ARTISTS & STAFF AT THE LYRIC

Artistic Director | Artist in Residence |
2010-2011 Composers | 2010-2011 Performers | Past Featured Artists |

DR. JOAN THOMSON KRETSCHMER
Founder and Artistic Director

Artistic Director and founder of the Lyric Chamber Music Society of New York, graduated from Barnard College and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in musicology from Columbia University. She has been a music critic for The New York Post and has written articles about music for the The New York Times, Opera News, Stagebill, Keynote, and other publications. Her program notes have appeared at concerts at Mostly Mozart, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and elsewhere.

In addition to writing scripts for radio and for national broadcasts of The Richard Tucker Gala, Dr. Kretschmer hosted Upbeat, her own classical music radio show. At The New School for Social Research, she created and hosted Musicians on Music, a series of interviews with artists Daniel Barenboim, Victor Borge, the Guarneri String Quartet, Marilyn Horne, Zubin Mehta, Birgit Nilsson, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Robert Merrill, Peter Schickele, André Watts, and others.

She has taught at The Juilliard School and lectured at the State University of New York at Purchase and for the Metropolitan Opera Guild. At Yale University she directed an Oral History of Electronics in Music, a collection of interviews with significant innovators in twentieth-century musical life.

A grateful student of Jascha Zayde, she has recently performed with wind and string players from the New York Philharmonic, including Joseph Robinson, Principal Oboe, and Sheryl Staples, Principal Associate Concert Master; the Moscow Quartet; violinists Eugenia Alikhanova, Alfred Hart, and Philip Quint; clarinetist Igor Begelman, hornist Karl Kramer; and bassoonist Martin Kuuskmann.

She is the author of Michelangela and Debuts, a book of short stories.

Dr. Kretschmer is the proud mother of Keith J. Thomson and Elliot R. Thomson.

JULIA C. REINHART
Managing Director

Managing Director Julia Reinhart worked as the Executive Director of the Manhattan New Music Project (aka MNMP, a jazz orchestra and arts education provider for New York City public schools) before joining the Lyric. She produced two full length studio CDs (Jazz Cycles and Avant Noir) with MNMP's founder, the late jazz composer and guitarist Paul Nash, and saw to their commercial release after his passing by starting her own record company.

After receiving a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, majoring in Acoustics, Radio and Recording Technology and minoring in Business Administration, Ms. Reinhart ran a large product portfolio for Procter & Gamble in Europe, before moving to New York to obtain her Master’s Degree in Music Business Management and Arts Administration from New York University.

She is classically trained on the harp, saxophone, plays the guitar and piano, and is a jazz vocalist. Ms. Reinhart has performed as a soprano in the choir of the Vienna Konzerthaus and worked as a songwriter and arranger for various bands. She runs her own artist management company Leo Music Ltd. for emerging talent in a broad variety of genres.
MATT HERSKOWITZ
Artist and Composer-in-Residence
Hailed as “extraordinary high-octane keyboard virtuosity”, pianist Matt Herskowitz is a unique voice from within the nexus of classical and jazz traditions. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, Mr. Herskowitz’s performances have led to both Grammy and Oscar Award nominations. His performance with Absolute Ensemble, a New York-based crossover contemporary chamber band, helped earn a Grammy nomination for their first album, Absolution, which features Matt as both composer and soloist (2001, Enja Records). His jazz arrangement of a Bach prelude for the soundtrack of The Triplets of Belleville helped earn the animated film two Oscar nominations and a French César award for best soundtrack in 2003. His first solo recording, Gabriel's Message (2000, CCnC Records), features his original arrangements and compositions based on Christmas themes, and has received world-wide critical acclaim resulting in international invitations. In 2004, Mr. Herskowitz recorded a solo recital for BRAVO Arts Channel which features classical, jazz, and original work.

Mr. Herskowitz tours extensively throughout Europe, Canada, and the U.S. He is a founding member of MaD Fusion - a progressive fusion ensemble. Their first CD, Forget Me Not (2005, Disques Tout Crin), received critical acclaim from European, U.S. and Canadian Jazz critics. After hearing the album, jazz-legend Dave Brubeck wrote: “Hearing such technique almost ruined my day. I said to myself, ‘I’d better quit now’.” MaD Fusion has performed at the Hamburg and Bremen International Music Festivals in Germany, at the Rhino Jazz Festival in France, at the Lyric Chamber Music Society in New York City, at the Luzerne Music Center Jazz Series in New York, and with the Philadelphia Piano Quartet on the Classic Chamber Concerts Series in Naples, Florida.

In addition to The Triplets of Belleville, Mr. Herskowitz's other film contributions also include a solo piano improvisation on the soundtrack of Robert Lepage’s La Face Cachée de la Lune. In 2001, Mr. Herskowitz scored a short avant-garde French film, one of six new scores written for 1930’s era silent French films. The music was performed live with the films at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater by Parabola, an ensemble specializing in new film and theater music. Other contributing composers included Carter Burwell and Stephen Endelman.

Mr. Herskowitz later worked with Mr. Burwell on a live theater project of plays by the Coen brothers and Charlie Kaufman, which received performances in New York, London, and Los Angeles. As a songwriter, Mr. Herskowitz has collaborated with many artists and producers, including pop diva Lara Fabian, and French pop-rock singer Sylvie Cobo. His songs have appeared on best-selling albums in France and Canada.

Other notable accomplishments include the 1998 Canadian premiere of Mr. Herskowitz’s Chorale and Variations on a Theme of Dave Brubeck - an original piece for piano and chamber orchestra performed by the Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal. Mr. Herskowitz is also the Grand Prize Winner of the 1997 Orford Festival International Piano Competition. As a result of the award, he was invited to record Glazunov's Piano Concerto no. 2 with I Musici de Montreal (1998, Chandos Records). The recording was hailed as “by far the best performance on CD” by Strad magazine.

SEASON 2010-2011 COMPOSERS

CARL AUGUST NIELSEN (1865 - 1931)
- October 5, 2010: Opening Night

Works Presented:
- Fantasistykke (Fantasy Piece in G minor), FS 3h
- To Fantasistykker (Two Fantasy Pieces), Op. 2 FS 8
- Romanze
- Humoresque
Nielsen was the seventh of twelve children in a poor peasant family in Sortelung (Nørre Lyndelse), south of the city of Odense, Denmark. His father was a house painter and amateur musician. Carl first discovered music by experimenting with the sounds and pitches he heard when striking logs in a pile of firewood behind his home. He managed to learn the violin and piano as a child.

He also learned how to play brass instruments, which led to a job as a bugler in the 16th Battalion at nearby Odense. He later studied violin and music theory at the Copenhagen Music Conservatory, but never took formal lessons in composition. Nonetheless, he began to compose. At first, he did not gain enough recognition for his works to support him. During the concert which saw the premiere of his first symphony on 14 March 1894 conducted by Johan Svendsen, Nielsen played in the second violin section. However, the same symphony was a great success when played in Berlin in 1896, and from then his fame grew.

Nielsen continued to play the violin at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen until 1905, when he became 2nd conductor at the Theatre (till 1914). From 1914-26, he conducted the orchestra of "Musikforeningen". In 1916 he took a post teaching at the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen, and continued to work there until his death, in his last year as director of the institute.

On 10 April 1891 Nielsen married the Danish sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen. Despite a long period of marital strife including a lengthy separation and mutual accusations of infidelity, they remained married until Nielsen's death. They had three children: Irmelin, Anne Marie, and Børge. For his son-in-law, the Hungarian violinist Dr. Emil Telmanyi, Nielsen wrote his Violin Concerto op. 33 (1911).

Nielsen suffered a serious heart attack in 1925 and from that time on he was forced to curtail much of his activity, although he continued to compose until his death. Also during this period he wrote a delightful memoir of his childhood called My Childhood on Funen (1927). He also produced a short book of essays entitled Living Music (1925). Both have been translated into English. He died in Copenhagen in 1931.

Nielsen is best known for his six symphonies. Other well-known pieces of his are the incidental music for Adam Oehlenschläger's drama Aladdin, the operas Saul og David and Maskarade, the concerti for flute, violin, and clarinet, the wind quintet, and the Helios Overture, which depicts the passage of the sun in the sky from dawn to nightfall. The vast majority of Danes know and sing the numerous songs by various poets, set to music by Carl Nielsen. Like his contemporary, the Finn Jean Sibelius, he studied Renaissance polyphony closely, which accounts for much of the melodic and harmonic "feel" of his music.

Nielsen's approach to sonata form, as seen in his six symphonies, is one of gradual abandonment. In considering the first movements of each symphony in turn, the first two reveal Nielsen working fairly comfortably within the confines of sonata form as later 19th century composers saw it; the middle two include certain high-level references to sonata form but little of the detail, and the last two inhabit a completely new world of Nielsen's own devising, wherein the structure of the movement can only be understood within the context of the material he is working with. By that point in his output there are no more parallels with any other forms or past traditions of musical construction. The subtitles Nielsen used are only very general signposts of intent, not indicating specific story-telling qualities.

"Objektiviering": By this term Nielsen meant an aesthetic approach wherein the instruments, or the players operating them, are given leave to assert their individual intentions, as interpreted by the composer. At the time Nielsen was writing the Fifth Symphony, with its sometimes violent dialogue between the clarinet and the snare drum, he also produced the Wind Quintet, Op. 43 for a group of wind players whom he knew well personally. He resolved to write a concerto for each man, but completed only the ones for flute and clarinet. The latter (1928) immortalizes a clarinettist known for being irascible, and uses this character as a means of commenting on the anxious world condition at the time.

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810 - 1856)
- October 5, 2010: Opening Night

Works Presented:
- Adagio and Allegro for Oboe and Piano Op. 70
- Three Romances for Oboe and Piano, Op. 94
- Fairy Tale Pieces
Robert Schumann was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is one of the most famous Romantic composers of the 19th century.

He had hoped to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist, having been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe after only a few years of study with him. However, a self-inflicted hand injury prevented those hopes from being realized, and he decided to focus his musical energies on composition. Schumann's published compositions were all for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra, many lieder (songs for voice and piano), four symphonies, an opera, and other orchestral, choral and chamber works. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ("The New Journal for Music"), a Leipzig-based publication that he jointly founded.

In 1840, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with his piano instructor (Wieck), Schumann married Wieck's daughter, pianist Clara Wieck, who also composed music and had a considerable concert career, including premieres of many of her husband's works.

Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony the fifth and last child of the family. Schumann began to compose before the age of seven, but his boyhood was spent in the cultivation of literature as much as music because his father, August Schumann, was a bookseller, publisher, and novelist. At age 14 Schumann wrote an essay on the aesthetics of music and also contributed to a volume, edited by his father, titled "Portraits of Famous Men." While still at school in Zwickau he read the works of the German poet-philosophers Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as well as Byron and the Greek tragedians. His most powerful and permanent literary inspiration was Jean Paul, whose influence is seen in Schumann's youthful novels Juniusabende, completed in 1826, and Selene.

Schumann's interest in music was prompted as a child by the performance of Ignaz Moscheles playing at Carlsbad, and he later developed an interest in the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn. His father, however, who had encouraged the boy's musical aspirations, died in 1826, and neither his mother nor his guardian thereafter encouraged a career for him in music. In 1828 he left school, and after a tour, during which he met Heinrich Heine in Munich, he went to Leipzig to study law. In 1829 his law studies continued in Heidelberg.

During Eastertide 1830 he heard Niccolò Paganini play in Frankfurt. In July he wrote to his mother, "My whole life has been a struggle between Poetry and Prose, or call it Music and Law." By Christmas he was back in Leipzig, taking piano lessons from his old master Wieck, who assured him that he would be a successful concert pianist. During his studies with Wieck, Schumann permanently injured his right hand. One suggested cause of this injury is that he damaged his finger by the use of a mechanical device designed to strengthen the weakest fingers, which held back one finger while he exercised the others. Others have suggested that the injury was a side-effect of syphilis medication. A more dramatic suggestion is that in an attempt to increase the independence of his fourth finger, he may have carried out a surgical procedure to separate the tendons of the fourth finger from those of the third. The cause of the injury is not known, but in any event Schumann abandoned ideas of a concert career and devoted himself instead to composition. To this end he began a course of theory under Heinrich Dorn, a German composer six years his senior and the conductor of the Leipzig opera at that time. About this time Schumann considered composing an opera on the subject of Hamlet.

The fusion of the literary idea with its musical illustration, which may be said to have first taken shape in Papillons ("Butterflies") (Schumann's Opus 2), is foreshadowed to some extent in his first written criticism, an 1831 essay on Frédéric Chopin's variations on a theme from Mozart's Don Giovanni, published in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. Here Chopin's work is discussed by the imaginary characters Florestan (the embodiment of Schumann's passionate, voluble side) and Eusebius (his dreamy, introspective side) – the counterparts of Vult and Walt in Jean Paul's novel Flegeljahre. A third, Meister Raro, is called upon for his opinion. Raro may represent either the composer himself, Wieck's daughter Clara, or the combination of the two (Clara + Robert).

However, by the time Schumann had written Papillons in 1831 he went a step further. The scenes and characters of his favorite novel had now passed definitely and consciously into the written music, and in a letter from Leipzig (April 1832) he bids his brothers "read the last scene in Jean Paul's Flegeljahre as soon as possible, because the Papillons are intended as a musical representation of that masquerade."

In the winter of 1832 Schumann visited his relations at Zwickau and Schneeberg, where he performed the first movement of his Symphony in G minor. In Zwickau, the music was performed at a concert given by Clara Wieck, who was thirteen years old. On this occasion Clara played bravura Variations by Henri Herz. The G minor Symphony was not published by Schumann during his lifetime, but has been played and recorded since then. The 1833 deaths of his brother Julius and his sister-in-law Rosalie apparently affected Schumann with a profound melancholy, leading to his first apparent attempt at suicide.

By spring 1834, Schumann had sufficiently recovered to inaugurate Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ("New Journal in Music"), first published on April 3, 1834. Schumann published most of his critical writings in the Journal, and often lambasted the popular taste for flashy technical displays from figures Schumann perceived as inferior composers. Schumann campaigned to revive interest in major composers of the past, including Mozart, Beethoven and Weber, while he also promoted the work of some contemporary composers, including Chopin and Berlioz, whom he praised for creating music of substance. On the other hand, Schumann disparaged the school of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. Among Schumann's associates at this time were composers Ludwig Schunke (to whom Schumann's Toccata in C is dedicated), and Norbert Burgmüller.

Carnaval (op. 9, 1834) is one of Schumann's most genial and characteristic piano works. Schumann named sections for two of his romantic interests, Ernestine ("Estrella") and Clara ("Chiarina"). Eusebius and Florestan, the imaginary figures appearing so often in his critical writings, also appear, alongside brilliant imitations of Chopin and Paganini. The work comes to a close with a march of the Davidsbündler — the league of King David's men against the Philistines in which may be heard the clear accents of truth in contest with the dull clamour of falsehood embodied in a quotation from the seventeenth century Grandfather's Dance. In Carnaval, Schumann went further than in Papillons, by conceiving the story as well as the musical illustration.

On 3 October 1835 Schumann met Mendelssohn at Wieck's house in Leipzig, and his appreciation of that great contemporary was shown with the same generous freedom that distinguished him in all his relations to other musicians, and which later enabled him to recognize the genius of the then-unknown Johannes Brahms, when they first met in 1853.

In 1836 Schumann's acquaintance with Clara Wieck, already famous as a pianist, ripened into love. A year later he asked her father's consent to their marriage, but was refused.

In the series Fantasiestücke for the piano (op. 12) Schumann once more gives a sublime illustration of the fusion of literary and musical ideas as embodied conceptions in such pieces as Warum and In der Nacht. After he had written the latter of these two he detected in the music the fanciful suggestion of a series of episodes from the story of Hero and Leander. The collection begins (in Des Abends) with a notable example of Schumann's predeliction for rhythmic ambiguity, as unrelieved syncopation plays heavily against the time signature, similar to the Faschingsschwank aus Wien's first movement. After a nicely told fable, and the appropriately titled "Dream's Confusion," the collection ends on an introspective note in the manner of Eusebius.

The Kinderszenen, completed in 1838, a favourite of Schumann's piano works, is playful and childlike, and nicely captures the innocence of childhood. The Träumerei is one of the most famous piano pieces ever written, and exists in myriad forms and transcriptions, and has been the favourite encore of several piano artists, including Vladimir Horowitz. The piece appears simple, but has been defended as "complex" in its harmonic structure.

The Kreisleriana (1838), considered one of Schumann's greatest works, also carried his fantasy and emotional range further. Johannes Kreisler, the fictional poet created by poet E. T. A. Hoffman who is limned as a "romantic brought into contact with reality", was appropriated by Schumann who utilized him as an imaginary mouthpiece for the sonic expression of emotional states, in music that is "fantastic and mad."

The Fantasia in C (Op. 17), written in the summer of 1836, is a work of passion and deep pathos, imbued with the spirit of late Beethoven. This is no doubt deliberate, since the proceeds from sales of the work were initially intended to be contributed towards the construction of a monument to Beethoven (who had died in 1827). The closing of the first movement of the Fantasy contains a musical quote from Beethoven's song cycle, an die ferne Geliebte, op. 90 (at the "Adagio" coda, taken from the first song of an die ferne Geliebte). According to Liszt, who played the work for Schumann, and to whom Schumann dedicated the work, the Fantasy was apt to be played too heavily, and should have a dreamier (träumerisch) character than vigorous German pianists tended to impart. Liszt also said, "It is a noble work, worthy of Beethoven, whose career, by the way, it is supposed to represent."

In 1837 Schumann published his Études symphoniques, a complex set of variations written in 1834-1835, which demand a powerful piano technique.

After a visit to Vienna during which he discovered Franz Schubert's previously unknown Symphony No. 9 in C, in 1839 Schumann wrote the Faschingsschwank aus Wien ("Carnival Prank from Vienna"). Most of the joke is in the central section of the first movement, into which a thinly veiled reference to the Marseillaise (then banned in Vienna owing to the memory of Napoleon's Austrian invasion) is squeezed. The festive mood does not preclude moments of melancholic introspection in the Intermezzo.

After a long and acrimonious legal battle with her father (which was ultimately resolved by waiting until she was of legal age and therefore no longer subject to the father's command), Schumann married Clara Wieck on September 12, 1840, at Schönefeld.

Before 1840, Schumann had written almost exclusively for the piano, but in this one year he wrote 168 songs. 1840 (scholars refer to it as the Liederjahr or "year of the lied") is the most important time in Schumann's musical legacy. He had secretly courted Clara because her father did not accept him as a suitor. They exchanged love letters and rendezvoused in secret. Robert would often wait in a cafe for hours in a nearby city just to see Clara for a few minutes after one of her concerts. After this long courtship, they finally married in 1840, and this great outpour of lieder (vocal songs with piano accompaniment) is directly related to the happiness he felt from finally having his Clara. This is evident in "Widmung", for example, where he uses the melody from Schubert's "Ave Maria" in the postlude- as a means of exalting Clara. Schumann's biographers have attributed the sweetness, the doubt and the despair of these songs to the varying emotions aroused by his love for Clara. Robert and Clara had seven children.

His chief song-cycles of this period were his settings of the Liederkreis of J. von Eichendorff (op. 39), the Frauenliebe und -leben of Chamisso (op. 42), the Dichterliebe of Heine (op. 48) and Myrthen, a collection of songs, including poems by Goethe, Rückert, Heine, Byron, Burns and Moore. The songs Belsatzar (op. 57) and Die beiden Grenadiere (op. 49), each to Heine's words, show Schumann at his best as a ballad writer, though the dramatic ballad is less congenial to him than the introspective lyric. The opus 35 (to words of Justinus Kerner) and opus 40 sets, although less well known, also contain songs of lyric and dramatic quality.

Despite his achievements, Schumann received few tokens of honour; he was awarded a doctoral degree by the University of Jena in 1840, and in 1843 a professorship in the Conservatory of Music which Felix Mendelssohn had founded in Leipzig that same year. On one occasion, accompanying his wife on a concert tour in Russia, Schumann was asked whether 'he too was a musician'. He was to remain sensitive to his wife's greater international acclaim as a pianist.

In 1841 he wrote two of his four symphonies. He devoted 1842 to composing chamber music, which included the piano quintet (op. 44), now one of his best known and most admired works. In 1843 he wrote Paradise and the Peri, his first essay at concerted vocal music. After this, his compositions were not confined during any particular period to any one form.

The stage in his life when he was deeply engaged in setting Goethe's Faust to music (1844–1853) was a critical one for his health. He spent the first half of 1844 with Clara on tour in Russia. On returning to Germany he abandoned his editorial work, and left Leipzig for Dresden, where he suffered from persistent “nervous prostration”. As soon as he began to work he was seized with fits of shivering and an apprehension of death, which was exhibited in an abhorrence for high places, for all metal instruments (even keys), and for drugs. Schumann's diaries also state that he suffered perpetually from imagining that he had the note A5 sounding in his ears. In 1846 he felt recovered and in the winter revisited Vienna, traveling to Prague and Berlin in the spring of 1847 and in the summer to Zwickau, where he was received with enthusiasm. This pleased him, since at that time he was famous only in Dresden and Leipzig.

His only opera was written in 1848: Genoveva (op. 81). It is interesting for its attempt to abolish the recitative, which Schumann regarded as an interruption to the musical flow. The subject of Genoveva, based on Johann Ludwig Tieck and Christian Friedrich Hebbel, was not a happy choice; but it is worth remembering that as early as 1842 the possibilities of German opera had been keenly realized by Schumann, who wrote, "Do you know my prayer as an artist, night and morning? It is called 'German Opera.' Here is a real field for enterprise . . . something simple, profound, German." And in his notebook of suggestions for the text of operas are found amongst others: Nibelungen, Lohengrin and Till Eulenspiegel. Schumann's consistently flowing melody in this work can be seen as a forerunner to Wagner's Melos.

The music to Byron's Manfred was written in 1849. The insurrection of Dresden caused Schumann to move to Kreischa, a little village a few miles outside the city. In August 1849, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth, such scenes of Schumann's Faust as were already completed were performed in Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar, Liszt, as always giving unwearied assistance and encouragement. The rest of the work was written later in 1849, and the overture (which Schumann described as "one of the sturdiest of [his] creations") in 1853.

From 1850 to 1854, the nature of Schumann's works is extremely varied. The popular belief that the quality of his music quickly decayed has been questioned: the changes in style may be explained by lucid experimentation

In 1850 Schumann succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as musical director at Düsseldorf, but he was a poor conductor and quickly aroused the opposition of the musicians. His contract was eventually terminated. From 1851 to 1853 he visited Switzerland, Belgium and Leipzig. In 1851 he completed his Rhenish Symphony, and he revised what would be published as his fourth symphony. On September 30, 1853, the 20-year-old Brahms knocked unannounced on the door of the Schumanns carrying a letter of introduction from the violinist Joseph Joachim (Schumann was not at home, and would not meet Brahms until the next day). Brahms amazed Clara and Robert with his music, stayed with them for several weeks and became a close family friend (later working closely with Clara to popularize Schumann's compositions during her long widowhood). During this time Schumann, Brahms and Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich collaborated on the composition of the 'F-A-E' Sonata for Joachim; Schumann also published an article, “Neue Bahnen” (New Paths) hailing the unknown young composer (Brahms) from Hamburg, who had published nothing, as “the Chosen One” who "was destined to give ideal expression to the times.] It was an extraordinary way to present Brahms to the musical world, setting up enormous expectations of him which he did not fulfill for many years. In January 1854, Schumann went to Hannover, where he heard a performance of his Paradise and the Peri organized by Joachim and Brahms.

