Daniel Hope recently succeeded pianist Wu Han as Artistic Advisor for Chamber Music at The Barns at Wolf Trap, Virginia. Presented in partnership with New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the season-long series brings world-class soloists and ensembles to the rustic venue, to which Hope returns this season for “The Gilded Age,” a two-part recital series devoted to the turn of the 20th century. In Part 1, he and pianist Maxim Lando capture the spirit of pre-World War I Europe through sonatas by Franck and Ravel, together with a pair of Elgar miniatures and Enescu’s Impromptu Concertant (Nov 1). Next, in Part 2, he pairs Kreisler’s nostalgic Slavonic Fantasie with two works embodying the emerging American voice: Dvořák’s Sonatina in G and Copland’s Nocturne. The program concludes with the East Coast premiere of a more recent American composition: Jake Heggie’s Fantasy Suite 1803, an eclectic piece commissioned for Hope by Germany’s Beethoven-Haus Bonn, of which he is President, that draws on sources ranging from Beethoven to tango (Jan 24). This time, Hope’s pianist is Simon Crawford-Phillips, his partner on the 2020 Deutsche Grammophon recording Belle époque. Their Wolf Trap appearance forms the centerpiece of a three-date North American recital tour, bookended by performances of “Treasures of the Belle Époque” in Montreal, at the Salle Bourgie (Jan 23), and Napa, CA (Jan 27), where Hope and Crawford- Phillips perform Franck, Kreisler, Ravel, and Enescu alongside Fauré’s Andante for violin and piano, an arrangement of Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole, and Schoenberg’s D-minor Piece for Violin and Piano.

Since 2018, Hope has served as Music Director and Concertmaster of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO), one of the world’s few conductorless ensembles. Having recently extended his tenure there for an additional three seasons, he is now set to become the longest serving Music Director in NCCO’s 34-year history. This season, he leads the NCCO from the violin on three Bay Area tours and at a weekend of concerts in San Francisco, each program showcasing a characteristically creative collaboration. On a fall program that includes preludes by Pulitzer Prize laureates Caroline Shaw and Rhiannon Giddens, he and the orchestra are joined by the Marcus Roberts Trio – the jazz outfit of Grammy-nominated pianist Marcus Roberts, drummer Jason Marsalis, and bassist Rodney Jordan – for song suites by Gershwin and Ellington, in Berkeley (Nov 5), Mountain View (Nov 6), San Francisco (Nov 7), and San Rafael (Nov 8).

Early next year, Hope and the NCCO join trailblazing pianist Lara Downes for the world premiere of Beauty Has No Borders by Grammy–nominated composer Clarice Assad, who describes her new work as an “homage to jazz and the visionary composers and performers who shaped it into one of America’s most transformative and enduring art forms.” Flanked by Mozart’s 29th Symphony and Stravinsky’s neoclassical ballet Apollon musagète, this takes them to Berkeley (Jan 28), Rohnert Park (Jan 29), and San Francisco (Jan 30).