For the October 1–4 weekend, the strongest single destination is Ilya Kaler’s Saturday, October 3 program at Carnegie Hall: the Bridgetower Project arrives in Weill Recital Hall at 7:30 PM with pianist Rasa Vitkauskaite and a roster built around a historical correction with present-tense stakes. The concert takes Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47—a work long attached to Rodolphe Kreutzer’s name—and returns attention to George Bridgetower, the Afro-European violin virtuoso who premiered it with Beethoven in 1803. That premise gives the evening a distinctive recital shape: music, literary testimony, and a new work all gather around the question of whose name stays attached to a canonical piece.[1][2][3]

Kaler and Vitkauskaite anchor the project, presenting the Beethoven sonata as the “Bridgetower.” Their program also includes Florence Price’s Adoration in an arrangement for violin and piano and selected material from Rita Dove’s Sonata Mulattica, the poetry collection that helped bring Bridgetower’s life into wider view. The project’s own materials frame Bridgetower as the sonata’s original dedicatee and inspiration; that history becomes the concert’s organizing device, allowing the familiar Beethoven score to sit beside Price’s lyricism and Dove’s language. It is an unusually focused way to hear repertory that is often separated into different institutional lanes.[2][4]

The evening’s key forward-looking event is the world premiere of Paquito D’Rivera’s Bridgetower Reimagined: Contradanza Mulattica. D’Rivera’s official listing places the premiere within a program also featuring works by Price, Dove, Beethoven, and William Grant Still. Boosey & Hawkes describes the new chamber work as drawing from the opening of Beethoven’s sonata and Bridgetower’s surviving ballad “Henry,” combining jazz improvisation, waltz, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and contradanzas. Those ingredients make the premiere central to the trip: it treats Bridgetower’s legacy as material for a living ensemble work, with clarinet, violin, piano, cello, and bass in the published personnel.[3][4]

A chamber cast built for the project

D’Rivera joins Kaler and Vitkauskaite alongside clarinetist Jonathan Cohler, cellist Dave Eggar, and bassist Gregg August. The project also credits Kaler as the only violinist to have won first prize at the Paganini, Tchaikovsky, and Sibelius competitions, while identifying Vitkauskaite as a Steinway Artist and principal pianist of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. The useful detail is the range of instrumental color available once D’Rivera’s commission enters the program. Carnegie Hall’s intimate Weill Recital Hall setting should keep that chamber interaction close enough to register as conversation.[2][3]

Practical details: Ilya Kaler, Rasa Vitkauskaite, and guests perform the Bridgetower Project at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall on Saturday, October 3, at 7:30 PM. Check Carnegie Hall’s official event page before heading out for current ticket, door, and program information, since these details can change.[1][2][3]

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This guide centers one upcoming concert during Thursday, October 1 through Sunday, October 4, 2026.[1][2]

Sources

  1. Ilya Kaler, Violin; Rasa Vitkauskaite, Piano; With Special Guests Paquito D’Rivera — Carnegie Hall
  2. Bridgetower Project | Ilya Kaler & Rasa Vitkauskaite — Bridgetower Project
  3. Carnegie Hall and the Bridgetower Project with Paquito D’Rivera — Paquito D’Rivera
  4. 2026/27 Season Highlights in North and South America — Boosey & Hawkes