Schumann returned to Düsseldorf and set himself to editing his complete works and making an anthology on the subject of music, but a renewal of the symptoms that had threatened him earlier showed itself. Besides the single note, he now imagined that voices sounded in his ear and he heard angelic music. One night he suddenly left his bed, telling Clara that Schubert and Mendelssohn had sent him a theme — in truth, he was merely recalling his own Violin concerto — which he must write down, and on this theme he wrote five variations for the piano, his last work. Brahms published the theme in a supplementary volume to the complete edition of Schumann's piano music, and in 1861 Brahms himself wrote a substantial set of variations upon it for piano duet, his Op. 23.

In late February Schumann's symptoms increased, the angelic visions sometimes being replaced by demonic visions. He warned Clara that he feared he might do her harm. On February 27, 1854, he attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine River. Rescued by boatmen and taken home, he asked to be taken to an asylum for the insane. He entered Dr. Franz Richarz' sanitarium in Endenich, a quarter of Bonn, and remained there until his death on 29 July 1856.

Given his reported symptoms, one modern view is that his death was a result of syphilis, which he may have contracted during his student days, and which would have remained latent during most of his marriage. According to studies by the musicologist and literary scholar Eric Sams, Schumann's symptoms during his terminal illness and death appear consistent with those of mercury poisoning, mercury being a common treatment for syphilis and other conditions. Schumann was buried at the Zentral Friedhof ("Central Cemetery"), Bonn. In 1880, a statue by Adolf von Donndorf was erected on his tomb.

From the time of her husband's death, Clara devoted herself principally to the interpretation of her husband's works. In 1856, she first visited England, but the critics received Schumann's music coolly, with some critics such as Henry Fothergill Chorley particularly harsh in their disapproval. She returned to London in 1865 and made regular appearances there in subsequent years. She became the authoritative editor of her husband's works for Breitkopf und Härtel. It was rumored that she and Brahms destroyed many of Schumann's later works that they thought to be tainted by his madness. However, only the Five Pieces for Cello and Piano are known to have been destroyed. Most of Schumann's late works, particularly the violin concerto, the Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra and the Third violin sonata, all from 1853, have entered the repertoire.

CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835 - 1921)
- October 5, 2010: Opening Night

Works Presented:
- Sonate for Oboe and Piano in D Major, Op. 166
Charles Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer and performer.

Saint-Saëns was born in Paris. A child prodigy, two years after his birth he could already read and write and began taking piano lessons and almost immediately began composing. His first piano recital was at age five. At ten years of age he gave public recitals of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. At the age of sixteen, he wrote his first symphony.

In 1871 he co-founded the Société Nationale de Musique. He wrote dramatic works, including four symphonic poems, and 13 operas, of which Samson et Dalila and the symphonic poem Danse Macabre are among his most famous. In all, he composed over three hundred works and was the first major composer to write music specifically for the cinema.

In 1886 he wrote his Symphony No. 3, 'avec orgue', that is, 'with Organ', perhaps the most famous of all his works. Aided by monumental symphonic organs built in France by Mr. Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, at that time the world's greatest organ builder, this work in particular is immersed in the spirit of 'gigantism' of the dying XIX century, along with the Eiffel Tower, the Universal Exposition at Paris and the beginning of the 'belle epoque'. The Maestoso of the second movement is clearly an expression of the confidence of the European man in himself, in his technology, his science, his 'age of reason' (somewhat ironically, the melody was later used as the basis for the theme music of the immensely popular film Babe). He was frequently named as 'the most German composer of all the French composers', perhaps due to his fantastic skills exhibited in the construction of melodic passages.

Also in 1886, Saint-Saëns completed The Carnival of the Animals, which was first performed on March 9th, 1886. Despite being very popular today, Saint-Saëns forbade complete performances of it shortly after its première, only allowing one movement, 'The Swan', a piece for cello and piano, to be published in his lifetime.

Saint-Saëns also wrote six preludes and fugues for organ, three in op. 99 and three in op. 109, the most performed of which is the Prelude and Fugue in E flat major, op. 99, no. 3.

Saint-Saëns wrote on musical, scientific and historical topics, frequently travelling around Europe, North Africa, and South America. In recognition of his accomplishments, the government of France awarded him the Legion of Honour.

Camille Saint-Saëns died on December 16, 1921, in Algiers. His body was brought back to Paris for a state funeral and was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, in Paris.

PAUL HINDEMITH (1895 - 1963)
- October 5, 2010: Opening Night

Works Presented:
- Sonate for Oboe and Piano in G Major
One of the main innovators of musical modernism, Paul Hindemith was a composer, conductor, violist, educator, and theoretician. Of the four founders of modernism – Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, and Hindemith – one can argue that Hindemith was by far the most scholarly and intellectual in temperament. His theoretic interests were both deep and wide-ranging and included medieval philosophy and the writings of the early church, as well as musical topics. He could play all the standard musical instruments at least passably and was a recognized virtuoso on the viola and viola d'amore. A sought-after educator, he taught such composers as Lukas Foss, Arnold Cooke, Franz Reizenstein, and Norman Dello Joio and wielded great influence in Europe and the United States between the two World Wars.

Hindemith began composing in a post-Romantic, Reger-like idiom, although Hindemith's textures are generally leaner. During the Twenties, he went through a "shock" phase, turning out work which owed much to white dance-band music (what most Europeans thought of as jazz) in works like the Suite 1922 for piano and had many elements of Expressionism (Der Dämon [1922], Nusch-Nuschi [1921], the Rilke song-cycle Das Marienleben (1923), and the opera Cardillac [1926]). He very quickly moved away from this toward a neoclassicism that owes nothing to Stravinsky. Where Stravinsky worked variations primarily on Mozart, Hindemith looked more to Bach. This is apparent in a series of seven chamber concerti known as the Kammermusiken (1922-1927), some of which pay conscious homage to Bach's Brandenburgs. The music becomes increasingly contrapuntal, and Hindemith begins theoretical researches in a system of harmony based on chords built from fourths, rather than from the usual thirds.

By 1930, Hindemith had consolidated his researches and began to produce a series of masterpieces including Concert Music for Strings and Brass (1930), the opera Mathis der Maler (1934-1935), Symphony "Mathis der Maler" (1934) which shares themes with the opera, Plöner Musiktag, Trauermusik (1936), written in less then twenty-four hours, the choral Six Chansons to French poems by Rilke (1939), and the ballet Nobilissima Visione (1938), on the life of St. Francis. He also began a remarkable series of sonatas for every major instrument, all idiomatic and almost all becoming a part of standard repertory. The Nazis forced Hindemith out of Germany. He went to Switzerland, England, and finally settled in the United States, where he joined the Yale University faculty.

The Forties saw probably the peak of Hindemith's output and critical reputation, with such masterpieces as Symphony in E Flat (1940), Sonata for Two Pianos (1942), Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber (1943), Sinfonia serena (1945), The Four Temperaments (1940), Ludus Tonalis (1942), an homage to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Sonata for Harp (1949), and a magnificent series of concerti for violin, cello, piano, clarinet, and horn. Hindemith wrote concerti for every major instrument. Among the peaks, we also find his choral masterpiece When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1946), written on the death of President Roosevelt to the complete Whitman poem.

After the war, Hindemith's influence was supplanted by that of Schoenberg and Anton Webern. Hindemith disliked dodecaphony, which he regarded as unnatural, and set himself up as the Anti-Schoenberg. He wrote several satirical pieces using 11-note and 13-note "rows," in a vain attempt to change the direction of musical thought. The later works show no decrease in craft, but there is an anguish to them not found before. He left the United States for Switzerland, his music increasingly ignored, but he nevertheless produced the masterpieces Symphony in B for Band, the organ concerto, Twelve Madrigals, the opera Die Harmonie der Welt and a related symphony, and his last work, a mass for unaccompanied chorus. Ironically, the late works share a similarity of sound with late Schoenberg.

Since his death, no one has taken up advocacy of Hindemith's work, in the same way that Craft has done for Stravinsky or Boulez for Schoenberg and his followers. Still, much of Hindemith's work remains in instrumentalists' repertoires. A mountain of noble, witty, and powerful scores awaits rediscovery.

 

JAN KALIVODA (1801 - 1866)
- October 5, 2010: Opening Night

Works Presented:
- Morceau de Salon for Oboe and Piano, Op. 228
Kalivoda was born in Prague in 1801 and as early as 1811 started studying violin and composition at the Prague Conservatory. He made his debut as a violinist at the age of 14. Upon completion of his studies he became a member of the Prague Opera Orchestra. His diploma from the Conservatory read "Excellent player solo or in an orchestra...shows great talent in composition." More prosperous tours as a violinist, for instance to Linz and Munich, followed.

Kalivoda lived what appears to have been a stable, hardworking musical life. For over forty years, from 1822 to 1865, he held the post of conductor on the court of Prince Karl Egon II of Fürstenberg and his successor in Donaueschingen. His duties there included not only the writing of and care for the music of the court and church, of music for the church, but also the management and conducting of a choir, and annual musical journeys for education. These manifold responsibilities may have foreshortened his life. In any case, he went into retirement in 1865, and a year later he died, of a heart attack in Karlsruhe.

His son Wilhelm Kalliwoda (1827-1893) continued his father's career, and worked as Kapellmeister for the Baden court in Karlsruhe, also composing (an Impromptu for piano was published as his opus 3 in Leipzig in 1854 ). During the 1850s he is mentioned by Alan Walker as a conductor at the Lower Rhenish Music Festival.

Kalivoda was a highly prolific composer, and was held in high regard during his lifetime by such eminent contemporaries as Robert Schumann. In all, his works number in the hundreds, of which there are about 250 works or sets of works with opus numbers.

His compositions included operas, symphonies, concert overtures -- one of them, commissioned for the occasion, was used to close the first concert, in 1842, of the New York Philharmonic -- as well as music for piano, piano concertos, concertinos for violin and for oboe, music for the church, lieder, choral music and various other vocal and instrumental works.

Kalivoda "represents a sort of symphonic 'missing link' between Beethoven and Schumann," writes the critic David Hurwitz, founder of Classics Today. "His melodic appeal and rhythmic energy undoubtedly have something to do with his Czech roots...but he also had a genuine understanding of symphonic development and real contrapuntal skill." Hurwitz observes that "as the predominance of minor keys suggests, his music has passion and an emotional depth that recalls Beethoven without ever descending into mere imitation. Part of the reason for his distinctiveness stems from his skill at orchestration."...The symphonic music of Kalivoda is "thrilling, and it strikingly anticipates or echoes so much of 19th century music--from Berlioz to Dvorák to Wagner, and even Sibelius..."

 

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685 - 1750)
- October 27, 2010: CHAMZZ: Classics for the 21st Century

Works Presented:
- Prelude in C minor, Well Tempered Klavier, Book 1
- Prelude in G Major, Well Tempered Klavier, Book 2

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation in composition for diverse instrumentation, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France.

Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's works include the Brandenburg concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B Minor, the St. Matthew Passion, the St. John Passion, the Magnificat, The Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue, the English Suites, the French Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo, the Cello Suites, more than 200 surviving cantatas, and a similar number of organ works, including the celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

While Bach's fame as an organist was great during his lifetime, he was not particularly well-known as a composer. His adherence to Baroque forms and contrapuntal style was considered "old-fashioned" by his contemporaries, especially late in his career when the musical fashion tended towards Rococo and later Classical styles. A revival of interest and performances of his music began early in the 19th century, and he is now widely considered to be one of the greatest composers in the Western tradition.

In 1708 Bach became the court organist and concertmaster at the ducal court in Weimar. Bach's position in Weimar marked the start of a sustained period of composing keyboard and orchestral works, in which he had attained the technical proficiency and confidence to extend the prevailing large-scale structures and to synthesise influences from abroad. From the music of Italians such as Vivaldi, Corelli and Torelli, he learnt how to write dramatic openings and adopted their sunny dispositions, dynamic motor-rhythms and decisive harmonic schemes. Bach inducted himself into these stylistic aspects largely by transcribing for harpsichord and organ the ensemble concertos of Vivaldi; these works are still concert favourites. He may have picked up the idea of transcribing the latest fashionable Italian music from Prince Johann Ernst, one of his employers, who was a musician of professional calibre. In 1713, the Duke returned from a tour of the Low Countries with a large collection of scores, some of them possibly transcriptions of the latest fashionable Italian music by the blind organist Jan Jacob de Graaf. Bach was particularly attracted to the Italian solo-tutti structure, in which one or more solo instruments alternate section-by-section with the full orchestra throughout a movement.

In Weimar, he had the opportunity to play and compose for the organ, and to perform a varied repertoire of concert music with the duke's ensemble. A master of contrapuntal technique, Bach's steady output of fugues began in Weimar. The largest single body of his fugal writing is Das wohltemperierte Clavier ("The well-tempered keyboard"—Clavier meaning keyboard instrument). It consists of two collections compiled in 1722 and 1744, each containing a prelude and fugue in every major and minor key. This is a monumental work for its masterful use of counterpoint and its exploration, for the first time, of the full range of keys–and the means of expression made possible by their slight differences from each other—available to keyboardists when their instruments are tuned according to systems such as that of Andreas Werckmeister.

During his tenure at Weimar, Bach started work on The little organ book for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann; this contains traditional Lutheran chorales (hymn tunes), set in complex textures to assist the training of organists. The book illustrates two major themes in Bach's life: his dedication to teaching and his love of the chorale as a musical form.

In 1717 Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen hired Bach to serve as his Kapellmeister (director of music). Prince Leopold, himself a musician, appreciated Bach's talents, paid him well, and gave him considerable latitude in composing and performing. However, the prince was Calvinist and did not use elaborate music in his worship; thus, most of Bach's work from this period was secular, including the Orchestral suites, the Six suites for solo cello and the Sonatas and partitas for solo violin. The well-known Brandenburg concertos date from this period.

In 1723, Bach was appointed Cantor of Thomasschule, adjacent to the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas' Lutheran Church) in Leipzig, as well as Director of Music in the principal churches in the town. In an astonishing burst of creativity, he wrote up to five annual cantata cycles during his first six years in Leipzig (two of which have apparently been lost). Most of these concerted works expound on the Gospel readings for every Sunday and feast day in the Lutheran year; many were written using traditional church hymns, such as Wachet auf! Ruft uns die Stimme and Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, as inspiration.

Having spent much of the 1720s composing cantatas, Bach had assembled a huge repertoire of church music for Leipzig's two main churches. He now wished to broaden his composing and performing beyond the liturgy. In March 1729, he took over the directorship of the Collegium Musicum, a secular performance ensemble that had been started in 1701 by his old friend, the composer Georg Philipp Telemann. This was one of the dozens of private societies in the major German-speaking cities that had been established by musically active university students; these societies had come to play an increasingly important role in public musical life and were typically led by the most prominent professionals in a city. In the words of Christoph Wolff, assuming the directorship was a shrewd move that 'consolidated Bach's firm grip on Leipzig's principal musical institutions'. During much of the year, Leipzig's Collegium Musicum gave twice-weekly, two-hour performances in Zimmerman's Coffeehouse on Catherine Street, just off the main market square. For this purpose, the proprietor provided a large hall and acquired several musical instruments. Many of Bach's works during the 1730s and 1740s were probably written for and performed by the Collegium Musicum; among these were almost certainly parts of the Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice) and many of the violin and harpsichord concertos.

During this period, he composed the Kyrie and Gloria of the Mass in B Minor, and in 1733, he presented the manuscript to the Elector of Saxony in an ultimately successful bid to persuade the monarch to appoint him as Royal Court Composer. He later extended this work into a full Mass, by adding a Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, the music for which was almost wholly taken from some of the best of his cantata movements. Bach's appointment as court composer appears to have been part of his long-term struggle to achieve greater bargaining power with the Leipzig Council. Although the complete mass was probably never performed during the composer's lifetime, it is considered to be among the greatest choral works of all time. Between 1737 and 1739, Bach's former pupil Carl Gotthelf Gerlach took over the directorship of the Collegium Musicum.

In 1747, Bach went to the court of Frederick II of Prussia in Potsdam, where the king played a theme for Bach and challenged him to improvise a fugue based on his theme. Bach improvised a three-part fugue on Frederick's pianoforte, then a novelty, and later presented the king with a Musical Offering which consists of fugues, canons and a trio based on the "royal theme", nominated by the monarch. Its six-part fugue includes a slightly altered subject more suitable for extensive elaboration.

The Art of Fugue, published posthumously but probably written years before Bach's death, is unfinished. It consists of 18 complex fugues and canons based on a simple theme. A magnum opus of thematic transformation and contrapuntal devices, this work is often cited as the summation of polyphonic techniques.

The final work Bach completed was a chorale prelude for organ, dictated to his son-in-law, Johann Altnikol, from his deathbed. Entitled Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit (Before thy throne I now appear, BWV 668a); when the notes on the three staves of the final cadence are counted and mapped onto the Roman alphabet, the initials "JSB" are found. The chorale is often played after the unfinished 14th fugue to conclude performances of The Art of Fugue.

JGIUSEPPE TARTINI (1692 - 1770)
- November 17, 2010: Exciting Young Virtuosos

Works Presented:
- Devil's Trill
Giuseppe Tartini was born in Pirano, Istria, on April 8, 1692. At his father's wish he studied for the priesthood. In 1710 he entered Padua University as a law student, where he remained until 1713, when he secretly married a niece of Cardinal Cornaro, which led to accusations of abduction. Leaving his wife in Padua, Tartini took refuge in a monastery at Assisi, where he practiced the violin and studied music theory. Here he wrote the Trillo del diavolo (Devil's Trill), an attempt to reconstruct a sonata he said the devil had played to him in a dream. In 1714 he discovered the "resultant" tone, a means for improving intonation. While this tone cannot be heard on a modern violin, it is clearly audible on an old one with its smaller bass-bar and other fittings.

In 1715 the cardinal withdrew his objections to the marriage, and Tartini and his wife were reunited in Padua. In 1716 Tartini heard the violinist Francesco Maria Veracini in Venice and was so impressed with his playing that he sent his wife to relatives so that he could continue his studies in Ancona.

Tartini was solo violinist and director at S. Antonio in Padua (1721-1723) and chamber musician in Prague to Count Kinsky (1723-1725). Tartini returned to Padua in 1726. Two years later he founded a school of violin playing, which became known as the School of the Nations. Among his pupils was Maddalena Lombardi-Sirmen, to whom he addressed an important letter on performance which is mistakenly called the Art of Bowing by some writers. That title, however, refers to a series of variations Tartini wrote on a theme by Arcangelo Corelli. In the letter Tartini provides clear evidence that even the fastest notes were separated by a silence, which is not the case today.

Although Tartini's Treatise on Music, which dealt mainly with acoustics, was published in Padua (1754), it had less of an impact upon performance than his unpublished Treatise on Ornamentation (ca. 1750), which circulated widely in manuscript. Whole sections of it were incorporated into Leopold Mozart's Violin School (1756) without any acknowledgment, and it was published in French as Treatise on the Ornaments of Music (1771).

Tartini wrote about 150 concertos and 100 violin sonatas with figured-bass accompaniment. They combined the dignity and serenity of Corelli with a passion and grace all his own. Tartini's violin works were technically more complicated and advanced than those of his predecessors. He died in Padua on Feb. 26, 1770.

 

CÉSAR FRANCK (1822 - 1890)
- November 17, 2010: Exciting Young Virtuosos

Works Presented:
- Sonata in A Major
César Auguste Jean Guillaume Hubert Franck was born in Liège, Belgium, to a father from the German-Belgian border and a German mother. His father had ambitions for him to become a concert pianist, and he studied at the conservatoire in Liège before going to the Paris Conservatoire in 1838 after private studies with Antonin Rejcha for a year. Upon leaving in 1842 he briefly returned to Belgium, but went back to Paris in 1844 and remained there for the rest of his life. His decision to give up a career as a virtuoso led to strained relations with his father during this time.

During his first years in Paris, Franck made his living by teaching, both privately and institutionally. He also held various posts as organist: from 1847 to 1851 he was organist at Notre Dame de Lorette, and from 1851 to 1858 he was organist at Saint Jean and St François. During this time he became familiar with the work of the famous French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, and he also worked on developing his technique as an organist and improviser.

In 1858, he became organist at the newly-consecrated Saint Clotilde Basilica, where he remained until his death. Here he began to attract attention for his skill as an improviser. His first set of organ compositions, however, was not published until 1868, when he was 46 years old, although it contains one of his finest organ pieces, the Grande Pièce Symphonique. From 1872 to his death he was professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory. His pupils included Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Louis Vierne, and Henri Duparc. As an organist he was particularly noted for his skill in improvisation, and on the basis of merely twelve major organ works, Franck is considered by many the greatest composer of organ music after J. S. Bach. His works were some of the finest organ pieces to come from France in over a century, and laid the groundwork for the French symphonic organ style. In particular, his Grande Pièce Symphonique, a work of 25 minutes' duration, paved the way for the organ symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, and Marcel Dupré.

In 1890, Franck was involved in a serious traffic accident. It was after this accident that he wrote his Trois chorals for organ. Franck died as a result of complications from the accident very shortly after finishing the chorales. He was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Many of Franck's works employ "cyclic form", a method of achieving unity among several movements in which all of the principal themes of the work are generated from a germinal motif. The main melodic subjects, thus interrelated, are then recapitulated in the final movement. His music is often contrapuntally complex, using a harmonic language that is prototypically late Romantic, showing a great deal of influence from Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. In his compositions, Franck showed a talent and a penchant for frequent, graceful modulations of key. Often these modulatory sequences, achieved through a pivot chord or through inflection of a melodic phrase, arrive at harmonically remote keys. Indeed, Franck's students report that his most frequent admonition was to always "modulate, modulate." Franck's modulatory style and his idiomatic method of inflecting melodic phrases are among his most recognizable traits. The key to his music may be found in his personality. His friends record that he was a man of utmost humility, simplicity, reverence and industry. Much of Franck's music is deeply serious and reverential in mood, often joyful, passionate or mysterious, but almost never light-hearted or humorous.

Unusual for a composer of such importance and reputation, Franck's fame rests largely on a small number of compositions written in his later years, particularly his Symphony in D minor (1886-88), the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra (1885), the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for piano solo (1884), the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major (1886), and the Piano Quintet in F minor (1879). The Symphony was especially admired and influential among the younger generation of French composers and was highly responsible for reinvigorating the French symphonic tradition after years of decline. One of his best known shorter works is the motet setting Panis Angelicus, which was originally written for tenor solo with organ and string accompaniment, but is also arranged for other voices and instrumental combinations.

César Franck exerted a significant influence on music. He helped to renew and reinvigorate chamber music and developed the use of cyclic form. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel remembered and employed the cyclic form, although their concepts of music were no longer the same as Franck's. Franck's influence was also due in part to his nature as "a man of utmost humility, simplicity, reverence and industry."

