Yolanda Kondonassis

Yolanda Kondonassis is an American harpist known for her performances and recordings of both standard and contemporary concerto repertoire. She appears widely with US orchestras as a soloist and has been a strong advocate for expanding the harp's place in the concert hall. Listeners will hear her take on Ginastera's percussive, rhythmically charged Harp Concerto in this appearance.

Kondonassis is associated with performances that push the harp beyond its reputation as a delicate background instrument, favoring clarity of attack and rhythmic drive alongside the instrument's more familiar shimmering tone. In Ginastera's Harp Concerto, expect a piece built on sharp contrasts: driving, syncopated rhythms drawn from Argentine dance forms, a cadenza (an unaccompanied solo passage) that lets the harpist show off both speed and percussive tapping on the instrument's frame, and moments of eerie, glassy stillness. The concerto asks for total commitment to its wide dynamic range, from near-silence to hard-edged bursts, and a soloist who can make the harp sound rhythmically assertive rather than merely atmospheric. Paired on this program with Beethoven's pastoral Sixth Symphony, the concert moves from that modern edge into music of open-air calm and birdsong.