someone’s most intimate moments, so unguarded and impassioned are her expressions.”
And when she played at Davies Symphony Hall in June with the San Francisco Symphony, the San Jose Mercury News’ music reviewer wrote that her solo “stole the show” from the symphony.
Barnatan also performed in San Francisco this summer, in July, joining the San Francisco Symphony in Saint-Saëns’ Second Piano Concerto. His flourishing career has seen him play the lavish concert halls of Amsterdam, London, Vienna, Paris and Shanghai.
“I feel so privileged to be doing something I love, and as a bonus get to travel and experience so many different places,” Barnatan said. “I always try and see more than just the hotel and the concert hall — inspiration comes from many sources.”
Born in Tel Aviv in 1979, Barnatan was playing the piano like a virtuoso as a teen, winning many national prizes in Israel before the age of 20. He has gone on to receive many more honors and awards, including an honorary Concert Artist diploma from École Normale Supérieure in Paris. The New Yorker called him “naturally poetic” and said he “he obtained a hypnotic tone from the piano.”
“I never lived a ‘prodigy’ life,” Barnatan said. “I always felt, and still do, that I have an enormous amount to learn and many improvements to make.”
In addition to concert dates with Barnatan — including one next week at Carnegie Hall in New York City — Weilerstein still takes time to play music with her parents. They perform as the Weilerstein Trio a handful of times each year and have made two albums together.
“My parents let me be very open as a child,” Weilerstein said. “They wanted me to develop verbal capacity for expressing ideas when little. So I never felt inferior to them. That made the transition to adulthood much easier, and today I can’t remember [playing music with them] being all that different from when I was a child.”
Weilerstein graduated in 2004 from Columbia University with a degree in Russian history. She chose the subject because she felt it relevant to both her heritage and her musical performance.
“My roots are eastern European, Russian — an Ashkenazi melting pot,” she said. “I love music from the Soviet times, so I really wanted to explore the roots of it. And Russian literature is my favorite genre.”
Throughout her college education, she continued to play 50 concerts a year.
How’d she do it?
“By not sleeping,” she joked. “I don’t know; I wrote papers on planes, trains and automobiles. I missed half of my classes, but my professors were mostly accommodating, fantastic and flexible.”
Perhaps they realized then what many people see now: Weilerstein could be the next Yo-Yo Ma.
Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan will play Beethoven’s “Sonata in D Major for Pianoforte and Cello, Op. 102, No. 2”; Zoltán Kodály’s “Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8”; Chopin’s “Barcarolle in F-Sharp Major, Op. 60” and “Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 65”; and Osvaldo Golijov’s “Omaramor”; 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11 at Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., S.F. Tickets $32-$42. Information: (415) 392-2545 or www.performances.org.