 

WILLIAM KROLL (1901 - 1980)
- November 17, 2010: Exciting Young Virtuosos

Works Presented:
- Banjo and Fiddle
William Kroll was an American composer and violinist. Kroll was born in New York City and died in Boston, Massachusetts. His most famous composition is Banjo and Fiddle for violin and piano.

William Kroll greatly contributed to music during his day, both as a soloist and as a member of various intimate chamber ensembles. From 1911 to 1914 he was a student of Marteau at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. The time he was a pupil of Franz Kneisel and P. Goetschius at the Institute of Musical Art (1917 - 1922), he made his professional debut in New York. After completing his schooling, he toured parts of Europe, North, and Central America as a soloist and a member of the Elshuco Trio (1922 - 1929), the Coolidge Quartet (1936 - 1944), and the Kroll Quartet (1944 - 1969). In the midst of his performance schedule, he taught at various facilities, first at the Institute of Musical Art (1922 - 1938), then at the Mannes College (1943), the Peabody Conservatory (1947 - 1965), Tanglewood (as of 1949), the Cleveland Institute of Music (1964 - 1967), and also at Queens College beginning in 1969.

 

PABLO DE SARASATE (1844 - 1908)
- November 17, 2010: Exciting Young Virtuosos

Works Presented:
- Zigeunerweisen
Pablo Sarasate was born in Pamplona, Spain, the son of an artillery bandmaster. He began studying the violin with his father at the age of five and later took lessons from a local teacher but his musical talent became evident early on and he appeared in his first public concert in La Coruña at the age of eight. His performance was well-received, and caught the attention of a wealthy patron who provided the funding for Sarasate to study under Manuel Rodríguez Saez in Madrid where he gained the favor of Queen Isabel II. Later, as his abilities developed, he was sent to study under Jean-Delphin Alard at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of twelve. There, at seventeen, Sarasate entered a competition for the Premier Prix and won his first prize, the Conservatoire's highest honour.

Sarasate, who had been playing in public since childhood, made his Paris debut as a concert violinist in 1860, and played in London the following year. Over the course of his career, he toured many parts of the world, performing in Europe, North America, and South America. His artistic pre-eminence was due principally to the purity of his tone, which was free from any tendency towards the sentimental or rhapsodic, and to that impressive facility of execution that made him a virtuoso. In his early career, Sarasate performed mainly opera fantasies, most notably the Carmen Fantasy, and various other pieces that he had composed. The popularity of Sarasate's Spanish flavor in his compositions is reflected in the work of his contemporaries. For example, the influences of Spanish music can be heard in such notable works as Édouard Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole which was dedicated to Sarasate, Georges Bizet's Carmen, and Camille Saint-Saëns' Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, written expressly for Sarasate and dedicated to him.

Of Sarasate's idiomatic writing for his instrument, the playwright and music critic George Bernard Shaw once declared that though there were many composers of music for the violin, there were but few composers of violin music. Of Sarasate's talents as performer and composer, Shaw said that he "left criticism gasping miles behind him." Sarasate's own compositions are mainly show-pieces designed to demonstrate his exemplary technique. Perhaps the best known of his works is Zigeunerweisen (1878), a work for violin and orchestra. Another piece, the Carmen Fantasy (1883), also for violin and orchestra, makes use of themes from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen. Probably his most performed encores are his two books of Spanish dances, brief pieces designed to please the listener's ear and show off the performer's talent. He also made arrangements of a number of other composers' work for violin, and composed sets of variations on "potpourris" drawn from operas familiar to his audiences, such as his Fantasia on La forza del destino (his Opus 1), his "Souvenirs of Faust", or his variations on themes from Die Zauberflöte. In 1904 he made a small number of recordings. In all his travels Sarasate returned to Pamplona each year for the San Fermín festival.

Sarasate died in Biarritz, France on September 20, 1908 from chronic bronchitis. He bequeathed his violin, made by Antonio Stradivari in 1724, to the Musée de la Musique. The violin now bears his name as the Sarasate Stradivarius in his memory. His second Stradivari violin, the Boissier of 1713, is now owned by Real Conservatorio Superior de Música, Madrid. Among his violin pupils was Alfred De Sève. The Pablo Sarasate International Violin Competition is held in Madrid.

A number of works for violin were dedicated to Sarasate, including Henryk Wieniawski's Violin Concerto No. 2, Édouard Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole, Camille Saint-Saëns' Violin Concerto No. 3 and his Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy, and Alexander Mackenzie's Pibroch Suite. Also inspired by Sarasate is William Potstock's Souvenir de Sarasate.

 

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809 - 1847)
- March 16, 2011: Principal Players Series
Works Presented:
- Cello Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 58
Of a distinguished intellectual, artistic and banking family in Berlin, he grew up in a privileged environment (the family converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1816, taking the additional 'Bartholdy'). He studied the piano with Ludwig Berger and theory and composition with Zelter, producing his first piece in 1820; thereafter, a profusion of sonatas, concertos, string symphonies, piano quartets and Singspiels revealed his increasing mastery of counterpoint and form. Besides family travels and eminent visitors to his parents' salon (Humboldt, Hegel, Klingemann, A.B. Marx, Devrient), early influences included the poetry of Goethe (whom he knew from 1821) and the Schlegel translations of Shakespeare; these are traceable in his best music of the period, including the exuberant String Octet op.20 and the vivid, poetic overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream op.21. His gifts as a conductor also showed themselves early in 1829 he directed a pioneering performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion at the Berlin Singakademie, promoting the modern cultivation of Bach's music.

A period of travel and concert-giving introduced Mendelssohn to England, Scotland (1829) and Italy (1830-31); after return visits to Paris (1831) and London (1832, 1833) he took up a conducting post at Düsseldorf (1833-5), concentrating on Handel's oratorios. Among the chief products of this time were The Hebrides (first performed in London, 1832), the g Minor Piano Concerto, Die erste Walpurgisnacht, the Italian Symphony (1833, London) and St. Paul (1836, Düsseldorf). But as a conductor and music organizer his most significant achievement was in Leipzig (1835-47), where to great acclaim he conducted the Gewandhaus Orchestra, championing both historical and modern works Bach, Beethoven, Weber, Schumann, Berlioz), and founded and directed the Leipzig Conservatory (1843).

Composing mostly in the summer holidays, he produced Ruy Blas overture, a revised version of the Hymn of Praise, the Scottish Symphony, the now famous Violin Concerto op.64 and the fine Piano Trio in c Minor (1845). Meanwhile, he was intermittently (and less happily) employed by the king as a composer and choirmaster in Berlin, where he wrote highly successful incidental music, notably for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1843). Much sought after as a festival organizer, he was associated especially with the Lower Rhine and Birmingham music festivals; he paid ten visits to England, the last two (1840-7) to conduct Elijah in Birmingham and London. Always a warm friend and valued colleague, he was devoted to his family; his death at the age of 38, after a series of strokes, was mourned internationally.

With its emphasis on clarity and adherence to classical ideals, Mendelssohn's music shows alike the influences of Bach (fugal technique), Handel (rhythms, harmonic progressions), Mozart (dramatic characterization, forms, textures) and Beethoven (instrumental technique), though from 1825 he developed a characteristic style of his own, often underpinned by a literary, artistic historical, geographical or emotional connection; indeed it was chiefly in his skilful use of extra-musical stimuli that he was a Romantic. His early and prodigious operatic gifts, clearly reliant on Mozart, failed to develop (despite his long search for suitable subjects), but his penchant for the dramatic found expression in the oratorios as well as in Ruy Blas overture, his Antigone incidental music and above all the enduring Midsummer Night's Dream music, in which themes from the overture are cleverly adapted as motifs in the incidental music. The oratorios, among the most popular works of their kind, draw inspiration from Bach and Handel and content from the composer's personal experience, St. Paul being an allegory of Mendelssohn's own family history and Elijah of his years of dissension in Berlin. Among his other vocal works, the highly dramatic Die erste Walpurgisnacht op.60 (on Goethe's poem greeting springtime) and the Leipzig psalm settings deserve special mention; the choral songs and lieder are uneven, reflecting their wide variety of social functions.

After an apprenticeship of string symphony writing in a classical mould, Mendelssohn found inspiration in art, nature and history for his orchestral music. The energy, clarity and tunefulness of the Italian have made it his most popular symphony, although the elegiac Scottish represents a newer, more purposeful achievement. In his best overtures, essentially one-movement symphonic poems, the sea appears as a recurring image, from Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage and The Hebrides to The Lovely Melusine. Less dependent on programmatic elements and at the same time formally innovatory, the concertos, notably that for violin, and the chamber music, especially some of the string quartets, the Octet and the two late piano trios, beautifully reconcile classical principles with personal feeling; these are among his most striking compositions. Of the solo instrumental works, the partly lyric, partly virtuoso Lieder ohne Worte for piano (from 1829) are elegantly written and often touching.

BENJAMIN BRITTEN (1913 - 1976)
- March 16, 2011: Principal Players Series
Works Presented:
- Cello Sonata in C Major, Op. 65
Britten was born at the family home in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England. His father was a dentist. He was the youngest of four children. He was educated locally, and studied, first, piano, and then, later, viola, from private teachers.

He began to compose as early as 1919, and after about 1922, composed steadily until his death. At a concert in 1927, conducted by composer Frank Bridge, he met Bridge, later showed him several of his compositions, and ultimately Bridge took him on as a private pupil. After two years at Gresham's School in Holt, Norfolk, he entered the Royal College of Music in London (1930) where he studied composition with John Ireland and piano with Arthur Benjamin. During his stay at the RCM he won several prizes for his compositions.

He completed a choral work, A Boy was Born, in 1933; at a rehearsal for a broadcast performance of the work by the BBC Singers, he met tenor Peter Pears, the beginning of a lifelong personal and professional relationship. (Many of Britten's solo songs, choral and operatic works feature the tenor voice, and Pears was the designated soloist at many of their premieres.)

From about 1935 until the beginning of World War II, Britten did a great deal of composing for the GPO Film Unit, for BBC Radio, and for small, usually left-wing, theater groups in London. During this period he met and worked frequently with the poet W. H. Auden who provided texts for numerous songs as well as complete scripts for which Britten provided incidental music.

In the spring of 1939, Britten and Pears sailed for North America, eventually settling in Amityville, Long Island, NY, where they lived with Dr. and Mrs. Wm. Mayer and their family. In 1940 he worked with Auden on what would become his first opera, actually an operetta for high schools called Paul Bunyan, based on traditional American folk characters. However, on a trip to California in 1941, he read an article by E. M. Forster on the English poet George Crabbe, planting the seed for what would eventually be Britten's first opera, Peter Grimes. In 1942, Serge Koussevitzky became interested in Britten's music and performed the Sinfonia da Requiem with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Out of this association came the commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (in memory of Koussevitzky's late wife Natalie) for the new opera, based on Crabbe's work The Borough. Britten and Pears worked on the scenario during their return voyage to England in March, 1942.

During the early 40s, Britten produced a number of works, outstanding among them the Hymn to St. Cecilia, A Ceremony of Carols, Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Serenade (for tenor, horn, and strings), Rejoice in the Lamb, and the Festival Te Deum. Peter Grimes, with a libretto by Montagu Slater, was complete in 1945 and had its premiere on June 7 of that year by the Sadler's Wells Opera Company. (Slightly over a year later, the work had its American premiere at the Boston Symphony's summer home at Tanglewood, under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.)

However, Britten encountered opposition from sectors of the English musical establishment and gradually withdrew from the London scene, founding the English Opera Group in 1947 and the Aldeburgh Festival the following year, partly (though by no means solely) to perform his own works. From 1949 to 1951 he had his only private pupil, Arthur Oldham. One of Oldham's achievements was the setting for full orchestra of Britten's Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge, for the Frederick Ashton ballet Le Rêve de Léonor (1949).

Other operas appeared regularly in the ensuing years: The Rape of Lucretia (1946), Albert Herring (1947), The Little Sweep (1949), Billy Budd (1951) Gloriana (1953), The Turn of the Screw (1954), Noye's Fludde (1957), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960) Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966), The Prodigal Son (1968) Owen Wingrave (1970) [for television], and finally Death in Venice (1973).

An increasingly important influence was the music of the East, an interest that was fostered by a tour with Pears in 1957, when Britten was struck by the music of the Balinese gamelan and by Japanese Noh plays. The fruits of this tour include the ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1957) and the series of semi-operatic "Parables for Church Performance": Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968). The greatest success of Britten's career was, however, the War Requiem, written for the 1962 consecration of the newly reconstructed Coventry Cathedral.

Britten developed close friendships with Russian musicians Dmitri Shostakovich and Mstislav Rostropovich in the 1960s. He composed his Cello Suites, Cello Symphony and Cello Sonata for Rostropovich, and conducted the first Western performance of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony. Shostakovich dedicated this score to Britten, and often spoke very highly of his music. Britten himself had previously dedicated The Prodigal Son (the third and last of the 'Church Parables') to Shostakovich.

Britten was awarded the Order of Merit in March 1965; having earlier declined a knighthood he was created a Life Peer, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk, in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, June, 1976.

Three years earlier, in May, 1973, he had undergone open heart surgery which left him handicaped for the remainder of his life. He was nevertheless able to attend the London premiere of Death in Venice at Covent Garden, October, 1973, and was able to travel to Germany and Italy. He died at his home in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on 4 December 1976 and is buried in the churchyard of the Aldeburgh Parish Church. His colleagues Peter Pears and Imogene Holst, co-founders with BB of the Aldeburgh Festival, lie in adjacent graves.

SERGEJ PROKOFIEV (1891 - 1953)
- March 16, 2011: Principal Players Series
Works Presented:
- Sonata for Cello and Piano in C major, Op. 119
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and came to be admired as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.

Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka (now Krasne in Donetsk oblast, Ukraine), an isolated rural estate in Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire. He displayed unusual musical abilities by the age of five. His first piano composition to be written down (by his mother), an 'Indian Gallop', was in the Lydian mode as the young Prokofiev felt 'reluctance to tackle the black notes'. By the age of seven he had also learned to play chess. Much like music, chess would remain a passion his entire life, and he became acquainted with world chess champions José Raúl Capablanca and Mikhail Botvinnik.

At the age of nine he was composing his first opera, The Giant, as well as an overture and miscellaneous pieces.

In 1902, Prokofiev's mother obtained an audience with Sergei Taneyev, director of the Moscow Conservatory. Taneyev initially suggested that Prokofiev should start lessons in composition with Alexander Goldenweiser; but when Taneyev was unable to arrange this he instead arranged for Reinhold Glière to spend the summer of 1902 in Sontsovka teaching Prokofiev. This first series of lessons culminated, at Prokofiev's insistence, with Glière supervising the 11-year-old's first attempt to write a symphony. Glière subsequently revisited Sontsovka the following summer to give further tuition. When decades later Prokofiev wrote about his lessons with Glière in his autobiography, he gave due credit to Glière's sympathetic qualities as a teacher but complained that Glière had introduced him to "square" phrase structure and conventional modulations which he subsequently had to unlearn. Nonetheless, now equipped with the necessary theoretical tools, Prokofiev started experimenting with dissonant harmonies and unusual time signatures in a series of short piano pieces which he called "ditties" (after the so-called "song form" - more accurately ternary form - they were based on), laying the basis for his own musical style.

After a while, Prokofiev's mother felt that the isolation in Sontsovka was restricting his further musical development. Although his parents were not too keen on forcing their son into a musical career at such an early age, in 1904 he was taken by his mother to Saint Petersburg where he applied, after encouragement by the composer Alexander Glazunov, to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. By this point Prokofiev had composed two more operas, Desert Islands and The Feast during the Plague and was working on his fourth, Undine. He passed the introductory tests and started his composition studies the same year. Being several years younger than most of his classmates, he was viewed as eccentric and arrogant, and he often expressed dissatisfaction with much of the education, which he found boring. During this period he studied under, among others, Anatoly Lyadov, Nikolai Tcherepnin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (though when the latter died in 1908, Prokofiev noted that he had only studied orchestration with him 'after a fashion' – that is, in a heavily attended class with other students – and regretted he otherwise 'never had the opportunity to study with him'). He also became friends with composers Boris Asafyev and Nikolai Myaskovsky.

As a member of the Saint Petersburg music scene, Prokofiev expanded his reputation as a musical rebel, while also getting praise for his original compositions, which he would perform himself on the piano. In 1909, he graduated from his class in composition, getting less than impressive marks. He continued at the Conservatory, studying piano under Anna Yesipova and conducting under Nikolai Tcherepnin.

In 1910, Prokofiev's father died and Sergei's financial support ceased. Luckily, at that time, he had started making a name for himself as a composer, although he frequently caused scandals with his forward-looking works. The Sarcasms for piano, Op. 17 (1912), for example, make extensive use of polytonality, and Etudes, Op. 2 (1909) and Four Pieces, Op. 4 (1908) are highly chromatic and dissonant works. His first two piano concertos were composed around this time, the latter of which caused a scandal at its premiere (23 August 1913, Pavlovsk). According to one account, the audience left the hall with exclamations of "'To hell with this futuristic music! The cats on the roof make better music!'", but the modernists were in raptures.

In 1911 help arrived from renowned Russian musicologist and critic Alexander Ossovsky, who wrote a letter in strong support of Sergei Prokofiev to famous music publisher Boris P. Jurgenson, thus a contract was offered to the composer. Prokofiev made his first excursion out of Russia in 1913, travelling to Paris and London where he first encountered Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

In 1914, Prokofiev finished his career at the Conservatory by entering the so-called 'battle of the pianos', a competition open to the five best piano students for which the prize was a Schreder grand piano: Prokofiev won by performing his own Piano Concerto No. 1. Soon afterwards, he made a trip to London where he made contact with the impresario Diaghilev. Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev's first ballet, Ala and Lolli, but rejected the work in progress when Prokofiev brought it to him in Italy in 1915; however Diaghilev then commissioned Prokofiev to compose the ballet Chout. Under Diaghilev's guidance, Prokofiev chose his subject from a collection of folktales by the ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev; the story, concerning a buffoon and a series of confidence tricks he performs, had been previously suggested to Diaghilev by Igor Stravinsky as a possible subject for a ballet, and Diaghilev and his choreographer Léonide Massine helped Prokofiev to shape this into a ballet scenario. Prokofiev's relative lack of experience in ballet composing meant he subsequently agreed to revise the ballet extensively in the 1920s, following Diaghilev's detailed critique of the score, prior to its first production. The ballet's premiere in Paris on 17 May 1921 was a huge success and was greeted with great admiration by an audience that included Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel. Stravinsky called the ballet "the single piece of modern music he could listen to with pleasure," while Ravel called it "a work of genius."

During World War I, Prokofiev returned again to the Conservatory, now studying the organ in order to avoid conscription. He composed his opera The Gambler based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name, but the rehearsals were plagued by problems and the première scheduled for 1917 had to be cancelled because of the February Revolution. In the summer of that same year, Prokofiev composed his first symphony, the Classical. This was his own name for the symphony, which was written in the style that, according to Prokofiev, Joseph Haydn would have used if he had been alive at the time. Hence, the symphony is more or less classical in style but incorporates more modern musical elements .

This symphony was also an exact contemporary of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19, which was scheduled to premiere in November 1917. Political events, however, delayed the first performances of both works until 21 April 1918 and 18 October 1923, respectively. After a brief stay with his mother in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus, because of worries of the enemy capturing Petrograd (the new name for Saint Petersburg), he returned in 1918, but he was now determined to leave Russia, at least temporarily. In the current Russian state of unrest, he saw no room for his experimental music and, in May, he headed for the USA. Despite this, he had already developed acquaintances with senior Bolsheviks including Anatoly Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar for Education, who told him: "You are a revolutionary in music, we are revolutionaries in life. We ought to work together. But if you want to go to America I shall not stand in your way."

Arriving in San Francisco, after having been released from questioning by immigration on Angel Island on 11 August 1918, Prokofiev was soon compared to other famous Russian exiles (such as Sergei Rachmaninoff), and he started out successfully with a solo concert in New York, leading to several further engagements. He also received a contract for the production of his new opera The Love for Three Oranges but, due to illness and the death of the director, the premiere was postponed. This was another example of Prokofiev's bad luck in operatic matters. The failure also cost him his American solo career, since the opera took too much time and effort. He soon found himself in financial difficulties, and, in April 1920, he left for Paris, not wanting to return to Russia as a failure.

Paris was better prepared for Prokofiev's musical style. He reaffirmed his contacts with the Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He also returned to some of his older, unfinished works, such as the Third Piano Concerto. The Love for Three Oranges finally premièred in Chicago in December 1921, under the composer's baton.

In March 1922, Prokofiev moved with his mother to the town of Ettal in the Bavarian Alps for over a year so he could concentrate fully on his composing. Most of his time was spent on an opera project, The Fiery Angel, based on the novel The Fiery Angel by Valery Bryusov. By this time his later music had acquired a certain following in Russia, and he received invitations to return there, but he decided to stay in Europe. In 1923, he married the Spanish singer Lina Llubera (1897–1989), before moving back to Paris.

There, several of his works (for example the Second Symphony) were performed, but critical reception was lukewarm. However the Symphony appeared to prompt Diaghilev to commission another ballet from Prokofiev: this was Le Pas d'acier (The Steel Step), a 'modernist' score intended to portray the industrialisation of the Soviet Union. This was enthusiastically received by Parisian audiences and critics.

Prokofiev and Stravinsky restored their friendship, though Prokofiev did not particularly like Stravinsky's later works; it has been suggested that his use of text from Stravinsky's A Symphony of Psalms to characterise the invading Teutonic knights in the film score for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) was intended as an attack on Stravinsky's musical idiom. However, Stravinsky himself described Prokofiev as the greatest Russian composer of his day, other than Stravinsky himself.

Around 1927, the virtuoso's situation brightened; he had some exciting commissions from Diaghilev and made a number of concert tours in Russia; in addition, he enjoyed a very successful staging of The Love for Three Oranges in Leningrad (as Saint Petersburg was then known). Two older operas (one of them The Gambler) were also played in Europe and in 1928 Prokofiev produced his Third Symphony, which was broadly based on his unperformed opera The Fiery Angel. The conductor Sergei Koussevitzky characterized the Third as "the greatest symphony since Tchaikovsky's Sixth."

During 1928–29 Prokofiev composed what was to be the last ballet for Diaghilev, The Prodigal Son, which was staged on 21 May 1929 in Paris with Serge Lifar in the title role. Diaghilev died only months later.

In 1929, Prokofiev wrote the Divertimento, Op. 43 and revised his Sinfonietta, Op. 5/48, a work started in his days at the Conservatory. Prokofiev wrote in his autobiography that he could never understand why the Sinfonietta was so rarely performed, whereas the "Classical" Symphony was played everywhere. Later in this year, however, he suffered a car accident, which slightly injured his hands and prevented him from performing in Moscow, but in turn permitted him to enjoy contemporary Russian music. After his hands healed, he made a new attempt at touring in the United States, and this time he was received very warmly, propped up by his recent success in Europe. This, in turn, propelled him to commence a major tour through Europe.

