The Weilerstein siblings share a very harmonious bond on and off the stage

Most classical-music followers are probably aware of cellist Alisa Weilerstein, whose soaring career that has taken her to the world’s most prestigious stages and earned her a 2011 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” What they might not know, though, is that she has an equally talented younger brother, Joshua, a conductor with guest appearances including the New York Philharmonic and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

Because of their complex schedules, the siblings typically work together only once or twice a year, and one of those opportunities will come Aug. 17 at the Ravinia Festival. They will join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a program that features Alisa as soloist in Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto (1919), with Joshua on the podium.

For Alisa, it represents a return to an orchestra and venue she knows well. But for Joshua, the concert will mark his CSO and Ravinia debuts. “The Chicago Symphony is such a legendary ensemble,” he said from his home in London. “To work with them will be such a pleasure. I can’t wait.”

Joshua and Alisa are a part of a long history of notable sibling musicians in the classical realm like Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn and Lili and Nadia Boulanger. In our time, examples include cellist Gautier Capuçon and his violinist brother Renaud, and violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his cellist sister Tanja.

It would seem a brother-sister concert like this one at Ravinia, especially one including a soloist as well-known as Alisa, would be a presenter’s dream. But that’s not totally the case. “We don’t get asked to do it as much as you would think,” Joshua said. “So it’s once or twice a year, but that’s not by design. We don’t try to limit it. It just works out that way.”

In any case, Alisa and Joshua both look forward to the collaborations. “It’s really fun,” Alisa said. “We’ve always had a really close relationship and a very harmonious one, and our musical relationship is like that, too. It’s very easy and very sympathetic, and we have a great time.”

“We’ve always had a really close relationship and a very harmonious one, and our musical relationship is like that, too.” — Alisa Weilerstein

That the two became professional musicians is not surprising, considering that their parents are well-respected musicians. Donald Weilerstein, their father, founded the famed Cleveland Quartet and served as its first violinist from 1969 through 1989. Their mother, Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, is what Alisa called a “fantastic pianist.” The three perform together as the Weilerstein Trio. 

“I was basically growing up with music practically 24 years a day,” Joshua said. Besides their parents’ practicing, there were rehearsals with visiting musicians and informal chamber-music readings with students and colleagues. “It was kind of a revolving door of musicians at the house all the time,” Alisa said.

Alisa, 41, began playing the cello when she was 4, and she soon realized it would be her life’s pursuit. “In a way that made things a bit clearer and easier in a sense,” she said.

Though Joshua, 35, pursued violin studies, he was much less serious about music while growing up. “Once I realized I wasn’t going to be an athlete, which became very clear early on,” he said. “I was very interested in broadcasting or writing about sports.”   

But when he was 14, his parents moved to Boston to teach at the New England Conservatory, and he joined a youth orchestra led by Benjamin Zander. A year later, the group toured in Guatemala and Panama, where many of the children attending its concerts had never heard classical music or seen an orchestra.

“I think partly because I grew up so surrounded by music, I had almost never fully clocked that a lot of people don’t have exposure to classical music,” he said. “Suddenly, at the age of 15, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I wanted to be a part of sharing of that with as many people as possible.”

Joshua studied violin at the New England Conservatory as an undergraduate, and fell in love with conducting at the end of his junior year. Ludovic Morlot, then assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony, provided some early guidance. Just a year later, Joshua won the Malko Competition for Young Conductors, which provided him with some early engagements. “At 21, you don’t often get to conduct a lot of professional orchestras, and I was able to do that,” he said. He went on to master studies with conductor Hugh Wolff. 

For the centerpiece of the Aug. 17 program, Joshua and Alisa settled on Elgar’s Cello Concerto, one of the most oft-played works in the form. “I’ve known how she plays it since I was 5,” he said. “I could follow her wherever she goes. And it worked really well with the other two pieces on the program,” including Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47 (1937).

Joshua has made a point of championing works that have been victimized by racial or gender prejudice or political suppression. Falling into that category is the concert opener, Poem for Orchestra, by William Grant Still (1895-1978). “This is a piece that’s almost never played,” Joshua said. “It’s a piece that came just out of World War II. It’s an emotionally ambiguous piece, which is exactly how the Elgar is and exactly how the Shostakovich is. All three pieces have elements of triumph, tragedy and terror as part of them.”