Lera Auerbach’s Frozen Dreams Debuts in Pittsburgh
Lera Auerbach’s new orchestral work Frozen Dreams receives its world premiere with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck in June.
Lera Auerbach’s new orchestral work Frozen Dreams is unveiled on June 13-15 with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck. Honeck also leads the Austrian premiere of the work one week later with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on June 21-22. On December 3, Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra bring the 12-minute orchestral work to Carnegie Hall in New York.
No stranger to Auerbach's music, Honeck led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and cello soloist Gautier Capuçon in the US premiere of her Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra ‘Diary of a Madman’ in 2022, along with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra debut of Icarus in 2023.
Auerbach describes Frozen Dreams as “a reflection on sound, memory, and the uncertainty of time.” The piece explores how our perception of music is constantly shifting, much like dreams or memories—both lasting and fleeting at once. This new orchestral work is an expansion of music from her String Quartet No. 10, also titled “Frozen Dreams.”
> Watch the Jasper String Quartet perform "Frozen Dreams"
Auerbach explains:
“Music exists in a paradox: it is both frozen and ephemeral, tangible and elusive. The act of composition is an attempt to capture something that is already dissolving. My orchestral work Frozen Dreams emerges from this paradox, reimagining the sound world of my earlier 'Frozen Dreams' String Quartet and expanding it into an orchestral landscape that explores the fragility of perception and the shifting nature of reality itself. And what is a dream, if not a memory that will be? Dreams are the subconscious writing the past into the future, fragmenting time so that what has been and what has yet to come coexist in the present moment. Though the title Frozen Dreams suggests stasis, this work is, at its core, about movement—about the delicate tension between what is remembered and what is forgotten, between what is possible and what is inevitable. It is a meditation on the way time is layered in our minds: past, present, and future coexisting in an endless spiral."
Auerbach introduces musical ideas that drift in and out like distant echoes—sometimes familiar, sometimes unfamiliar—blurring the lines between what has happened and what is yet to come. “A theme emerges, vanishes, then returns changed—as if recalled from a dream, yet belonging to a moment still waiting to unfold,” says the composer.
In addition to Frozen Dreams, Auerbach's On Grief and Wonder (Adam’s Lament), also scored for orchestra, receives its world premiere with the Bremen Philharmonic and Valentin Uryupin (May 11-12).
Performance Infomation
Friday, June 13 at 7:30pm ET
Satturday, June 14 at 7:30pm ET
Sunday, June 15 at 2:30pm ET
Heinz Hall | Pittsburgh, PA
More info
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Manfred Honeck, conductor
Beatrice Rana, piano
LERA AUERBACH Frozen Dreams (World Premiere)
FELIX MENDELSSOHN Piano Concerto No. 1
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 10
Photo: Raniero Tazzi