In 1930 Prokofiev began his first non-Diaghilev ballet On the Dnieper, Op. 51, a work commissioned by Serge Lifar, who had been appointed maitre de ballet at the Paris Opéra. The years 1931 and 1932 saw the completion of Prokofiev's fourth and fifth piano concertos. The following year saw the completion of the Symphonic Song, Op. 57, a darkly scored piece in one movement.

In the early 1930s, Prokofiev was starting to long for Russia again; he moved more and more of his premieres and commissions to his home country instead of Paris. One such was Lieutenant Kijé, which was commissioned as the score to a Soviet film. Another commission, from the Kirov Theater in Leningrad, was the ballet Romeo and Juliet. Today, this is one of Prokofiev's best-known works, and it contains some of the most inspired and poignant passages in his whole output. However, there were numerous problems related to the ballet's original 'happy end' (contrary to Shakespeare), and the premiere was postponed for several years.

In 1935, Prokofiev moved back to the Soviet Union permanently; his family came a year later. At this time, the official Soviet policy towards music changed; a special bureau, the "Composers' Union", was established in order to keep track of the artists and their doings. By limiting outside influences, these policies would gradually cause almost complete isolation of Soviet composers from the rest of the world. Both Prokofiev and Shostakovich came under particular scrutiny for "formalist tendencies." Forced to adapt to the new circumstances (whatever misgivings he had about them in private), Prokofiev wrote a series of "mass songs" (Opp. 66, 79, 89), using the lyrics of officially approved Soviet poets. At the same time Prokofiev also composed music for children (Three Songs for Children and Peter and the Wolf, among others) as well as the gigantic Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, which was banned from performance and had to wait until May 1966 for a partial premiere.

In 1938, Prokofiev collaborated with the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein on the historical epic Alexander Nevsky. For this he composed some of his most inventive dramatic music. Although the film had a very poor sound recording, Prokofiev adapted much of his score into a cantata, which has been extensively performed and recorded. In the wake of Alexander Nevsky's success, Prokofiev composed his first Soviet opera Semyon Kotko, which was intended to be produced by the director Vsevolod Meyerhold. However the première of the opera was postponed because Meyerhold was arrested on 20 June 1939 by the NKVD (Stalin's Secret Police), and shot on 2 February 1940. Only months after Meyerhold's arrest, Prokofiev was 'invited' to compose Zdravitsa (literally translated 'Cheers!', but more often given the English title Hail to Stalin) (Op. 85) to celebrate Joseph Stalin's 60th birthday.

Later in 1939, Prokofiev composed his Piano Sonatas Nos. 6, 7, and 8, Opp. 82–84, widely known today as the "War Sonatas." Premiered respectively by Prokofiev (No. 6: 8 April 1940), Sviatoslav Richter (No. 7: Moscow, 18 January 1943) and Emil Gilels (No. 8: Moscow, 30 December 1944), they were subsequently championed in particular by Richter. These sonatas contain some of Prokofiev's most dissonant music for the piano. Biographer Daniel Jaffé has argued that Prokofiev, "having forced himself to compose a cheerful evocation of the nirvana Stalin wanted everyone to believe he had created" (i.e. in Zdravitsa) then subsequently, in these three sonatas, "expressed his true feelings". As evidence of this, Jaffé has pointed out that the central movement of Sonata No. 7 opens with a theme based on a Robert Schumann Lieder, 'Wehmut' ('Sadness', which appears in Schumann's Liederkreis, Op. 39): the words to this translate "I can sometimes sing as if I were glad, yet secretly tears well and so free my heart. Nightingales... sing their song of longing from their dungeon's depth... everyone delights, yet no one feels the pain, the deep sorrow in the song." Ironically (though probably because, it appears, no one had noticed this musical allusion) Sonata No. 7 received a Stalin Prize (Second Class), and No. 8 a Stalin Prize First Class, even though the works have been subsequently interpreted as representing Prokofiev "venting his anger and frustration with the Soviet regime."

Prokofiev had been considering making an opera out of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace, when news of the German invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941 made the subject seem all the more timely. Prokofiev took two years to compose his original version of War and Peace. Because of the war he was evacuated together with a large number of other artists, initially to the Caucasus where he composed his Second String Quartet. By this time his relationship with the 25-year-old writer Mira Mendelson (1915–1968) had finally led to his separation from his wife Lina, although they were never technically divorced: indeed Prokofiev had tried to persuade Lina and their sons to accompany him as evacuees out of Moscow, but Lina opted to stay in Moscow.

During the war years, restrictions on style and the demand that composers should write in a 'socialist realist' style were slackened, and Prokofiev was generally able to compose dissonant and chromatic works. The Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 80, The Year 1941, Op. 90, and the Ballade for the Boy Who Remained Unknown, Op. 93 all came from this period. Some critics have said that the emotional springboard of the First Violin Sonata and many other of Prokofiev's compositions of this time "may have more to do with anti-Stalinism than the war", and most of his later works "resonated with darkly tragic ironies that can only be interpreted as critiques of Stalin's repressions."

In 1943 Prokofiev joined Eisenstein in Alma-Ata, the largest city in Kazakhstan, to compose more film music (Ivan the Terrible), and the ballet Cinderella (Op. 87), one of his most melodious and celebrated compositions. Early that year he also played excerpts from War and Peace to members of the Bolshoi Theatre collective. However, the Soviet government had opinions about the opera which resulted in numerous revisions. In 1944, Prokofiev moved to a composer's colony outside Moscow in order to compose his Fifth Symphony (Op. 100) which would turn out to be the most popular of all his symphonies, both within Russia and abroad. Shortly afterwards, he suffered a concussion after a fall due to chronic high blood pressure. He never fully recovered from this injury, which severely reduced his productivity rate in the ensuing years, though some of his last pieces were as fine as anything he had composed before.

Prokofiev had time to write his postwar Sixth Symphony and a ninth piano sonata (for Sviatoslav Richter) before the Party, as part of the so-called "Zhdanov Decree," suddenly changed its opinion about his music. The end of the war allowed overall creative attention to turn inward again, resulting in the Party tightening its reins on domestic artists. Prokofiev's music was now seen as a grave example of formalism, and was branded as 'anti-democratic'. With a number of his works banned, most concert and theatre administrators panicked and would not program Prokofiev's music at all, leaving him in severe financial straits.

On 20 February 1948, Prokofiev's wife Lina was arrested for 'espionage', as she tried to send money to her mother in Spain. She was sentenced to 20 years, but was eventually released after Stalin's death and later left the Soviet Union.

His latest opera projects were quickly cancelled by the Kirov Theatre. This snub, in combination with his declining health, caused Prokofiev to withdraw more and more from active musical life. His doctors ordered him to limit his activities, which resulted in him spending only an hour or two each day on composition. In 1949 he wrote his Cello Sonata in C, Op. 119, for the 22-year old Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave the first performance in 1950, with Sviatoslav Richter. The last public performance of his lifetime was the première of the Seventh Symphony in 1952, a piece of somewhat bittersweet character. The music was written for a children's television program.

Prokofiev died at the age of 61 on 5 March 1953: the same day as Joseph Stalin. He had lived near Red Square, and for three days the throngs gathered to mourn Stalin, making it impossible to carry Prokofiev's body out for the funeral service at the headquarters of the Soviet Composer's Union. Paper flowers and a taped recording of the funeral march from Romeo and Juliet had to be used, as all real flowers and musicians were reserved for Stalin's funeral. He is buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

The leading Soviet musical periodical reported Prokofiev's death as a brief item on page 116. The first 115 pages were devoted to the death of Stalin. Usually Prokofiev's death is attributed to cerebral hemorrhage (bleeding into the brain). Nevertheless it is known that he was persistently ill for eight years before he died, which is why the precise nature of Prokofiev's terminal illness is uncertain.

Lina Prokofieva outlived her estranged husband by many years, dying in London in early 1989. Royalties from her late husband's music provided her a modest income. Their sons Sviatoslav (born 1924), an architect, and Oleg (1928–1998), an artist, painter, sculptor and poet, have dedicated a large part of their lives to the promotion of their father's life and work.

MANUEL DE FALLA (1876 - 1946)
- March 16, 2011: Principal Players Series
Works Presented:
- Suite Populaire Espagnole
Manuel de Falla was born in Cádiz. His early teacher in music was his mother; at the age of 9 he was introduced to his first piano professor. Little is known of that period of his life, but his relationship with his teacher was likely conflicted. From the late 1890s he studied music in Madrid, piano with José Tragó and composition with Felipe Pedrell. In 1899 by unanimous vote he was awarded the first prize at the piano competition at his school of music.

It was from Pedrell, during the Madrid period, that Falla became interested in native Spanish music, particularly Andalusian flamenco (specifically cante jondo), the influence of which can be strongly felt in many of his works. Among his early pieces are a number of zarzuelas, but his first important work was the one-act opera La vida breve (Life is Short, or The Brief Life, written in 1905, though revised before its premiere in 1913).

Falla spent the years 1907 to 1914 in Paris, where he met a number of composers who had an influence on his style, including the impressionists Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Paul Dukas. He wrote little more music, however, until his return to Madrid at the beginning of World War I. While at no stage was he a prolific composer, it was then that he entered into his mature creative period.

In Madrid he composed several of his best known pieces, including:

• The nocturne for piano and orchestra Nights in the Gardens of Spain (Noches en los jardines de España, 1916)
• The ballet El amor brujo (Love the Magician, 1915) which includes the much excerpted and arranged Ritual Fire Dance
• The ballet The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife (El corregidor y la molinera) which, after revision, became The Three-Cornered Hat (El sombrero de tres picos, 1917) and was produced by Serge Diaghilev with set design and costumes by Pablo Picasso.

From 1921 to 1939 Manuel de Falla lived in Granada, where he organized the Concurso de Cante Jondo in 1922. In Granada he wrote the puppet opera El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show, 1923) and a concerto for harpsichord and chamber ensemble (1926). The puppet opera marked the first time the harpsichord had entered the modern orchestra; and the concerto was the first for harpsichord written in the 20th Century. Both of these works were written with Wanda Landowska in mind. In these works, the Spanish folk influence is somewhat less apparent than a kind of Stravinskian neoclassicism.

Also in Granada, Falla began work on the large-scale orchestral cantata Atlàntida (Atlantis), based on the Catalan text L'Atlàntida by Jacint Verdaguer. Falla considered Atlàntida to be the most important of all his works. Verdaguer's text gives a mythological account of how the submersion of Atlantis created the Atlantic ocean, thus separating Spain and Latin America, and how later the Spanish discovery of America reunited what had always belonged together. Falla continued work on the cantata after moving to Argentina in 1939, following Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. The orchestration of the piece remained incomplete at his death and was completed posthumously by Ernesto Halffter.

He died in Alta Gracia, in the Argentine province of Córdoba. In 1947 his remains were brought back to Spain and entombed in the cathedral at Cádiz. One of the lasting honors to his memory is the Manuel de Falla Chair of Music in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at Complutense University of Madrid. His image appeared on Spanish currency notes for some years. Manuel de Falla never married and had no children.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862 - 1918)
- May, 2011: Exciting Young Virtuosos
Works Presented:
- Rhapsody for Clarinet and Piano, L.98
Achille-Claude Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. Debussy is among the most important of all French composers, and a central figure in European music of the turn of the 20th century. He was made Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1903.

His music is noted for its sensory component and how it is not often formed around one key or pitch. Often Debussy's work reflected the activities or turbulence in his own life. His music virtually defines the transition from late-Romantic music to 20th century modernist music. In French literary circles, the style of this period was known as symbolism, a movement that directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.

Claude Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1862, the eldest of five children. His father, Manuel-Achille Debussy, owned a shop where he sold china and crockery, and his mother, Victorine Manoury Debussy, was a seamstress. They moved to Paris in 1867. In 1870, his pregnant mother sought refuge from the Franco-Prussian war with a paternal aunt of Claude's in Cannes and it was here that he began piano lessons when he was seven years old with an elderly Italian violinist named Cerutti; his lessons were paid for by his aunt. In 1871, the young Debussy gained the attention of Marie Mauté de Fleurville, who claimed to have been a pupil of Frédéric Chopin, and Debussy always believed her, although there is no independent evidence that she was. His talents soon became evident, and in 1872, at age ten, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he spent eleven years. During his time there he studied composition with Ernest Guiraud, music history/theory with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, harmony with Émile Durand, piano with Antoine François Marmontel, organ with César Franck, and solfège with Albert Lavignac, as well as other significant figures of the era. He also became lifelong friend of fellow student and noted pianist Isidor Philipp. After Debussy's death, many pianists sought out Philipp for advice on playing his music.

From the start, though clearly talented, Debussy was also argumentative and experimental, and he challenged the rigid teaching of the Academy, favoring instead dissonances and intervals which were frowned upon at the time. Like Georges Bizet, Debussy was a brilliant pianist and an outstanding sight reader, who could have had a professional career as such had he so wished. The pieces he played in public at this time included sonata movements by Beethoven, Schumann and Weber; and Chopin - the Ballade No. 2, a movement from the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Allegro de Concert, a relatively little-known piece that demands an even higher degree of virtuosity than either of the concertos.

From 1880 to 1882, he lived in Russia as music teacher to the children of Nadezhda von Meck, the patroness of Tchaikovsky. Despite von Meck's closeness with Tchaikovsky, the Russian master appears to have had little or no effect on Debussy. In September 1880 she sent Debussy's Danse bohémienne for Tchaikovsky's perusal. A month later Tchaikovsky wrote back to her, "It is a very pretty piece, but it is much too short. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, and it lacks unity". Debussy did not publish the piece; the manuscript remained in the von Meck family, and it was sold to B. Schott's Sohne in Mainz, and published by them in 1932. More influential was Debussy's close friendship with Madame Vasnier, a singer he met when he began working as an accompanist to earn some money. She and her husband gave Debussy emotional and professional support. Monsieur Vasnier introduced him to the writings of influential French writers of the time which gave rise to his first songs, settings of poems by Paul Verlaine, his former teacher Mme. Mauté de Fleurville's son-in-law.

As the winner of the 1884 Prix de Rome with his composition L'Enfant prodigue, he received a scholarship to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four-year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, to further his studies (1885-1887). According to letters to Madame Vasnier, perhaps in part designed to gain her sympathy, he found the artistic atmosphere stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the monastic quarters "abominable". Neither did he delight in the pleasures of the "Eternal City", finding the Italian opera of Donizetti and Verdi not to his taste. Debussy was often depressed and unable to compose, but he was inspired by Franz Liszt, whose command of the keyboard he found admirable.

In June 1885, Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way, saying, "I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas."

Debussy finally composed four pieces that were sent to the Academy: the symphonic ode Zuleima, based on a text by Heinrich Heine; the orchestral piece Printemps; the cantata La damoiselle élue (1887-1888), which was criticized by the Academy as "bizarre"; and the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. The third piece was the first in which stylistic features of Debussy's later style emerged. The fourth piece was heavily based on César Franck's music and withdrawn by Debussy himself. Overall, the Academy chided him for "courting the unusual" and hoped for something better from the gifted student. Even though Debussy showed touches of Jules Massenet in his efforts, Massenet himself concluded, "He is an enigma."

In his visits to Bayreuth in 1888-9, Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opera, which had a lasting impact on his work. Richard Wagner had died in 1883 and the cult of Wagnerism was still in full swing. Debussy, like many young musicians of the time, responded positively to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies, but ultimately Wagner's extroverted emotionalism was not to be Debussy's way either. Wagner's influence is evident in La damoiselle élue and the 1889 piece Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire. Other songs of the period, notably the settings of Verlaine—Ariettes oubliées, Trois mélodies, and Fêtes galantes are all in a more capricious style. Around this time, Debussy met Erik Satie, who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition and to naming his pieces. During this period, both musicians were bohemians enjoying the same cafe society and struggling to stay afloat financially.

During 1889, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Debussy heard Javanese gamelan music. Although direct citations of gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, or ensemble textures have not been located in any of Debussy's own compositions, the equal-tempered pentatonic scale appears in his music of this time and afterward.

Debussy's private life was often turbulent. At the age of 18 he began an eight-year affair with Madame Blanche Vasnier, wife of a wealthy Parisian lawyer. The relationship eventually faltered following his winning of the Prix de Rome and obligatory incarceration in the eponymous city.

On his permanent return to Paris in 1889, he began a tempestuous nine-year relationship with Gabrielle ('Gaby') Dupont, a tailor's daughter from Lisieux, with whom he cohabited on the Rue Gustave Doré. During this time he also had an affair with the singer Thérèse Roger, to whom he was briefly engaged.

He left Dupont for her friend Rosalie ('Lily') Texier, a fashion model whom he married in 1899. Although Texier was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well-liked by Debussy's friends and associates, he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. In 1904, Debussy was introduced to Emma, wife of Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac, by her son Raoul, one of his students. In contrast to Texier, Bardac was a sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. Debussy soon abandoned Texier; distraught, like Dupont before her, she attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest while standing in the Place de la Concorde. She survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life.

The scandal obliged Debussy and Bardac (already carrying his child) to elope to England, via Jersey, in April 1905. The couple ultimately settled at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, where Debussy was to complete his symphonic suite La Mer, and celebrate his divorce from Texier on August 2, 1905. Claude and Emma returned to Paris that autumn in time for the birth of their child, a daughter (and the composer's only child), Claude-Emma, on 30 October. More affectionately known as 'Chouchou', Claude-Emma was the dedicatee of Debussy's Children's Corner suite; she outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919. Her parents were eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring until Debussy's death in 1918.

Claude Debussy died of rectal cancer in Paris on March 25, 1918, in the midst of the aerial and artillery bombardment of the city during the Spring Offensive of World War I. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets to Père Lachaise cemetery as shells from the German guns ripped into his beloved city. At this time, the military situation in France was desperate, and circumstances did not permit his being paid the honour of a public funeral or ceremonious graveside orations. It was just eight months before France would celebrate victory. Debussy's body was reinterred shortly afterwards in the small Cimetière de Passy sequestered behind the Trocadéro; his wife and daughter are buried with him. French culture has ever since celebrated Debussy as one of its most distinguished representatives.

ZOLTÁN KODÁLY (1882 - 1967)
- May, 2011: Exciting Young Virtuosos
Works Presented:
- Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7
Born in Kecskemét, Kodály's father was a stationmaster and keen amateur musician, and Kodály learned to play the violin as a child. He also sang in a cathedral choir and wrote music, despite having little formal musical education.

In 1900, Kodály entered the University of Budapest to study modern languages, and began to study music at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where Hans Koessler taught him composition.

One of the first people to undertake the serious study of folk tales, Kodály became one of the most significant early figures in the field of ethnomusicology. In 1905 he visited remote villages to collect songs recording them on phonograph cylinders. In 1906 he wrote the thesis on Hungarian folk song ("Strophic Construction in Hungarian Folksong"). Around this time Kodály met fellow composer Béla Bartók, whom he took under his wing and introduced to some of the methods involved in folk song collecting. The two became lifelong friends and champions of each other's music.

After gaining his PhD in philosophy and linguistics, Kodály went to Paris where he studied with Charles Widor. There he discovered and absorbed various influences, notably the music of Claude Debussy. In 1907 he moved back to Budapest and gained a professorship at the Academy of Music there. He continued his folk music-collecting expeditions through World War I without interruption.

Kodály had composed throughout this time, producing two String quartets (op.2, 1909 and op.10, 1917 respectively), Sonata for cello and piano (op.4, 1910) and Sonata for cello solo (Op. 8, 1915), and his Duo for violin and cello (op.7, 1914). All these works show a great originality of form and content, a very interesting blend of highly sophisticated mastery in the Western-European style of music, including classical, late-romantic, impressionistic and modernist tradition and at the other hand profound knowledge and respect for the folk music on Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Albania and other Eastern-European countries. Due to the outbreak of the First World War and subsequent major geopolitical changes in the region and partly because of the personal shyness Kodály had no major public success until 1923 when his Psalmus Hungaricus premiered at a concert to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest (Bartók's Dance Suite premiered on the same occasion.) Following this success, Kodály travelled throughout Europe to conduct his music.

Kodály was very interested in the problems of music education, and wrote a large amount of material on music education methods as well as composing a large amount of music for children. Beginning in 1935, along with colleague Jenö Ádám, he embarked on a long term project to reform music teaching in the lower and middle schools. His work resulted in the publication of several highly influential books and he had a profound impact on musical education both inside and outside his home country. The Hungarian music education method that developed in the 1940's became the basis for what is called the "Kodály Method". Kodaly himself did not write a comprehensive method, but he did establish a set of principles to follow in music education.

He continued to compose for professional ensembles also, with the Dances of Marosszék (1930, in versions for solo piano and for full orchestra), the Dances of Galanta (1933, for orchestra), the Peacock Variations (1939, commissioned by the Concertgebouw Orchestra to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary) and the Missa Brevis (1944, for soloists, chorus, orchestra and organ) among his better known works. The suite from his opera Háry János (1926) also became well known, though few productions of the opera itself take place. It was first performed in Budapest and conductors such as Toscanini, Mengelberg and Furtwangler have included this piece in their repertoires.

Kodály remained in Budapest through World War II, retiring from teaching in 1942. In 1945 he became the president of the Hungarian Arts Council, and in 1962 received the Order of the Hungarian People's Republic. His other posts included a presidency of the International Folk Music Council, and honorary presidency of the International Society for Music Education. He died in Budapest in 1967, one of the most respected and well known figures in the Hungarian arts.

In 1966, the year before Kodály's death, the Kodály Quartet, a string quartet named in Kodály's honour, formed.

His notable students include Anne Lauber and John Verrall.

In the motion picture, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" a visual learning aid distributed to members of a conference of UFOlogist was named "Zoltan Kodaly" and referenced musical notes as hand signals.

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881 - 1945)
- May, 2011: Exciting Young Virtuosos
Works Presented:
- Contrasts, Sz. 111
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered to be one of the greatest composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology.

Béla Bartók was born in the small Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in Austria-Hungary (now Sânnicolau Mare, Romania) on March 25, 1881. He displayed notable musical talent very early in life: according to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano even before he learned to speak in complete sentences. By the age of four, he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano and his mother began formally teaching him the next year.

Béla was a small and sickly child and suffered from a painful chronic rash until the age of five. In 1888, when he was seven, his father (the director of an agricultural school) died suddenly. Béla's mother then took him and his sister, Erzsebet, to live in Nagyszőlős (today Vinogradiv, Ukraine) and then to Pozsony (German: Pressburg, today Bratislava, Slovakia). In Pozsony, Béla gave his first public recital at age eleven to a warm critical reception. Among the pieces he played was his own first composition, written two years previously: a short piece called "The Course of the Danube" (de Toth 1999). Shortly thereafter László Erkel accepted him as a pupil.

Bartók studied piano under István Thomán, a former student of Franz Liszt, and composition under János Koessler at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest from 1899 to 1903. There he met Zoltán Kodály, who influenced him greatly and became his lifelong friend and colleague. In 1903, Bartók wrote his first major orchestral work, Kossuth, a symphonic poem which honored Lajos Kossuth, hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.

The music of Richard Strauss, whom he met in 1902 at the Budapest premiere of Also sprach Zarathustra, was very influential on his early work. When visiting a holiday resort in the summer of 1904, Bartók overheard the eighteen-year-old nanny, Lidi Dósa from Kibéd in Maros-Torda in Transylvania sing folk songs to the children under her care. This sparked his life-long dedication to folk music. From 1907 his music also began to be influenced by Claude Debussy, whose compositions Kodály had brought back from Paris. Bartók's large-scale orchestral works were still in the style of Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss, but also around this time he wrote a number of small piano pieces which show his growing interest in folk music. The first piece to show clear signs of this new interest is the String Quartet No. 1 in A minor (1908), which contains folk-like elements.

In 1907, Bartók began teaching as a piano professor at the Royal Academy. This position freed him from touring Europe as a pianist and enabled him to stay in Hungary. Among his notable students were Fritz Reiner, Sir Georg Solti, György Sándor, Ernő Balogh, Lili Kraus, and, after Bartók moved to the United States, Jack Beeson and Violet Archer.

In 1908, inspired by both their own interest in folk music and by the contemporary resurgence of interest in traditional national culture, he and Kodály travelled into the countryside to collect and research old Magyar folk melodies. Their findings came as a surprise: Magyar folk music had previously been categorised as Gypsy music. The classic example of this misconception is Franz Liszt's famous Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano, which were based on popular art-songs performed by Gypsy bands of the time. In contrast, the old Magyar folk melodies discovered by Bartók and Kodály bore little resemblance to the popular music performed by these Gypsy bands. Instead, they found that many of the folk-songs are based on pentatonic scales similar to those in Oriental folk traditions, such as those of Central Asia and Siberia.

Bartók and Kodály quickly set about incorporating elements of real Magyar peasant music into their compositions. Both Bartók and Kodály frequently quoted folk songs verbatim and wrote pieces derived entirely from authentic folk melodies. An example is his two volumes entitled For Children for solo piano containing 80 folk tunes to which he wrote accompaniment. Bartók's style in his art music compositions was a synthesis of folk music, classicism, and modernism. His melodic and harmonic sense was profoundly influenced by the folk music of Hungary, Romania, and many other nations, and he was especially fond of the asymmetrical dance rhythms and pungent harmonies found in Bulgarian music. Most of his early compositions offer a blend of nationalist and late Romanticism elements.

In 1909, Bartók married Márta Ziegler. Their son, Béla II, was born in 1910. In 1911, Bartók wrote what was to be his only opera, Bluebeard's Castle, dedicated to Márta. He entered it for a prize awarded by the Hungarian Fine Arts Commission, which rejected it out of hand as un-stageworthy. In 1917 Bartók revised the score in preparation for the 1918 première, for which he rewrote the ending. Following the 1919 revolution, he was pressured by the government to remove the name of the blacklisted librettist Béla Balázs (by then a refugee in Vienna) from the opera. Bluebeard's Castle received only one revival, in 1936, before Bartók emigrated. For the remainder of his life, although he was passionately devoted to Hungary, its people and its culture, he never felt much loyalty to its government or its official establishments.

After his disappointment over the Fine Arts Commission prize, Bartók wrote little for two or three years, preferring to concentrate on collecting and arranging folk music. He collected first in the Carpathian Basin (the then Kingdom of Hungary), where he notated Hungarian, Slovakian, Romanian and Bulgarian folk music. He also collected in Moldavia, Wallachia and in 1913 in Algeria. However, the outbreak of World War I forced him to stop these expeditions, and he returned to composing, writing the ballet The Wooden Prince in 1914–16 and the String Quartet No. 2 in 1915–17, both influenced by Debussy. It was The Wooden Prince which gave him some degree of international fame.

Raised as a Roman Catholic, Bartók had by his early adulthood become an atheist and considered the existence of God as undecidable and unnecessary. He later became attracted to Unitarianism and publicly converted to the Unitarian faith in 1916. His son later became president of the Hungarian Unitarian Church.

He subsequently worked on another ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin influenced by Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, as well as Richard Strauss, following this up with his two violin sonatas (written in 1921 and 1922 respectively) which are harmonically and structurally some of the most complex pieces he wrote. The Miraculous Mandarin, a sordid modern story of prostitution, robbery, and murder, was started in 1918, but not performed until 1926 because of its sexual content. He wrote his third and fourth string quartets in 1927–28, after which his compositions demonstrate his mature style. Notable examples of this period are Divertimento for String Orchestra BB 118 (1939) and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936). The String Quartet No. 5 (1934) is written in somewhat more traditional style. Bartók wrote his sixth and last string quartet in 1939, the sadness of which has been related to the death of Bartók’s mother and the looming war in Europe.

Bartók divorced Márta in 1923, and married a piano student, Ditta Pásztory. His second son, Péter, was born in 1924.

In 1936 he travelled to Turkey to collect and study folk music. He worked in collaboration with Turkish composer Ahmet Adnan Saygun mostly around Adana.

In 1940, as the European political situation worsened after the outbreak of World War II, Bartók was increasingly tempted to flee Hungary. He was strongly opposed to the Nazis and Hungary’s siding with Germany. After the Nazis had come to power in Germany, he refused to give concerts there and broke from his German publisher. His views caused him a great deal of trouble with the establishment in Hungary. Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, Bartók reluctantly emigrated to the U.S. with Ditta Pásztory. They settled in New York City. After joining them in 1942, Péter Bartók enlisted in the United States Navy. Béla Bartók, Jr. remained in Hungary.

Bartók never became fully at home in the U.S. He initially found it difficult to compose. Although well-known in America as a pianist, ethnomusicologist and teacher, he was not well known as a composer and there was little interest in his music during his final years. He and his wife Ditta gave concerts. Bartók, who had made some recordings in Hungary also recorded for Columbia Records after he came to the U.S; many of these recordings (some with Bartók's own spoken introductions) were later issued on LP and CD.

For several years, supported by a research fellowship from Columbia University, Bartók and his wife worked on a large collection of Serbian and Croatian folk songs in Columbia's libraries. Bartók's difficulties during his first years in the US were mitigated by publication royalties, teaching and performance tours. While their finances were always precarious, it is a myth that he lived and died in abject poverty and neglect. There were enough supporters to ensure that there was sufficient money and work available for him to live on. Bartók was a proud man and did not easily accept charity. Though he was not a member of ASCAP, the society paid for any medical care he needed in his last two years and Bartók accepted this .

The first symptoms of his leukemia began in 1940, when his right shoulder began to show signs of stiffening. In 1942 symptoms increased and he started having bouts of fever but the disease was not diagnosed in spite of medical examinations. Finally, in April 1944, leukemia was diagnosed but by this time little could be done.

As his body failed, Bartók's creative energy reawakened and he produced a final set of masterpieces, partly thanks to the violinist Joseph Szigeti and the conductor Fritz Reiner (Reiner had been Bartók's friend and champion since his days as Bartók's student at the Royal Academy). Bartók's last work might well have been the String Quartet No. 6 but for Serge Koussevitsky's commission for the Concerto for Orchestra. Koussevitsky's Boston Symphony Orchestra premièred the work in December 1944 to highly positive reviews. Concerto for Orchestra quickly became Bartók's most popular work, although he did not live to see its full impact. He was also commissioned in 1944 by Yehudi Menuhin to write a Sonata for Solo Violin. In 1945 Bartók composed his Piano Concerto No. 3, a graceful and almost neo-classical work and he began work on his Viola Concerto. He had not completed the scoring at his death.

Bartók died in New York from leukemia (specifically, of secondary polycythemia) on September 26, 1945 at age 64. His funeral was attended by only ten people, including his friend the pianist György Sándor. Bartok's body was initially interred in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York but during the final year of communist Hungary in the late 1980s, his remains were transferred to Budapest for a state funeral on July 7, 1988 with interment in Budapest's Farkasréti Cemetery.

He left his Third Piano Concerto almost finished at his death. For the Viola Concerto he only left the viola part and sketches of the orchestra part. Both works were later completed by his pupil, Tibor Serly. György Sándor was the soloist in the first performance of the Third Piano Concerto on February 8, 1946. The Viola Concerto was revised and polished in the 1990s by Bartók's son, Peter and this version may be closer to what Bartók may have intended.

There is a statue of Béla Bartók in Brussels, Belgium near the central train station in a public square, Spanjeplein-Place d'Espagne. Another statue stands in London, opposite South Kensington Underground Station. Still another is in front of one of the houses that Bartók owned in the hills above Budapest, which is now a museum.

Bartók's music reflects two trends that dramatically changed the sound of music in the 20th century: the breakdown of the diatonic system of harmony that had served composers for the previous two hundred years; and the revival of nationalism as a source for musical inspiration, a trend that began with Mikhail Glinka and Antonín Dvořák in the last half of the 19th century. In his search for new forms of tonality, Bartók turned to Hungarian folk music, as well as to other folk music of the Carpathian Basin and even of Algeria and Turkey; and in so doing he became influential in that stream of modernism which exploited indigenous music and techniques.

One characteristic style of music is his Night music, which he used mostly in slow movements of multi-movement ensemble or orchestral compositions in his mature period. It is characterised by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies". An example is the third movement Adagio of his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

The works of his youth are of a late-Romantic style. Between 1890 and 1894 (nine to 13 years of age) he wrote 31 pieces with corresponding opus numbers. He started numbering his works anew with ‘opus 1’ in 1894 with his first large scale work, a piano sonata. Up to 1902, Bartók wrote in total 74 works which can be considered in Romantic style. Most of these early compositions are either scored for piano solo or include a piano. Additionally, there is some chamber music for strings. Compared to his later achievements, these works are of less importance.

Under the influence of Richard Strauss (among others Also sprach Zarathustra), Bartók composed in 1903 Kossuth, a symphonic poem in ten tableaux. In 1904 followed his Rhapsody for piano and orchestra which he numbered opus 1 again, marking it himself as the start of a new era in his music. An even more important occurrence of this year was his overhearing the eighteen-year-old nanny Lidi Dósa from Transylvania sing folk songs, sparking Bartók’s life long dedication to folk music. When criticised for not composing his own melodies Bartók pointed out that Molière and Shakespeare mostly based their plays on well-known stories too. Regarding the incorporation of folk music into art music he said:

The question is, what are the ways in which peasant music is taken over and becomes transmuted into modern music? We may, for instance, take over a peasant melody unchanged or only slightly varied, write an accompaniment to it and possibly some opening and concluding phrases. This kind of work would show a certain analogy with Bach’s treatment of chorales. Another method is the following: the composer does not make use of a real peasant melody but invents his own imitation of such melodies. There is no true difference between this method and the one described above. There is yet a third way. Neither peasant melodies nor imitations of peasant melodies can be found in his music, but it is pervaded by the atmosphere of peasant music. In this case we may say, he has completely absorbed the idiom of peasant music which has become his musical mother tongue.

Bartók became first acquainted with Debussy’s music in 1907 and regarded his music highly. In an interview in 1939 Bartók said

"Debussy's great service to music was to reawaken among all musicians an awareness of harmony and its possibilities. In that, he was just as important as Beethoven, who revealed to us the possibilities of progressive form, or as Bach, who showed us the transcendent significance of counterpoint. Now, what I am always asking myself is this: is it possible to make a synthesis of these three great masters, a living synthesis that will be valid for our time?"

Debussy's influence is present in the Fourteen Bagatelles (1908). These made Ferruccio Busoni exclaim ‘At last something truly new!’. Until 1911, Bartók composed widely differing works which ranged from adherence to romantic-style, to folk song arrangements and to his modernist opera Bluebeard’s Castle. The negative reception of his work led him to focus on folk music research after 1911 and abandon composition with the exception of folk music arrangements.

His pessimistic attitude towards composing was lifted by the stormy and inspiring contact with Klára Gombossy in the summer of 1915. This interesting episode in Bartók's life remained hidden until it was researched by Denijs Dille between 1979 and 1989. Bartók started composing again, including the Suite for piano opus 14 (1916), and The Miraculous Mandarin (1918) and he completed The Wooden Prince (1917).

Bartók felt the result of World War I as a personal tragedy . Many regions he loved were severed from Hungary: Transylvania, the Banat where he was born, and Pozsony where his mother lived. Additionally, the political relations between Hungary and the other successor states to the Austro-Hungarian empire prohibited his folk music research outside of Hungary. Thrown largely onto himself, he experimented with extreme compositional practices, the peak being his Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 (Op. 21) and No. 2. Bartók also wrote the noteworthy Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs in 1920, and the sunny Dance Suite in 1923, the year of his second marriage.

In 1926, Bartók needed a significant piece for piano and orchestra with which he could tour in Europe and America. In the preparation for writing his First Piano Concerto, he wrote his Sonata, Out of Doors, and Nine Little Pieces, all for solo piano. He increasingly found his own voice in his maturity. The style of his last period—named "Synthesis of East and West" —is hard to define let alone to put under one term. In his mature period, Bartók wrote relatively few works but most of them are large-scale compositions for large settings. Only his voice works have programmatic titles and his late works often adhere to classical forms.

Among his masterworks are all the six String quartets (1908, 1917, 1927, 1928, 1934, and 1939), the Cantata Profana (1930, Bartók declared that this was the work he felt and professed to be his most personal "credo", , the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936), the Concerto for Orchestra (1943) and the Third Piano Concerto (1945).

Bartók also made a lasting contribution to the literature for younger students: for his son Péter's music lessons, he composed Mikrokosmos, a six-volume collection of graded piano pieces.

Paul Wilson lists as the most prominent characteristics of Bartók's music from late 1920s onwards the influence of the Carpathian basin and European art music, and his changing attitude toward (and use of) tonality, but without the use of the traditional harmonic functions associated with major and minor scales .

Although Bartók claimed in his writings that his music is always tonal, it rarely uses the chords or scales of tonality, and so the descriptive resources of tonal theory are of limited use. George Perle and Elliott Antokoletz focus on alternative methods of signaling tonal centers, via axes of inversional symmetry. Others view Bartok's axes of symmetry in terms of atonal analytic protocols. Richard Cohn argues that inversional symmetry is often a byproduct of another atonal procedure, the formation of chords from transpositionally related dyads. Atonal pitch-class theory also furnishes the resources for exploring polymodal chromaticism, projected sets, privileged patterns, and large set types used as source sets such as the equal tempered twelve tone aggregate, octatonic scale (and alpha chord), the diatonic and heptatonia seconda seven-note scales, and less often the whole tone scale and the primary pentatonic collection.

He rarely used the simple aggregate actively to shape musical structure, though there are notable examples such as the second theme from the first movement of his Second Violin Concerto, commenting that he "wanted to show Schoenberg that one can use all twelve tones and still remain tonal" . More thoroughly, in the first eight measures of the last movement of his Second Quartet, all notes gradually gather with the twelfth (G♭) sounding for the first time on the last beat of measure 8, marking the end of the first section. The aggregate is partitioned in the opening of the Third String Quartet with C♯–D–D♯–E in the accompaniment (strings) while the remaining pitch classes are used in the melody (violin 1) and more often as 7-35 (diatonic or "white-key" collection) and 5-35 (pentatonic or "black-key" collection) such as in no. 6 of the Eight Improvisations. There, the primary theme is on the black keys in the left hand, while the right accompanies with triads from the white keys. In measures 50–51 in the third movement of the Fourth Quartet, the first violin and 'cello play black-key chords, while the second violin and viola play stepwise diatonic lines. On the other hand, from as early as the Suite for piano, op. 14 (1914), he occasionally employed a form of serialism based on compound interval cycles, some of which are maximally distributed, multi-aggregate cycles.

Erno Lendvai (1971) analyses Bartók's works as being based on two opposing tonal systems, that of the acoustic scale and the axis system, as well as using the golden section as a structural principle.

Milton Babbitt, in his 1949 critique of Bartók's string quartets, criticized Bartók for using tonality and non tonal methods unique to each piece. Babbitt noted that "Bartók's solution was a specific one, it cannot be duplicated" . Bartók's use of "two organizational principles"—tonality for large scale relationships and the piece-specific method for moment to moment thematic elements—was a problem for Babbitt, who worried that the "highly attenuated tonality" requires extreme non-harmonic methods to create a feeling of closure.

The cataloguing of Bartók's works is somewhat complex. Bartók assigned opus numbers to his works three times, the last of these series ending with the Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, Op. 21 in 1921. He ended this practice because of the difficulty of distinguishing between original works and ethnographic arrangements, and between major and minor works. Since his death, three attempts—two full and one partial—have been made at cataloguing. The first, and still most widely used, is András Szőllősy's chronological Sz. numbers, from 1 to 121. Denijs Dille subsequently reorganised the juvenilia (Sz. 1–25) thematically, as DD numbers 1 to 77. The most recent catalogue is that of László Somfai; this is a chronological index with works identified by BB numbers 1 to 129, incorporating corrections based on the Béla Bartók Thematic Catalogue.

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833 - 1897)
- May, 2011: Exciting Young Virtuosos

Works Presented:
- Clarinet Trio, Op. 114
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs. Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he gave the first performance of many of his own works; he also worked with the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished.

Brahms was at once a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined method of composition for which Bach is famous, and also of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Beethoven. Brahms aimed to honour the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as the progressive Arnold Schoenberg and the conservative Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.

Brahms's father, Johann Jakob Brahms (1806–72), came to Hamburg from Dithmarschen, seeking a career as a town musician. He was proficient on several instruments, but found employment mostly playing the horn and double bass. In 1830, he married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen (1789–1865), a seamstress never previously married, who was seventeen years older than he was. Johannes Brahms had an older sister and a younger brother. Initially, they lived near the city docks, in the Gängeviertel quarter of Hamburg, for six months, before moving to a small house on the Dammtorwall, located on the northern perimeter of Hamburg, in the Inner Alster.

Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training. He studied piano from the age of seven with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. It is a long-told tale that Brahms was forced in his early teens to play the piano in bars that doubled as brothels; recently, Brahms scholar Kurt Hoffman has suggested that this legend is false. Since Brahms himself clearly originated the story, however, some have questioned Hoffman's theory.

For a time, Brahms also studied the cello. After his early piano lessons with Otto Cossel, Brahms studied piano with Eduard Marxsen, who had studied in Vienna with Ignaz von Seyfried (a pupil of Mozart) and Carl Maria von Bocklet (a close friend of Schubert). The young Brahms gave a few public concerts in Hamburg, but did not become well known as a pianist until he made a concert tour at the age of nineteen. (In later life, he frequently took part in the performance of his own works, whether as soloist, accompanist, or participant in chamber music.) He conducted choirs from his early teens, and became a proficient choral and orchestral conductor.

He began to compose quite early in life, but later destroyed most copies of his first works; for instance, Louise Japha, a fellow-pupil of Marxsen, reported a piano sonata that Brahms had played or improvised at the age of 11. His compositions did not receive public acclaim until he went on a concert tour as accompanist to the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi in April and May 1853. On this tour he met Joseph Joachim at Hanover, and went on to the Court of Weimar where he met Franz Liszt, Peter Cornelius, and Joachim Raff. According to several witnesses of Brahms's meeting with Liszt (at which Liszt performed Brahms's Scherzo, Op. 4, at sight), Reményi was offended by Brahms's failure to praise Liszt's Sonata in B minor wholeheartedly (Brahms supposedly fell asleep during a performance of the recently composed work), and they parted company shortly afterwards. Brahms later excused himself, saying that he could not help it, having been exhausted by his travels.

Joachim had given Brahms a letter of introduction to Robert Schumann, and after a walking tour in the Rhineland, Brahms took the train to Düsseldorf, and was welcomed into the Schumann family on arrival there. Schumann, amazed by the 20 year-old's talent, published an article entitled "Neue Bahnen" (New Paths) in the October 28, 1853 issue of the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik alerting the public to the young man, who, he claimed, was "destined to give ideal expression to the times." This pronouncement was received with some scepticism outside of Schumann's immediate circle, and may have increased Brahms's naturally self-critical need to perfect his works and technique. While he was in Düsseldorf, Brahms participated with Schumann and Albert Dietrich in writing a sonata for Joachim; this is known as the "F-A-E Sonata" (German: Frei aber einsam). He became very attached to Schumann's wife, the composer and pianist Clara, fourteen years his senior, with whom he would carry on a lifelong, emotionally passionate, but probably platonic, relationship. Brahms never married, despite strong feelings for several women and despite entering into an engagement, soon broken off, with Agathe von Siebold in Göttingen in 1859. After Schumann's attempted suicide and subsequent confinement in a mental sanatorium near Bonn in February 1854, Brahms was the main intercessor between Clara and her husband, and found himself virtually head of the household.

After Schumann's death at the sanatorium in 1856, Brahms divided his time between Hamburg, where he formed and conducted a ladies' choir, and the principality of Detmold, where he was court music-teacher and conductor. He was the soloist at the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1859. He first visited Vienna in 1862, staying there over the winter, and, in 1863, was appointed conductor of the Vienna Singakademie. Though he resigned the position the following year, and entertained the idea of taking up conducting posts elsewhere, he based himself increasingly in Vienna and soon made his home there. From 1872 to 1875, he was director of the concerts of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde; afterwards, he accepted no formal position. He declined an honorary doctorate of music from University of Cambridge in 1877, but accepted one from the University of Breslau in 1879, and composed the Academic Festival Overture as a gesture of appreciation.

He had been composing steadily throughout the 1850s and 60s, but his music had evoked divided critical responses, and the Piano Concerto No. 1 had been badly received in some of its early performances. His works were labelled old-fashioned by the 'New German School' whose principal figures included Liszt and Richard Wagner. Brahms admired some of Wagner's music and admired Liszt as a great pianist, but the conflict between the two schools, known as the War of the Romantics, soon embroiled all of musical Europe. In the Brahms camp were his close friends: Clara Schumann, the influential music critic Eduard Hanslick, and the leading Viennese surgeon Theodor Billroth. In 1860, Brahms attempted to organize a public protest against some of the wilder excesses of the Wagnerians' music. This took the form of a manifesto, written by Brahms and Joachim jointly. The manifesto, which was published prematurely with only three supporting signatures, was a failure, and he never engaged in public polemics again.

It was the premiere of A German Requiem, his largest choral work, in Bremen, in 1868, that confirmed Brahms's European reputation and led many to accept that he had conquered Beethoven and the symphony. This may have given him the confidence finally to complete a number of works that he had wrestled with over many years, such as the cantata Rinaldo, his first string quartet, third piano quartet, and most notably his first symphony. This appeared in 1876, though it had been begun (and a version of the first movement seen by some of his friends) in the early 1860s. The other three symphonies then followed in 1877, 1883, and 1885. From 1881, he was able to try out his new orchestral works with the court orchestra of the Duke of Meiningen, whose conductor was Hans von Bülow. He was the soloist at the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1881.

Brahms frequently travelled, both for business (concert tours) and pleasure. From 1878 onwards, he often visited Italy in the springtime, and he usually sought out a pleasant rural location in which to compose during the summer. He was a great walker and especially enjoyed spending time in the open air, where he felt that he could think more clearly.

In 1889, one Theo Wangemann, a representative of American inventor Thomas Edison, visited the composer in Vienna and invited him to make an experimental recording. Brahms played an abbreviated version of his first Hungarian dance on the piano. The recording was later issued on an LP of early piano performances (compiled by Gregor Benko). Although the spoken introduction to the short piece of music is quite clear, the piano playing is largely inaudible due to heavy surface noise. Nevertheless, this remains the earliest recording made by a major composer. Analysts and scholars remain divided, however, as to whether the voice that introduces the piece is that of Wangemann or of Brahms. There have been various attempts to improve the quality of this historic recording; a "denoised" version was produced at Stanford University which claims to solve the mystery.

In 1889, Brahms was named an honorary citizen of Hamburg, until 1948 the only one born in Hamburg.

In 1890, the 57 year-old Brahms resolved to give up composing. However, as it turned out, he was unable to abide by his decision, and in the years before his death he produced a number of acknowledged masterpieces. His admiration for Richard Mühlfeld, clarinetist with the Meiningen orchestra, moved him to compose the Clarinet Trio, Op. 114, Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115 (1891), and the two Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120 (1894). He also wrote several cycles of piano pieces, Opp. 116–119, the Four Serious Songs (Vier ernste Gesänge), Op. 121 (1896), and the Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ, Op. 122 (1896).

While completing the Op. 121 songs, Brahms developed cancer (sources differ on whether this was of the liver or pancreas). His condition gradually worsened and he died on April 3, 1897. Brahms is buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.

Brahms wrote a number of major works for orchestra, including two serenades, four symphonies, two piano concertos (No. 1 in D minor; No. 2 in B flat major), a Violin Concerto, a Double Concerto for violin and cello, and two orchestral overtures, the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture.

His large choral work A German Requiem is not a setting of the liturgical Missa pro defunctis but a setting of texts which Brahms selected from the Lutheran Bible. The work was composed in three major periods of his life. An early version of the second movement was first composed in 1854, not long after Robert Schumann's attempted suicide, and this was later used in his first piano concerto. The majority of the Requiem was composed after his mother's death in 1865. The fifth movement was added after the official premiere in 1868, and the work was published in 1869.

Brahms's works in variation form include the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel and the Paganini Variations, both for solo piano, and the Variations on a Theme by Haydn in versions for two pianos and for orchestra. The final movement of the Fourth Symphony, Op. 98, is formally a passacaglia.

His chamber works include three string quartets, two string quintets, two string sextets, a clarinet quintet, a clarinet trio, a horn trio, a piano quintet, three piano quartets, and four piano trios (the fourth being published posthumously). He composed several instrumental sonatas with piano, including three for violin, two for cello, and two for clarinet (which were subsequently arranged for viola by the composer). His solo piano works range from his early piano sonatas and ballades to his late sets of character pieces. Brahms was a significant Lieder composer, who wrote over 200 songs. His chorale preludes for organ, Op. 122, which he wrote shortly before his death, have become an important part of the organist's repertoire.

Brahms strongly preferred writing absolute music that does not refer to an explicit scene or narrative, and he never wrote an opera or a symphonic poem.

Despite his reputation as a serious composer of large, complex musical structures, some of Brahms's most widely known and most commercially successful compositions during his life were small-scale works of popular intent aimed at the thriving contemporary market for domestic music-making; indeed, during the 20th century, the influential American critic B. H. Haggin, rejecting more mainstream views, argued in his various guides to recorded music that Brahms was at his best in such works and much less successful in larger forms. Among the most cherished of these lighter works by Brahms are his sets of popular dances—the Hungarian Dances, the Waltzes, Op. 39, for piano duet, and the Liebeslieder Waltzes for vocal quartet and piano—and some of his many songs, notably the Wiegenlied, Op. 49, No. 4 (published in 1868). This last was written (to a folk text) to celebrate the birth of a son to Brahms's friend Bertha Faber and is universally known as Brahms's Lullaby.

Brahms maintained a Classical sense of form and order in his works – in contrast to the opulence of the music of many of his contemporaries. Thus many admirers (though not necessarily Brahms himself) saw him as the champion of traditional forms and "pure music", as opposed to the "New German" embrace of programme music.

Brahms venerated Beethoven: in the composer's home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed, and some passages in his works are reminiscent of Beethoven's style. Brahms's First Symphony bears strongly a homage (or influence) from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as the two works are both in a formidable C Minor, and end in the struggle towards a C Major triumph. The main theme of the finale the First Symphony is also reminiscent of the main theme of the finale of Beethoven's Ninth, and when this resemblance was pointed out to Brahms, he replied that any ass – jeder Esel – could see that. In 1876, when the work was premiered in Vienna, it was immediately hailed as "Beethoven's Tenth".

A German Requiem was partially inspired by his mother's death in 1865 (at which time he composed a funeral march that was to become the basis of Part Two, Denn alles Fleisch), but it also incorporates material from a Symphony which he started in 1854 but abandoned following Schumann's suicide attempt. He once wrote that the Requiem "belonged to Schumann". The first movement of this abandoned Symphony was re-worked as the first movement of the First Piano Concerto.

Brahms also loved the Classical composers Mozart and Haydn. He collected first editions and autographs of their works, and edited performing editions. He also studied the music of pre-classical composers, including Giovanni Gabrieli, Johann Adolph Hasse, Heinrich Schütz, and, especially, Johann Sebastian Bach. His friends included leading musicologists, and, with Friedrich Chrysander, he edited an edition of the works of François Couperin. He looked to older music for inspiration in the arts of strict counterpoint; the themes of some of his works are modelled on Baroque sources such as Bach's The Art of Fugue in the fugal finale of Cello Sonata No. 1 or the same composer's Cantata No. 150 in the passacaglia theme of the Fourth Symphony's finale.

The early Romantic composers also had a major influence on Brahms, particularly Schumann, who encouraged Brahms as a young composer. Brahms often met Robert and Clara Schumann. During his stay in Vienna in 1862–63, Brahms became particularly interested in the music of Franz Schubert. The latter's influence may be identified in works by Brahms dating from the period, such as the two piano quartets Op. 25 and Op. 26, and the Piano Quintet which alludes to Schubert's String Quintet and Grand Duo for piano four hands. There is less evidence for influence of Chopin and Mendelssohn on Brahms, although occasionally one can find in his works what seems to be an allusion to one of their works (for example, Brahms's Scherzo, Op. 4, alludes to Chopin's Scherzo in B-flat minor; the scherzo movement in Brahms's Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 5, alludes to the finale of Mendelssohn's Piano Trio in C minor).

Brahms considered giving up composition when it seemed that other composers' innovations in extended tonality would result in the rule of tonality being broken altogether. Although Wagner became fiercely critical of Brahms as the latter grew in stature and popularity, he was enthusiastically receptive of the early Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel; Brahms himself, according to many sources, deeply admired Wagner's music, confining his ambivalence only to the dramaturgical precepts of Wagner's theory.

Brahms wrote settings for piano and voice of 144 German folk songs, and many of his lieder reflect folk themes or depict scenes of rural life. His Hungarian dances were among his most profitable compositions.

Although Brahms's religious views are not perfectly clear, it is certain one of his musical influences was the Bible. He was reared to appreciate Luther's translation. His "Requiem" employs biblical texts to convey a humanist message, omitting words about salvation or immortality, and focuses on the living rather than the dead. On the one hand, author Walter Niemann declared, "The fact that Brahms began his creative activity with the German folk song and closed with the Bible reveals... the true religious creed of this great man of the people." On the other hand, some biographers and critics see Brahms as more of a cultural Lutheran who embraced the cultural aspects of his upbringing but may or may not have adopted the religious beliefs. When asked by conductor Karl Reinthaler to add additional sectarian text to his "requiem", Brahms responded, "As far as the text is concerned, I confess that I would gladly omit even the word German and instead use Human; also with my best knowledge and will I would dispense with passages like John 3:16. On the other hand, I have chosen one thing or another because I am a musician, because I needed it, and because with my venerable authors I can't delete or dispute anything. But I had better stop before I say too much."

There is reason to believe that Brahms was a religious freethinker. Being a star of his age, he would frequently say deceptive things to the public. This means that the most reliable accounts on Brahms's innermost feelings may come from the people in the close circle around him. Among these was the pious Antonín Dvořák, the closest Brahms ever would come to having a protégé. In a letter, Dvorak disclosed his concerns regarding Brahms's religious views: "Such a man, such a fine soul—and he believes in nothing! He believes in nothing!"

The question of Brahms and religiosity has been controversial and elicited accusations of fraud. One example is the book "Talks With Great Composers" by Arthur Abell which contains an unconfirmed interview with Brahms and Joseph Joachim replete with biblical references. The book was released in the 1950s and Brahms biographer Jan Swafford declared the interview fraudulent.

Brahms's point of view looked both backward and forward; his output was often bold in its exploration of harmony and rhythm. As a result, he was an influence on composers of both conservative and modernist tendencies. Within his lifetime, his idiom left an imprint on several composers within his personal circle, who were strong admirers of his music, such as Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Robert Fuchs, and Julius Röntgen, as well as on Gustav Jenner, who was Brahms's only formal composition pupil. Antonín Dvořák, who received substantial assistance from Brahms, deeply admired his music and was influenced by it in several works such as the Symphony No 7 in D minor and the F minor Piano Trio. Features of the 'Brahms style' were absorbed in a more complex synthesis with other contemporary (chiefly Wagnerian) trends by Hans Rott, Wilhelm Berger and Max Reger, whereas the British composers, Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar, and the Swede, Wilhelm Stenhammar, all testified to learning much from Brahms's example. It was Elgar who said, "I look at the Third Symphony of Brahms, and I feel like a pygmy."

Ferruccio Busoni's early music shows much Brahmsian influence, and Brahms took an interest in him, though Busoni later tended to disparage Brahms. Towards the end of his life, Brahms offered substantial encouragement to Ernő Dohnányi and also to Alexander von Zemlinsky. Their early chamber works (and those of Béla Bartók, who was friendly with Dohnányi,) show a thoroughgoing absorption of the Brahmsian idiom. Zemlinsky, moreover, was in turn the teacher of Arnold Schoenberg, and Brahms was apparently impressed by two movements of Schoenberg's early Quartet in D major which Zemlinsky showed him. In 1933, Schoenberg wrote an essay "Brahms the Progressive" (re-written 1947), which drew attention to Brahms's fondness for motivic saturation and irregularities of rhythm and phrase; in his last book (Structural Functions of Harmony, 1948), he analysed Brahms's "enriched harmony" and exploration of remote tonal regions. These efforts paved the way for a re-evaluation of Brahms's reputation in the 20th century. Schoenberg went so far as to orchestrate one of Brahms's piano quartets. Schoenberg's pupil Anton Webern, in his 1933 lectures, posthumously published under the title The Path to the New Music, claimed Brahms as one who had anticipated the developments of the Second Viennese School, and Webern's own Op. 1, an orchestral passacaglia, is clearly in part a homage to, and development of, the variation techniques of the passacaglia-finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony.

Brahms was honoured by the German Hall of Fame, the Walhalla temple. On 14 September 2000, he was introduced there as 126th "rühmlich ausgezeichneter Teutscher" and 13th composer among them, with a bust by sculptor Milan Knobloch.

Like Beethoven, Brahms was fond of nature and often went walking in the woods around Vienna. He often brought penny candy with him to hand out to children. To adults, Brahms was often brusque and sarcastic, and he sometimes alienated other people. His pupil Gustav Jenner wrote, "Brahms has acquired, not without reason, the reputation for being a grump, even though few could also be as lovable as he. " He also had predictable habits, which were noted by the Viennese press, such as his daily visit to his favourite "Red Hedgehog" tavern in Vienna, and the press also particularly took into account his style of walking with his hands firmly behind his back complete with a caricature of him in this pose walking alongside a red hedgehog. Those who remained his friends were very loyal to him, however, and he reciprocated with equal loyalty and generosity.

Brahms was a lifelong friend of Johann Strauss II, though they were very different as composers. Brahms even struggled to get to the Theater an der Wien in Vienna for the premiere of Strauss's operetta Die Göttin der Vernunft in 1897 before his death. Perhaps the greatest tribute that Brahms could pay to Strauss was his remark that he would have given anything to have written The Blue Danube waltz. An anecdote dating around the time Brahms became acquainted with Strauss is that when Strauss's wife Adele asked Brahms to autograph her fan, he wrote a few notes from the "Blue Danube" waltz, and then cheekily inscribed the words "Alas, not by Brahms!"

Starting in the 1860s, when his works sold widely, Brahms was financially quite successful. He preferred a modest life style, however, living in a simple three-room apartment with a housekeeper. He gave away much of his money to relatives, and anonymously helped support a number of young musicians.

Brahms was an extreme perfectionist. He destroyed many early works — including a Violin Sonata he had performed with Reményi and violinist Ferdinand David — and once claimed to have destroyed 20 string quartets before he issued his official First in 1873. Over the course of several years, he changed an original project for a symphony in D minor into his first piano concerto. In another instance of devotion to detail, he laboured over the official First Symphony for almost fifteen years, from about 1861 to 1876. Even after its first few performances, Brahms destroyed the original slow movement and substituted another before the score was published. (A conjectural restoration of the original slow movement has been published by Robert Pascall.) Another factor that contributed to Brahms's perfectionism was that Schumann had announced early on that Brahms was to become the next great composer like Beethoven, a prediction that Brahms was determined to live up to. This prediction hardly added to the composer's self-confidence, and may have contributed to the delay in producing the First Symphony. However, Clara Schumann noted before that Brahms's First Symphony was a product that was not reflective of Brahms's real nature. She felt that the final exuberant movement was "too brilliant", as she was encouraged by the dark and tempestuous opening movement she had seen in an early draft. However, she recanted in accepting the Second Symphony, which has often been seen in modern times as one of his sunniest works. Other contemporaries, however, found the first movement especially dark, and Reinhold Brinkmann, in a study of Symphony No. 2 in relation to 19th century ideas of melancholy, has published a revealing letter from Brahms to the composer and conductor Vinzenz Lachner in which Brahms confesses to the melancholic side of his nature and comments on specific features of the movement that reflect this.

MATT HERSKOWITZ
Chamzz Series: Classics for the 21st Century
- October 27, 2010: From Bach to Brubeck

Works Presented:
- Undertow

see bio above

2010-2011 SEASON PERFORMERS

LIANG WANG
Principal Oboe, New York Philharmonic
Principal Players Series
- October 5, 2010 : Opening Night

Liang Wang joined the Philharmonic as Principal Oboe in September 2006; in February 2008 he performed Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto with the Orchestra in Hong Kong. Previously he was principal oboe of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, and San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and was guest principal oboe at the Chicago and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras. Born in Qing Dao, China, he studied at the Beijing Central Conservatory and at California’s Idyllwild Arts Academy. He received his bachelor’s degree from Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, and was a fellowship recipient at the Aspen Music Festival and School and at the Music Academy of the West. He has won awards at the Spotlight Competition of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Pasadena Instrumental, Fernard Gillet International Oboe, and Tilden Prize competitions, and he has twice received the Los Angeles Philharmonic Fellowship. He has performed chamber music at the Santa Fe and Angel Fire Festivals; given master classes at the Cincinnati Conservatory; and was on the oboe faculty of the University of California–Berkeley.

KEUN-A LEE
Piano
The Metropolitan Opera, Lindemann Young Artist Development Program
- October 5, 2010: Principal Players Series - Season Opening Night

Korean Pianist Keun-A Lee will begin her second year of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program in the fall. Following her debut at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Korea in 1998, Ms. Lee has focused her career on collaboration. She has performed at such halls as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Chicago’s Preston Bradley Hall, Toronto Centre for the Arts in Canada, the Hochschule für Musik Detmold in Germany and Korea’s Seoul Arts Center. She has participated in the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute for Young Artists, the Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera, and the Music Academy of the West. This past season, Ms. Lee performed with Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival as the winner of the Samuel Sanders Award 2009. Recent engagements include recitals for the Marilyn Horne Foundation at Hahn Hall, The Music Academy of the West and Broad Stage in Santa Monica City College; and recitals at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and at Merkin Hall, New York City with Young Concert Artists. Highlights of recent seasons include a recital series with The Marilyn Horne Foundation, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Live Broadcast on Chicago’s 98.7 WFMT, the Juilliard Vocal Honors Recital, the Judith Raskin Memorial Recital, and The David G. Whitecomb Foundation’s recital series. Engagements this summer include concerts with The Honest Brook Festival in Delhi, New York, Fisher’s Island, New York, and at the Chappaquiddick Summer Music Festival in Massachusetts. Ms. Lee’s piano studies began at age four. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Piano Performance at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea. She received her master’s degree and Artist Diploma in Collaborative Piano from The Juilliard School under Margo Garrett, Jonathan Feldmann and Brian Zeger. Ms. Lee also received her Professional Studies Certificate in Vocal Accompanying with Warren Jones at the Manhattan School of Music.

MATT HERSKOWITZ
Piano
Lyric Artist & Composer-In-Residence
CHAMZZ: Classics for the 21st Centurys
- October 27, 2010: From Bach to Brubeck

see bio above

DAVID ROZENBLATT
Drums, Percussion
CHAMZZ: Classics for the 21st Century Series
- October 27, 2010: From Bach to Brubeck

David Rozenblatt’s talents have drawn him to all corners of the globe and all styles of music, performing in the world’s most revered concert halls as well as intimate nightclubs. He has performed and collaborated with some of the finest talents in Pop, Jazz and Classical including Barry Manilow, with whom he recorded his latest CDs, The Greatest Songs of the 70’s, The Greatest Songs of the 80’s and four chart topping DVDs, Music and Passion (Platnum), First and Farewell, PBS’s Songs From The 70’s(Double Platnum) and A&E’s Happy Holidays . Barry’s latest Christmas recording, In The Swing Of Christmas which went Gold in the US alone and Grammy nominated for "Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album" features David’s trio MaD Fusion, his inspired collaboration with virtuoso pianist Matt Herskowitz and bassist Mat Fieldes, with whom he tours nationally and internationally. MaD Fusion’s debut CD, entitled Forget Me Not - Herskowitz Rozenblatt Project featuring Lew Soloff (Disques Tout Crin) was released to rave reviews and nominated for the Felix Award for “best jazz CD of the year”.

David performed and/or collaborated with The Killers, Paul Simon, Usher, Baby Face, Reba McEntire, Cindy Lauper, Donna Summer, Judy Collins, Micky Dolenz, David Foster, Randy Kerber, Lara Fabian, Jon Secada, Katherine McPhee, Jennifer Hudson, Audra McDonald, Esperanza Spalding, The Ronettes, Paul Shaffer, Will Lee, Little Anthony, Bobby Womack, Ronnie Wood, Dave Koz, Joe Zawinul, Paquito D’Rivera, Ornette Coleman, Adam Holzman, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Mike Keneally, Mark Egan, Pierre Boulez, Dimitri Hvorostovsky, Vladimir Spivakov and Elliot Carter.

David has performed at Madison Square Garden, Nassau Coliseum, the Meadowlands, Gund Arena, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, Avery Fisher Hall, England’s Blenheim Palace, Japan’s Santori Hall, and London’s Barbican.

On Television, David can be seen performing on The 22nd & 24th Annual Rock n’ Roll Hall Of Fames, The Emmy Awards, The American Music Awards, Late Show With David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live, A&E’s Live By Request, PBS’s “Soundstage”, ABC’s Good Morning America, The Ellen Show, The Today Show, The Early Show, Martha Stewart, and BBC Television.

As drummer, producer and composer for the critically acclaimed, Grammy nominated + German Record Critics’ Award winning Absolute Ensemble, David can be heard on the group’s seven released CDs and serves as producer on FIX (Enja Records). He is also featured on many albums of various genres featuring renowned artists, and on the soundtrack recordings for the feature films The Chamber, Wide Awake, You've Got Mail, Swat, Perfume and The Marconi Bros.

On Broadway, David performed in Swan Lake, Smokey Joe’s Café, Sunset Boulevard, The King and I, Miss Saigon, Elton John’s Aida, Jim Steinman’s Dance Of The Vampires featuring Michael Crawford, and Legally Blonde. He has performed with the Met Orchestra, NYC Opera and Ballet, St. Luke's Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Jupiter Symphony, Concordia Orchestra, EOS, Moscow Chamber Symphony, the Moscow Virtuosi, and premiered Mark Anthony Turnage’s Blood On The Floor (originally written for Peter Erskine) as soloist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Australia in 2005.

David’s music for Three Point Turn, choreographed by the esteemed Dwight Rhoden for prima Ballerina Diana Vishneva, Desmond Richardson and members of the Kirov Ballet, premiered at New York City Center, The Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Stanislavsky Musical Theater in Moscow. Three Point Turn is part of the highly acclaimed Dance spectacle “Beauty In Motion” for which Vishneva won the 2009 Gloden Mask Award for "Best Female Performer in Ballet or Modern Dance". David's latest commission of Dwight Rhoden’s Othello for the North Carolina Dance Theater premiered in Charlotte, NC to rave reviews.

David received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School where he became a founding member of the critically acclaimed New York Percussion Quartet. Born in the Ukraine, David moved to the United States at the age of four and one year later began playing drums professionally. He began his formal training at the Kaufman Cultural Center in New York City and, following graduation, was appointed to the faculty - a position he held for over ten years. David’s also devotes his time to recording and producing music from his recording studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

David officially endorses © Latin Percussion (LP) and Vic Firth and is on the faculty of Hofstra University as adjunct professor of percussion.

MAT FIELDES
Bass
CHAMZZ: Classics for the 21st Century Series
- October 27, 2010: From Bach to Brubeck

Mat Fieldes is one of the most sought-after bass players on the New York freelance scene today. Equally comfortable in Jazz, Rock, Hip-hop, R&B, and Classical genres, Mr. Fieldes has collaborated with such luminaries as Joe Jackson, John Cale, Ornette Coleman, Steve Vai, Peter Erskine, Paquito D'Rivera, Kristjan Jarvi, Joe Williams, Arturo Sandaval, and Toni Tennille among others. His recent appearances include Dream Engine – the latest vehicle for legendary song-writer Jim Steinman. Mr Fieldes was honored to perform with the acclaimed crossover hip-hop virtual band the Gorillaz, live at the Apollo theater, and hip-hop legend Jay-Z at Radio City Music Hall in the spring of 2006. In 2001, he performed on Joe Jackson’s album, Symphony, which won a Grammy Award for “Best Pop Instrumental”.

Mr. Fieldes tours extensively as solo bassist for Absolute Ensemble, an electro-acoustic crossover chamber orchestra, which performs at major venues worldwide. Recent appearances include the Sydney Opera House, Koln Philharmonie, London Barbican, the Estonia Concert Hall, and residencies at Bremen and Adelaide Festivals. In 2000, the ensemble won the coveted German Record Critic's Award for its album Mix. The ensemble received a Grammy nomination in the 'Best Small Ensemble' category for its album Absolution (2002, Enja Records). Current collaborations include recordings and touring with Joe Zawinul, and a Frank Zappa tribute featuring Mike Keneally and Napolean Murphy Brock.

As a soloist, Mr. Fieldes has performed Mark Anthony Turnage's concerto Blood on the Floor, at Miller Theater, New York City, in 2001. In 2004, he performed the same concerto with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Also that year, he premiered Gene Pritsker’s concerto for electric and acoustic bass, Lost Illusions, with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, in front of 30,000 people.

Mr. Fieldes is currently a member of the acclaimed Herskowitz-Rozenblatt Project (HRP). Other performances and collaborations include the New York based Quasilulu, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestras, Continuum, Bronx Arts Ensemble, Second Generation Productions, and the Jose Limon Dance Company.

Mr. Fieldes was born in Hastings, New Zealand. He earned his Master’s degree from The Juilliard School where he studied with Eugene Levinson, Principal Bass of the New York Philharmonic.

EDDIE VENGAS
Violin / Trombone
CHAMZZ: Classics for the 21st Century Series
- October 27, 2010: From Bach to Brubeck
Violinist/Trombonist Eddie Venegas was born in Caracas, Venezuela and studied with Daniel Phillips of the Orion String Quartet at The Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College where he obtained his Bachelors and Masters in Performance of Classical Violin. Venegas is also a self-taught trombonist and very active on both instruments in the NYC freelance jazz, classical, and Latin music scenes. He has worked with such renowned artists as John Fadis, Joe Zawinul, Tito Puente, Mark Antony, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Dani Rojo and Johnny Pacheco, among others and has appeared as a soloist with numerous groups including The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Hudson Jazz Ensemble, Saint Martins of Tours Symphony Orchestra, the Carpentier Quartet and the Queens Philharmonic. Venegas plays regularly with The Harrisburg Symphony, La Orquesta Broadway, the Sphinx Symphony and En Talla, and his original compositions can be heard among the Sweet Plantain and The 3 Sad Cats Jazz Ensemble regular repertoire. Venegas can additionally be seen in the Jennifer Lopez/Marc Antony movie, El Cantante.

ROMULO BENAVIDES
Violin
CHAMZZ: Classics for the 21st Century Series
- October 27, 2010: From Bach to Brubeck
Violinist Romulo Benavides studied with the late Emil Friedman in his native Venezuela and obtained his Bachelors from The Juilliard School. As Concertmaster of Arcos Juveniles de Caracas, he performed as soloist in the United States, Spain, Dominican Republic and throughout Venezuela, and in 1985, he won 1st Prize at the Juan Bautista Plaza Violin Competition in Caracas. He went on to perform as soloist with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, Carabobo Chamber Orchestra and the Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra. In NYC he has performed with the Carpentier Quartet, Ensemble America, Frank Valiente Tango Quintet, and with Mauricio Najt and Alberto Quiroga. Benavides performs as the first violinist of the Dali Quartet and is Concertmaster and featured soloist of the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. He has recorded for New World Records and performed in master classes for Itzhak Perlman at Brooklyn College and for Peter Winograd at The Aspen Music School.

ORLANDO WELLS
Viola
CHAMZZ: Classics for the 21st Century Series
- October 27, 2010: From Bach to Brubeck
Violist Orlando Wells, a NJ native, studied at LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts and graduated with Behrens Foundation and B’nai Brith scholarships. He then went on to S.U.N.Y. Purchase and Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers. Wells has held the concertmaster chair with Orchestra of the Bronx and the Bronx Opera and has appeared as a soloist with Antara, the Manhattan Virtuosi and the St. Peter by the Sea Orchestra. He also performs with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, SONYC Chamber Orchestra, Ritz Chamber Players, Quartet Evolution, Sweet Plantain, Radio City Christmas Show Orchestra and on Broadway with Phantom of the Opera, The Producers, Spamalot and Wicked. He has collaborated with such greats as John Legend, Mariah Carrey, Rihanna, Kanye West, Marvin Hamlish, the Akua Dixon Swing Quartet, Sojourner Strings, and Dionne Warwick.

DAVID GOTAY
Cello
CHAMZZ: Classics for the 21st Century Series
- October 27, 2010: From Bach to Brubeck
Cellist David Gotay, born in the Bronx, has performed in such notable venues as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and the White House. He has played on television in PBS’ Sessions at 54th Street, on the QVC Network and in the nationally-broadcast Hurricane Katrina Benefit with Sheryl Crow. He has collaborated with such artists as Billy Joel, Alicia Keys, Aretha Franklin, k.d. lang, David Sanborn, Little Jimmy Scott, John Blake Jr., and Mannheim Steamroller. Mr. Gotay is a rapper and electric cellist of the experimental hip-hop/classical group Sound Liberation, whose debut album is released on the Col Legno label in Germany. He regularly performs with the Harrisburg Symphony, Key West Symphony, and the Sphinx Symphony in Detroit. Among his numerous awards are included: Chamber Music America’s Residency Partnership Program Grant; Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks Visiting Professorship, University of Michigan; Meet The Composer Met Life Creative Connections grant, Harlem School of the Arts Certificate of Appreciation; and Chamber Music Live Award, Queens College.

TATIANA GONCHAROVA
Piano
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
November 17, 2010

An inspiring soloist and ensemble partner, Russian-born pianist Tatiana Goncharova has performed throughout the United States, South America, Europe and Asia. Praised by the Philadelphia Inquirer for her “exceptional musicianship,” and hailed by the Washington Post as “a musician on the threshold of a brilliant career,” Ms. Goncharova has appeared at such noted venues as Avery Fisher Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kravis Center, Ravinia, Caramoor, and Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center. 

Frequent collaborations with international artists have taken Ms. Goncharova to such renowned venues as Aspen Music Festival, Japan’s Miyazaki Music Festival, the Mostly Mozart Festival in Lincoln Center, National Hall in Taipei, Colden Center for the Arts, Singapore Sun Festival, Montpellier Music Festival in France; at the Appalachian Summer Music Festival and the Great Composers Festival in Canada she performed a duo-recital with one of the world’s most celebrated violinists, Pinchas Zukerman. In May 2003, Ms. Goncharova performed again in recital with Mr. Zukerman, in Tokyo for the Empress of Japan. Her performances were broadcast by Radio France, New York's WNYC and WQXR, nationally on PBS and NPR’s Performance Today, and in Japan.

A resident artist of the Lyric Chamber Music Society of New York, she founded the TAGI ensemble (formerly known as the New York Lyric Chamber Players) with Francesco Mastromatteo, Igor Begelman and Grigory Kalinovsky. The highlights of the group’s recent seasons include performances and masterclasses at Asheville Chamber Series, Universities of South and Western Carolina, Sevenars, Bentley College, Howland Music Center, Emelin Theater, Lukas Foss’s Festival of the Hamptons, and the Lyric Chamber Music Society.

Ms. Goncharova is on the faculty of Pinchas Zukerman’s National Arts Center Young Artists Program in Canada, the pre-college division of the Manhattan School of Music in New York, the Zukerman Performance Program; she was also formerly at the Perlman Music Program, Fordham University, and the Illona Feher Festival in Israel. She is involved with a number of educational projects through her affiliation with Astral Artistic Services and the Piatigorsky Foundation, which allows her to perform classical music in less traditional settings.

Called “a sensational pianist” by the Providence Journal, Ms. Goncharova is a winner of numerous prizes and awards, including the Olga Koussevitzky Piano Competition, the Bergen Philharmonic Concerto Competition, the Moscow Conservatory Concerto Competition, and the Byelorussian National Competition. She has studied with such renowned musicians as Leon Fleisher, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Eugene Malinin and Oxana Yablonskaya at the Moscow State Conservatory, the Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School.

Tatiana Goncharova made her debut recording with violinist Grigory Kalinovsky, featuring the Violin Sonata and 24 Preludes by Dmitriy Schostakovich, which has been recently released worldwide by Centaur Records. The International Record Review praised it for its “emotional intensity” and “overwhelming mastery.”

BELA HORVATH
Violin
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
- November 17, 2010

A distinguished young artist of international stature, Bela Horvath has numerous prizes and awards, TV and radio appearances, and major performances in various European countries and the U.S. to his credit. In 1996, Bela entered the Bela Bartok Conservatory In Budapest, Hungary, where he studied with Istvan Kertesz, the first violinist of the Festetics String Quartet.

In 1998, Bela won the National Janos Koncz violin competition in Hungary. The following year, he entered the 9th International Carl Flesch Violin Competition. As the youngest contestant, he was the fourth prize winner of that year and also won a special prize for the best interpretation of a new work written for the competition by Hungarian composer, Miklos Csemicky. In 2000, Bela entered the Franz Liszt University of Music, where he began his studies with Hungarian concert violinist, Miklos Szenthelyi.

In 2002, the renowned violinist, violist, and conductor, Pinchas Zukerman invited Mr.Horvath to study with him and his associate, Patinka Kopec, at the Manhattan School of Music. Bela Horvath has worked with leading violinists and pedagogues including Zakhar Bron, Jaime Laredo, Gyorgy Pauk, Ruggiero Ricci, Aaron Rosand, and Joseph Silverstein.

Mr. Horvath has also played a great deal of chamber music and has been coached by chamber musicians and teachers like Daniel Avshalomov, Steven Dann, Eugene Drucker, Lawrence Dutton, Timothy Eddy, Joseph Kalichstein, Robert Mann, Sylvia Rosenberg, David Soyer, and Michael Tree.

Bela Horvath made his debut recital at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall in 2003. The debut of his Piano Quartet, Amity Players, was at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall in October 2006. The Quartet has recently released a recording of two piano quartets by J. Brahms for the Canadian label, Marquis Music.

As a soloist and recitalist, he has played many concerts around the world, including the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, France, England, Slovakia, Hungary, the United States and Canada.

GABRIELA MARTINEZ
Piano
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
- December 8, 2010

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, 25-year-old pianist Gabriela Martinez has already amassed an impressive list of recital, concerto, and chamber music performance credits. Since making her orchestral debut at age 7, Ms. Martinez has appeared as soloist with the New Jersey, Fort Worth, Pacific and San Francisco Symphonies, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, MDR Rundfunkorchester, Symphonisches Staatsorchester Halle, Tivoli Philharmonic, and regularly performs with the Simón Bolívar Youth Symphony Orchestra and Gustavo Dudamel. She regularly performs with Itzhak Perlman, and has collaborated with the Takacs quartet. Ms. Martinez has performed under the batons of conductors Lawrence Foster, James Gaffigan, Dirk Brosse, Klauspeter Seibel, Giordano Bellincampi, Guillermo Figueroa, David Machado, Anne Manson, James Conlon, Charles Dutoit, Egmon Colomer, Pedro and Cristobal Halffter among others.

Ms. Martinez regularly performs at Carnegie Hall, and has performed at Avery Fisher, and Alice Tully Halls, Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg; Semperoper in Dresden, Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, the Verbier Festival, Dresden Music Festival, Snow and Symphony Festival in St. Moritz, Festival de Radio France et Montpellier, Festival dei Due Mondi, The International Holland Music Sessions, and the Mostly Mozart and Tokyo International Music Festivals. She has toured both as soloist and chamber musician in over 50 concert halls in the U.S. and Germany, as well as in Salzburg, Copenhagen, Holland, St. Moritz, Verbier, Sendai, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Montpellier, Rome, Venice, London, Spoleto, Brussels, Caracas, and Bogota.

Ms. Martinez has won numerous national and international prizes and awards. Her most recent accomplishments include first prize and audience award at the Anton Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Dresden. She was a semifinalist at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where she also received a Jury Discretionary Award. Her performances have been featured on MDR Kultur (Germany), NHK (Japan), Radio France (France), RAI (Italy), Deutsche Welle (Germany), National Public Radio, CNN, PBS, 60 minutes, ABC, From the Top (USA), and numerous television and radio stations in Venezuela.

Ms. Martinez earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School as a full scholarship student of Yoheved Kaplinsky, and is currently pursuing her doctorate in Halle, Germany with Professor Marco Antonio de Almeida. From 2007-2009, Ms. Martinez was a member of the fellowship "The Academy- a Program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute.» Ms. Martinez was invited to join the Kean University Concert Artist Faculty in 2008.

NOAH GELLER
Violin, Philadelphia Orchestra
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
- December 8, 2010

Violinist Noah Geller, winner of numerous competitions and prizes, has given lauded performances throughout the United States and abroad. A laureate of the 2007 Michael Hill International Violin Competition, Mr. Geller recently performed recitals in Queenstown, New Zealand and chamber music with the New Zealand Trio in Auckland. Previously he received top prizes in the 2006 Corpus Christi International String Competition, the Skokie Valley Symphony Young Artists' Competition and Wisconsin Public Radio's Neale-Silva Young Artists' Competition in Madison, Wisconsin. Mr. Geller has also won competitions at the Music Academy of the West (Santa Barbara) and the Chicago Youth Symphony, resulting in solo performances with those orchestras. Following performances at the Tanglewood Music Center, he was awarded the Jules C. Reiner Violin Prize.

In recital, Mr. Geller has appeared at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago as part of the Chicago Youth Symphony's Distinguished Alumni Recital series. He has also performed in a live Wisconsin Public Radio broadcast at the Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison. Through the Merit School of Music in Chicago, Mr. Geller performed the world premiere of Eugene O'Brien's Two Inventions for Violin and Cello, broadcast on WFMT radio. As a chamber musician, Mr. Geller has appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival, Alice Tully Hall, Sejong Center, and the Taos School of Music in New Mexico.

As an orchestral musician, Mr. Geller has performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and has served in concertmaster and principal positions for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Juilliard Orchestra, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra under James Levine. Mr. Geller recently joined the first violin section of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

A previous student of Jennifer Cappelli and Hyo Kang, Mr. Geller is currently completing his Master of Music degree at the Juilliard School where he studies with Donald Weilerstein and Cho-Liang Lin. Mr. Geller plays a violin made in 1783 by Nicolo Gagliano II on loan from an enthusiastic benefactor.

MARK HOLLOWAY
Viola, Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
- December 8, 2010

Violist Mark Holloway is a chamber musician sought after within the United States and abroad. He has appeared at such festivals as the Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia, Music from Angel Fire, Banff, Taos, Mainly Mozart, Caramoor, and the Boston Chamber Music Society. He has played chamber music in France, Switzerland, Russia, and at the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, England. His current activities include performances with the Jupiter Chamber Players and appearances as a substitute with the New York Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Ballet Theatre, and the American Symphony, where he has played as guest principal violist. He has been principal violist of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the New York String Orchestra, and was a member and guest principal of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. He has also appeared with Chamber Music at the 92nd Street Y, and, with the Brandenburg Ensemble, he played at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. He has recently recorded music by Stravinsky, Webern, and Paul Moravec for the Naxos label. A member of Chamber Music Society Two, Mr. Holloway studied at The Curtis Institute of Music with Michael Tree, and received his bachelor of music summa cum laude from Boston University as a student of Michelle LaCourse.

JOSHUA ROMAN
Cello
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
- December 8, 2010

Dubbed a “Classical Rock Star” by the press, cellist Joshua Roman has earned a national reputation for performing a wide range of repertoire with an absolute commitment to communicating the essence of the music at its most organic level. Before embarking on a solo career, he was for two seasons principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony, a position he won in 2006 at the age of 22.

Roman’s 2009–10 season engagements include debuts as concerto soloist with the Albany, Arkansas, and Santa Barbara Symphonies, the New Philharmonic Orchestra in Illinois, Oklahoma’s Signature Symphony, and Kentucky’s Lexington Philharmonic. In recent seasons he has performed with the Seattle Symphony, where he gave the world premiere of David Stock’s Cello Concerto, as well as with the Symphonies of Edmonton, Quad City, Spokane, and Stamford, and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, among others. In 2008, Roman performed Britten’s third Cello Suite during New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival in a pre-concert recital at Avery Fisher Hall. In April 2009, he was the only guest artist invited to play an unaccompanied solo during the YouTube Symphony Orchestra’s debut concert at Carnegie Hall.

In addition to his solo work, Roman is an avid chamber music performer. He has enjoyed collaborations with veterans like Earl Carlyss and Christian Zacharias, as well as the Seattle Chamber Music Society and the International Festival of Chamber Music in Lima, Peru. He often joins forces with other dynamic young soloists and performers from New York’s contemporary music scene, including Alarm Will Sound, So Percussion, and artists from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two. In spring 2007, he was named Artistic Director of TownMusic, an experimental chamber music series at Town Hall in Seattle, where he creates programs that feature new works and reflect the eclectic range of his musical influences and inspirations.

Committed to making music accessible to a wider audience, Roman may be found anywhere from a club to a classroom, whether performing jazz, rock, chamber music, or a solo sonata by Bach or Kodály. His versatility as a performer and his ongoing exploration of new concertos, chamber music, and solo cello works have spawned projects with composers such as Aaron Jay Kernis, Mason Bates, and Dan Visconti. One of Roman’s current undertakings is an online video series called The Popper Project — wherever the cellist and his laptop find themselves, he performs an étude from David Popper’s High School of Cello Playing and uploads it, unedited, to his YouTube channel. Roman’s outreach endeavors have taken him to Uganda with his violin-playing siblings, where they played chamber music in schools, HIV/AIDS centers, and displacement camps, communicating a message of hope through music.

The Oklahoma City native began playing the cello at the age of three on a quarter-size instrument, and played his first public recital at age ten. Home-schooled until he was 16, Roman then pursued his musical studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Richard Aaron. Roman received his Bachelor’s Degree in Cello Performance in 2004, and his Master’s in 2005, as a student of Desmond Hoebig, principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Joshua Roman was named “Musical America’s New Artist of the Month” in August 2009. He is grateful for the loan of an 1899 cello by Giulio Degani of Venice.

IGOR BEGELMAN
Clarinet
That "Other" Music Series
- February 9, 2011

Winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2000, clarinetist Igor Begelman exudes an exhilarating virtuosity and a gracious sense of style. He has performed recitals in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Israel, and as a soloist with such orchestras as the Houston, Savannah and New Haven Symphonies, the Odense Simfoniker, and L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Equally accomplished as a soloist and chamber musician, Mr. Begelman opened the Lyric’s 2006-7 season. He has also performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at festivals throughout the world, including Marlboro, Caramoor, Tanglewood, and Schleswig-Holstein. An avid proponent of new music, Mr. Begelman has premiered compositions by Anton Kuerti, Alex Krasotov, Meyer Kupferman, Elliot Schwartz, Roland Tec, and recently a new concerto by Ralph Shapey. Through his association with the Piatigorsky Foundation he is able to perform classical music in less traditional settings.

An active educator, Mr. Begelman teaches at Brooklyn and Swarthmore Colleges and has taught on various occasions at Yale, at Juilliard, and at the Manhattan School of Music. Additionally, he has taught master classes at such festivals as Caramoor and Bowdoin, and throughout the U.S. Mr. Begelman was awarded top prizes at the First Carl Nielsen International Clarinet Competition in Denmark and at the 53rd Geneva International Competition in Switzerland. In addition, he has earned top prizes at the William C. Byrd Competition, the Koussevitsky Competition, the International Clarinet Society Competition, the Heida Hermanns International Competition, the Tilden Prize Competition, and the Crane New Music Competition. His honors include the Special Prize at the 41st Munich International Competition and awards from the Altamura/Caruso Foundation and Salon de Virtuosi.

Igor Begelman was raised in Kiev, Ukraine, and came to the United States in 1989. He received his Bachelor’s degree from The Manhattan School of Music and his Master’s degree from The Juilliard School of Music. His major teachers include Charles Neidich and Stanley Drucker.

Igor Begelman is affiliated with Astral Artistic Services, a Philadelphia nonprofit organization dedicated to guiding the careers of America’s most exceptional musicians. He currently resides in New York.

LEN HOROVITZ
Piano
That "Other" Music Series
- February 9, 2011

Len Horovitz enjoys the unique distinction of having been born with three thumbs. After much surgery, he has been performing as a concert pianist since childhood. At the 1999 Van Cliburn International Amateur Competition, he received widespread media attention for playing with" perfect voicing and projection, and an arresting sense of drama and momentum". He has appeared in solo recitals, chamber concerts, and with orchestras at Steinway Hall, Town Hall, Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall, Isaac Stern auditorium (Carnegie Hall), and Alice Tully Hall (Lincoln Center). He has performed with the Lyric Chamber Music Society of NY, and at the Bowdoin International Music Festival. He has performed at the German Consulate, and debuted last season at the Hell’s Kitchen Jazz Festival.

In chamber music he has appeared with internationally –known artists such as Igor Begelman, Yuri Namkung, Valerie Saalbach, Carol Wincenc, and Carol Vaness. He has recorded the Grieg piano Concerto for Europadisc, and can be seen on YouTube. He has been an actively performing member of the New York Piano Society since its inception. His sixth appearance at Carnegie Hall in November 2008 was attended by Maestro James Levine. He was the keynote performer for the Society for the Arts in Healthcare in April 2009. Future engagements include appearances with the New York Lyric chamber Society, and with the New York Piano Society.

Dr.Horovitz is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University and graduated from NYU School of Medicine. He is a board- certified Internist and Lung Specialist in private practice in New York, is on the staff of Lenox Hill Hospital. He has been listed in Castle-Connolly’s “Best Doctors” for the past five years, and was awarded Strathmore’s Pulmonary/Healthcare professional of the year in 2006.

As a medical spokesperson, Dr. Horovitz has been interviewed on national radio programs and by all the local and national television networks as well as on Internet-based health sites, including Good Morning America’s Health Podcasts (abc.com) and WebMD.

RIEKO AIZAWA
Piano
That "Other" Music Series
- February 9, 2011

Japanese pianist Rieko Aizawa is known for that rare combination of technical mastery and musical sensitivity, which has repeatedly earned the admiration of musicians and critics alike.

In 1988, Ms. Aizawa was brought to the attention of Alexander Schneider by the recommendation of pianist Mitsuko Uchida. Schneider engaged her as soloist with his Brandenburg Ensemble at the opening concerts of Tokyo's Casals Hall; later that year, Schneider presented 14-year-old Ms. Aizawa in her U.S. debut concerts at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall, performing Mozart's Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414, with his New York String Orchestra. The Washington Post celebrated her performance: "She played with a beautiful, limpid tone and a sense of characterization and cohesiveness that is unusual."To complete her triumphant season of U.S. debuts, during January of 1989 Ms. Aizawa stepped in as soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, guestconducted by Schneider.

Since then Ms. Aizawa has performed in solo and orchestral engagements throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe, including Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall and Chicago's Orchestra Hall. Highlights of recent seasons have included acclaimed performances with the New Japan Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa, the English Chamber Orchestra under Heinz Holliger, the Festival Strings Lucerne in Switzerland under Rudolf Baumgartner, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra under Hugh Wolff, the Curtis Institute Orchestra with Peter Oundjian, the St. Louis Symphony under David Loebel and, most recently, a wonderfully received performance with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Ms. Aizawa also has a great interest in exploring unusual repertoire. In October 2007, the St. Paul Pioneer Press described her performance with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hans Graf "the Salieri Piano Concerto in C was played so splendidly by Rieko Aizawa. Hers was a graceful reading. .... Aizawa's performance lent the work a respect it rarely receives."

As a recitalist, Ms. Aizawa has been heard in many North American cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, St. Louis, Seattle, Boulder, Los Angeles, Houston, and Toronto; at the Caramoor International Festival; at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival; Ravinia Festival, Gilmore Keyboard Festival. Following a recent all-Beethoven recital in Dresden, Germany, a reviewer wrote: "Her listeners followed her playing -full of details and delicate contrasts- breathlessly." Ms. Aizawa recently has started her "Prism" series in Japan, with tributes to Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann, and specially commissioned works for each program. She also will continue her exploration of Beethoven's music with a Beethoven cycle at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 2006, Ms. Aizawa will be collaborating with WFMT-Chicago and Fazioli to present the complete Mozart's piano sonatas.

An avid chamber musician, Ms. Aizawa has performed as a guest with string quartets including the Guarneri Quartet and the Orion Quartet, and she has participated in numerous festivals, such as the Marlboro Music Festival, U.S.A.; the Kammermusik Festival Moritzburg, Germany; and the Evian Festival, France. She has been a guest artist of Boston's, Philadelphia's and Seattle's Chamber Music Society. Ms. Aizawa is also a founding member of Duo Prism with a violinist Jesse Mills, which earned the 1st Prize at the Zinetti International Competition in Italy in 2006.

Ms. Aizawa received her Masters Degree from the Juilliard School, where she worked with Peter Serkin. She is also a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was awarded the prestigious Rachmaninoff Prize and studied with Seymour Lipkin, Peter Serkin, and Mieczyslaw Horszowski as his last pupil. March 2005 marked the release of Ms. Aizawa's first solo recording on the Japanese label Altus Music - a tour-de-force CD of Shostakovich's and Scriabin's 24 Preludes. She also recorded Faure's and Messiaens' Preludes in 2008.

Ms. Aizawa is a Steinway Artist.

JESSE MILLS
Violin
That "Other" Music Series
- February 9, 2011

Grammy-nominated violinist Jesse Mills enjoys performing music of many genres, from classical to contemporary, as well as composed and improvised music of his own invention. In 2004, Mills made his professional concerto debut with the Ravinia Festival Orchestra conducted by Nicholas McGegan in a unique partnership with Salsa trombonist, Jimmy Bosch.

This project combined a classical performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, with Mills as violin soloist, and a Salsa band arrangement of the same piece, fronted by Bosch and Mills as improvising soloists.

A successful performance at Ravinia led to bookings with the Phoenix, Colorado and Green Bay Symphonies for the 2005-2006 season. In past years Mills has performed as soloist with the Juilliard Pre-College Chamber Orchestra, the Teatro Argentino Orchestra in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the New Jersey Symphony, the Sarah Lawrence College Symphony, the Plainfield Symphony, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Aspen Music Festival’s Sinfonia Orchestra as winner of the Festival’s E. Nakamichi Violin Concerto Competition.

As a chamber musician Jesse Mills has performed at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall and Bargemusic, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, Boston’s Gardener Museum, the Cooper Arts Series at Cooper Union, the Rising Stars series at Caramoor, the Ravinia Festival’s Bennett-Gordon Hall, and at the Marlboro Music Festival. He performed on the opening night of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s A Great Day in New York series with pianist/composer Peter Schickele, and this concert was broadcast live on WNYC 93.9 FM in New York.

Mr. Mills is an avid performer of contemporary works. As a member of the FLUX Quartet from 2001-2003, he played in many concert halls around the world, performing music composed during the last 50 years. Among these concerts were 3 performances of Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 3, a six-hour-long work of immense beauty. Mills has played extensively with renowned cellist, Fred Sherry, in works by Reich, Wuorinen, Schoenberg, and avant-garde composer and saxophonist, John Zorn. In 2004-2005, they recorded Schoenberg’s String Quartet Concerto and various chamber works of Anton Webern for NAXOS, as well as Zorn’s String Quartet, Necronomicon, on Tzadik.

Mills is co-founder of Duo Prism, a violin-piano duo with Rieko Aizawa. He is also a member of Nurse Kaya, an ensemble comprised of string quartet plus bass and drums which exclusively plays compositions written by its members; much of this music involves improvisation. The group plays in traditional venues such as concert halls and clubs, as well as in schools, hospitals, and jails. In 2005, Nurse Kaya was awarded a Residency Partnership Grant from Chamber Music America, which resulted in a successful week-long residency in the public schools as well as at the Rialto Theater of Loveland, Colorado. Mills was an integral part of New Spirit – a new recording on the Verve label by jazz pianist, Makoto Ozone. Several performances of this project will be presented next year.

Jesse Mills began violin studies at the age of four. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School as a student of Robert Mann in 2001. He has previously studied with Christiane Pors, Naoko Tanaka and Itzhak Perlman.

HONGGANG LI
Viola
That "Other" Music Series
- February 9, 2011

Honggang Li began his musical training studying the violin with his parents at the same time as his brother, Weigang. When the Beijing Conservatory reopened in 1977 after the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Li was selected to attend from a group of over five hundred applicants. He continued his training at the Shanghai Conservatory and was appointed a faculty member there in 1984. Mr. Li has also served as a teaching assistant at the Juilliard School and has appeared as soloist with the Shanghai Philharmonic and the Shanghai Conservatory Orchestra. In 1987 he won a violin as a special prize given by Elisa Pegreffi of Quartetto Italiano at the Paolo Borciani competition in Italy.

NICHOLAS TZAVARAS
Cello
That "Other" Music Series
- February 9, 2011

A Native of Spanish Harlem in New York City, cellist Nicholas Tzavaras has quickly become an internationally sought after chamber musician and educator across three continents. A recent review in the New York Times called his sound "richly singing.” Summer engagements have included the Santa Fe, La Jolla, Greenwood, and Taos Festivals, Radio France Festival in Montpellier, and the Marlboro Festival, among others. Mr.Tzavaras has toured with multiple artists including the Musicians from Marlboro and the pop sensation Madonna, appearing on MTV, VH1, The David Letterman Show and at the White House for President Clinton. He has recorded for the Delos, Bis, Camerata, and New Albion labels. Since 2000, Mr.Tzavaras has been the cellist of the internationally renowned Shanghai Quartet

Formerly a faculty member at the University of Richmond, Mr. Tzavaras is currently the coordinator of the String Department and Cello Professor of the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University in New Jersey. In addition, he is a guest professor at the Shanghai and Central Conservatories in China. Mr. Tzavaras has degrees from the New England Conservatory and State University of New York at Stonybrook where his teachers were Laurence Lesser and Timothy Eddy. During his graduate studies he began a cello program for the Opus 118 Music Center in East Harlem of which he is now an advisory board member. Mr. Tzavaras' family can be seen in the Academy Award nominated documentary Small Wonders, the motion picture Music of the Heart starring Meryl Streep and with the Shanghai Quartet in Woody Allen's Melinda Melinda.

HAI-YE NI
Principal Cello, Philadelphia Orchestra
Principal Players Series
- March 16, 2011

One of the most accomplished young cellists of our time, Hai-Ye Ni is currently principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She came into prominence via her critically praised New York debut at Alice Tully Hall in 1991. This noted performance came as a result of Ms. Ni capturing the first prize at the Naumburg International Cello Competition, and thus becoming the youngest recipient to receive this distinguished award. In 1996, Ms. Ni was the unanimous choice for first prize in the International Paulo Cello Competition in Finland. In 2001 she received the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Ms. Ni's performance with the Chicago Symphony under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach was a highlight of 1997, a year which also included winning second prize in the International Rostropovich Competition in France, as well as a 14-city tour of the U.S. introducing Bright Sheng's new cello concerto "Two Poems," for which she was recommended by Yo-Yo Ma. During the 1998-99 season, Ms. Ni performed at Lincoln Center as a member of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society II. She also performed in recital in London, at Harvard University and at the Freer Gallery/Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC with Cho-Liang Lin. The 1999-2000 season saw Ms. Ni's appointment as associate principal cellist for the New York Philharmonic, while in 2001 she made her Kennedy Center debut.

Ms. Ni's many engagements include the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the Houston Symphony, and the Odense (Denmark) Symphony; the International Cello Festival in Brazil, the Kuhmo Festival/Finland, the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades, as well as the Naantali Festival in Finland. She has also had return engagements with the Ravinia Festival, the Finnish Radio Symphony, Spoleto/Italy, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Singapore Symphony, Korsholm/Finland, and the Peninsula Festival. Ms. Ni participated in the Marlboro Music Festival and the Steans Institute for Young Artists/Ravinia, and has performed with such artists as Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Joshua Bell, Emanuel Pahud, Leonidas Kavakos, Barry Douglas, Ida Kavafian, Pinchas Zukerman, David Shifrin and Bobby McFerrin.

Ms. Ni's performances have been broadcast throughout the USA on National Public Radio. She was featured on the ABC television show "20/20" and on a PBS documentary of the Tchaikovsky International Cello Competition in Moscow. Her performance of Bright Sheng's concerto was aired on "CBS Sunday Morning". She was the cover story in the May/June 1997 issue of Strings magazine and is featured along with Yo-Yo Ma in the book Twenty-first Century Cellists. Ms Ni's first solo CD, on the Naxos label, was chosen CD of the week by Classic FM, London. Ms. Ni's other awards include the 1995 SONY ES Career Award, and the best performance prize of Tchaikovsky at the 1994 International Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow.

Born in Shanghai in 1972, Hai-Ye began her cello studies with her mother and later at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Hai-Ye continued her musical education with Irene Sharp at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, with Joel Krosnick at the Juilliard School of Music, and with William Pleeth in London.

CECILE LICAD
Piano
Principal Players Series
- March 16, 2011

Called "a pianist's pianist" by The New Yorker, Cecile Licad's artistry is a blend of daring musical instinct and superb training. Her natural talent was honed at the Curtis Institute of Music by three of the greatest performer/pedagogues of our time: Rudolf Serkin, Seymour Lipkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. Licad's large repertoire as an orchestral soloist spans the Classical works of Mozart and Beethoven, the Romantic literature of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Rachmaninoff, and on to the 20th century compositions of Debussy, Ravel, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Bartok.

Licad's recent U.S. highlights include performances with Seattle Symphony, Honolulu Symphony, Virginia Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony, Tucson Symphony, and at the La Jolla Chamber Music and Eastern Music festivals. In Europe she toured in Germany with the Wurtemburg Philharmonic playing Beethoven's No. 2, appeared with the Freiburg Orchestra performing the Shostakovich Concerto for Piano and Trumpet, and performed a series of piano/cello duos with Alban Gerhardt in Germany and the United States.

Licad has appeared in North America with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and many others. In Europe she has played with the London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Bayerisches Rundfunk Orchestra, and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. In Asia, she has performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo's NHK Symphony and her native Philippine Philharmonic. Among the conductors with whom she has collaborated are Claudio Abbado, Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Masur, Sir Neville Marriner, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gerard Schwarz, Michael Tilson-Thomas, David Zinman, Pinchas Zukerman, as well as the late Sir Georg Solti and Eugene Ormandy.

Cecile Licad has performed in recital with Murray Perahia, Peter Serkin and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, with whom she has appeared at Lincoln Center, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, and the Kennedy Center, respectively. She performs regularly with cellist Alban Gerhardt, throughout Europe and the United States, including at the Frick Collection in New York City. She appeared as soloist in the Steinway Piano Sesquicentennial Celebration at Carnegie Hall, performing six Rachmaninoff songs with tenor Ben Heppner, and has made television appearances with Mstislav Rostropovich.

As a highly regarded chamber musician, she has performed regularly with ensembles such as the New York Chamber Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Guarneri Quartet, Takacs Quartet, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Music from Marlboro. She also appeared as guest soloist on tour with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Leipzig, Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Cologne, among other European cities. Her summer festival appearances have included Caramoor, Tanglewood, the International Music Festival of Seattle, Mostly Mozart Festival (in both New York and Tokyo) and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

On the Music Masters label, Licad released a recording of three works by Ravel: Le tombeau de Couperin, Gaspard de la Nuit, and Sonatine. She has an all-Gottschalk recording on the Naxos label. And on Sony Classical, she has recorded Schumann's Carnaval, Papillions and Toccata in C Major; and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with the Chicago Symphony, conducted by Claudio Abbado. Her Sony Classical release of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 2, with André Previn conducting the London Philharmonic, was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque Frederic Chopin. Angel/EMI produced her solo all-Chopin recordings, which include Études, op. 10. Also for Angel/EMI, she recorded, with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, the Franck Sonata in A Major, the Brahms Sonata No. 2 in A Major, and Sonatensatz in C Major.

Cecile Licad began her piano studies at the age of three with her mother, Rosario Licad, in her native Philippines, and later studied with the highly regarded Rosario Picazo. At seven, she made her debut as soloist with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Philippines. As one of the youngest musicians to receive the prestigious Leventritt Gold Medal, Ms. Licad won immediate international recognition, and her career was launched.

LOOP 2.4.3
Percussion
Cutting Edge Series
- April 13, 2011



Loop 2.4.3 is an exciting new music team with a sensibility somewhere between Anton Webern, Steve Reich, Art Blakey, and The Beatles. Known to employ the gamut of percussion instruments, their new album, Zodiac Dust, uses an expanded palette including strings and two instruments of their invention (more below). Their music has been described as "transportive percussion odysseys," (The Boston Phoenix) "taut compositions with a stunning improvisational sense" (Time Out - Chicago) and as consisting of both "action adventures and reveries... all sound[ing] like part of a well-thought-out tradition, only the tradition has never existed until now." (Fresh Air - NPR)

Hailing from Michigan and arriving in Brooklyn via New Haven and Seattle, Loop 2.4.3 has spent the last 5 years alternately traveling and working in a Bed-Stuy loft space, focused on writing, improvising and creating their own style. Finding themselves outside of the established music cliques, the group rallied some friends to start their own label (Music Starts From Silence), as well as their own summer music and arts festival (SFOS) in Bed-Stuy, and they found an audience that was ready for something different. Their debut record, Batterie, was captured in a onehour session for Sonarchy Radio (KEXP) in Seattle. They released the CD "as is" with no edits, and the immediacy and vibrancy of their performances won over many listeners. Their new album, Zodiac Dust, retains that energy while somehow becoming both more focused and more experimental. Their innately narrative approach to instrumental writing is taken across the breadth of the entire album. Loop 2.4.3 introduces two new instruments, the eLog and Rose Echo, and utilizes cello, violin, piano and voice, along with their standard percussion arsenal to create a "fusing of mainstream perceptiveness and a post-modern philosophy" that "makes Zodiac Dust something that can be listened to over and over." (Audiophile Audition) Loop 2.4.3 has performed with Clogs, Newband (Harry Partch Ensemble), Daphnis Prieto, Belle Orchestre, the Books, Evan Ziporyn, Sufjan Stevens, Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond, the Decemberists), Joe Morello, their late mentor Robert Hohner, dancer/choreographer Alan Good, director John Jeserun, as soloists with the Brooklyn Philharmonic at the BAM Opera House, and at Times Square as a collaboration with Robert Indiana, Michael McKenzie and Teresa Smith. The duo has toured internationally and performed for radio, theater, and television, including footage for The Learning Channel and MTV, and appearances at the Sydney Festival, the London Jazz Festival, Merkin Hall, and the Japan Society (NYC) among others.

DAVID SHIFRIN
Clarinet
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
- May 18, 2011

One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award's inception in 1974, Mr. Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber music collaborator.

Mr. Shifrin has appeared with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras and the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit and Denver symphonies among many others in the US, and internationally with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In addition, he has served as principal clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), the Honolulu and Dallas symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and New York Chamber Symphony. Mr. Shifrin has also received critical acclaim as a recitalist, appearing at such venues as Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York City as well as at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. A sought after a chamber musician, he collaborates frequently with such distinguished ensembles and artists as the Guarneri, Tokyo, and Emerson String Quartets, Wynton Marsalis and pianists Emanuel Ax and André Watts.

An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, David Shifrin served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. He has toured extensively throughout the US with CMSLC and appeared in several national television broadcasts on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center. He has also been the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon since 1981.

David Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale's annual concert series at Carnegie Hall in September 2008. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary professorship at China's Central Conservatory in Beijing.

Mr. Shifrin's recordings on Delos, DGG, Angel/EMI, Arabesque, BMG, SONY, and CRI have consistently garnered praise and awards. He has received three Grammy nominations - for a collaborative recording with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center of the collected chamber music of Claude Debussy (Delos), the Copland Clarinet Concerto (Angel/EMI) and Ravel's Introduction and Allegro with Nancy Allen, Ransom Wilson, and the Tokyo String Quartet (Angel/EMI). His recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, performed in its original version on a specially built basset clarinet, was named Record of the Year by Stereo Review. His latest recording, Shifrin Plays Schifrin (Aleph Records), is a collection of clarinet works by composer/conductor Lalo Schifrin. Both the recording of the Copland Clarinet Concerto and a 2008 recording of Leonard Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott have been released on iTunes via Angel/EMI and Deutsche Grammophon.

Mr. Shifrin continues to broaden the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra by commissioning and championing the works of 20th and 21st century American composers including, among others, John Adams, Joan Tower, Stephen Albert, Bruce Adolphe, Ezra Laderman, Lalo Schifrin, David Schiff, John Corigliano, Bright Sheng and Ellen Zwilich.

In addition to the Avery Fisher Prize, David Shifrin is the recipient of a Solo Recitalists' Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the 1998 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Music Academy of the West. At the outset of his career, he won the top prize at both the Munich and the Geneva International Competitions. Mr. Shifrin resides in Connecticut with his wife and is the father of four children - Henry, Olivia, Sam and William.

ERIN KEEFE
Violin
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
- May 18, 2011

American violinist Erin Keefe has been hailed as “an impressive violin soloist” by The New York Times and has established a reputation as a compelling artist who combines exhilarating temperament and fierce integrity. Winner of a 2006 Avery Fisher Career Grant, she recently took grand prizes in the Valsesia Musica, Torun, Schadt and Corpus Christi competitions and was the silver medalist in the Nielsen, Sendai and Gyeongnam competitions.

Ms. Keefe has appeared as a soloist in recent seasons with orchestras such as the New York City Ballet Orchestra, New Mexico Symphony, Korean Symphony Orchestra, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra and the Gottingen Symphony and has given recitals throughout the United States, Austria, Germany, Korea, Japan, Poland and Denmark.

Among the leading chamber musicians of her generation, Ms. Keefe joins the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as an Artist during the 2010-2011 season after previously being a member of The Chamber Music Society Two program from 2006-2009. She regularly collaborates with many leading artists of today including the Emerson String Quartet, Edgar Meyer, Gary Hoffman, David Finckel, Wu Han, Gary Graffman, Richard Goode, Menahem Pressler and Leon Fleisher. Ms. Keefe has performed with the Boston and Brooklyn Chamber Music Societies and has made festival appearances at Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Music from Angel Fire, Ravinia and the Seattle, OK Mozart, Mimir and Bridgehampton chamber music festivals. She has recorded for the Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos and CMS Studio Recordings labels, and her performances have been featured on “Live from Lincoln Center” and broadcast on radio stations nationwide.

Ms. Keefe graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School where she studied with Arnold Steinhardt, Ida Kavafian, Philip Setzer and Ronald Copes. She has also studied with Philipp Naegele, Brian Lewis and Teri Einfeldt. She plays a Nicolo Gagliano violin from 1732.

ANDREY TCHEKMAZOV
Cello
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
- May 18, 2011

Hailed by critics as an “extraordinary musician” (Washington Post), cellist Andrey Tchekmazov is known for his versatility as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician.

Mr. Tchekmazov was the Grand Prize winner of the Vittorio Gui International Chamber Music Competition and the Premio Trio di Trieste and has performed extensively throughout North and South America, Europe, Russia and Asia, appearing at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Osaka Symphony Hall in Japan, New York's Alice Tully Hall, Brazil's Sala Cecilia Mereles, Sala Sao Paulo and Teatro Alfa with orchestras such as the São Paolo Symphony, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Brazil National Symphony, the Kiev Philharmonic and the Teatro Alfa Symphony. He has also been a top prizewinner at the Koussevitzky Cello Competition in New York, the Schadt Competition, Artists International, Premio della Critica in Trieste and the Russian National Competition in Moscow.

Ever since his critically acclaimed debut at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall, Mr. Tchekmazov has enjoyed an active career as recitalist and chamber musician, performing at such renowned venues as Zankel Hall, the Caramoor Music Center, Barge Music, the Rhode Island Chamber Music Series, Bar Harbor Festival, Merkin Concert Hall in New York City and Hampden Sydney, where he was invited to perform by the members of The Emerson String Quartet.

As a regular performer with the Jupiter Chamber Players in New York and at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C, Mr. Tchekmazov "impressed his audiences with a big, warm tone and Russian brand of virtuosity” (The Strad) by introducing them to rarely-performed jewels of classical music alongside the works of great masters. He has premiered works by contemporary composers such as George Warren, Ira Cremer and Ralf Ytrehus and has recently recorded the Cello Sonata by David Winkler and Byzantine Chants, The Sacred Concerto for Solo Cello, by Margarita Zelenaia, both which were written and dedicated to him. He has also participated in ambitious, unique projects such as performing Dmitri Shostakovich’s entire chamber music repertoire for cello at the Phillips Collection.

An active educator, Andrey Tchekmazov has been a faculty member at the Rio de Janeiro Cello Encounter, the Lakewood Festival, Russish Abend in Germany and the Brasilia International Music Festival. He has also performed at Westminster College and Brown, Bowdoin, Seton Hall and Princeton Universities. As an orchestral musician, Mr. Tchekmazov was appointed principal cellist of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and the São Paolo Symphony. His performances have been featured on WQXR, WGBH, NPR and other TV and radio stations across Eastern and Western Europe and South America.

Born in Moscow into a family of professional pianists, Mr. Tchekmazov studied piano and later cello at the Gnessin Academy. He continued his education at the Moscow State Conservatory with Nataliya Shakhovskaya and later at the Juilliard School as a Leonard Rose full scholarship student of Harvey Shapiro. At Juilliard he worked closely with members of the Juilliard and Guarneri String Quartets. Mr. Tchekmazov has made several recordings including a recent release on NAXOS with the Russian National Phiharmonic as well as a recording for the Delos label.

GLORIA CHIEN
Piano
Exciting Young Virtuosos Series
- May 18, 2011

Pianist Gloria Chien has been picked by the Boston Globe as one of the Superior Pianists of the year, "… who appears to excel in everything." Richard Dyer praised her for "a wondrously rich palette of colors, which she mixes with dashing bravado and with an uncanny precision of calibration…Chien's performance had it all, and it was fabulous." Ms. Chien made her orchestral debut at the age of 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since then, she has appeared as a soloist under the batons of Sergiu Comissiona, Keith Lockhart, Thomas Dausgaard, Irwin Hoffman, Benjamin Zander, Robert Bernhardt and Felix Chen. She received a Harvard Musical Association Award and was a prize winner at the World Piano Competition and the San Antonio International Piano Competition, where she also received the prize for the Best Performance of the Commissioned Work. Ms. Chien has presented solo recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Harvard Musical Association, Sanibel Music Festival, Caramoor Music Festival, Salle Cortot in Paris, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. Ms. Chien has participated in such festivals as Music Academy of the West, Verbier Music Festival and Music@Menlo, where she has been a chamber music coach since 2007.

An avid chamber musician, Ms. Chien has been the resident pianist with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston since 2000, a group known for its versatility and commitment to new music. The Boston Herald praised her for "[playing] phenomenally." Her recent CD with violinist Joanna Kurkowicz, featuring music of Grazyna Bacewicz, was released on Chandos Records. The International Record Review wrote, "[the violinist] could ask for no more sensitive or supportive an accompanist than Gloria Chien." Harmonie Magazine wrote, "…but it would be unfair not to mention the pianist, who is accompanying the soloist in an absolutely responsive, impressive and confident way. She is more than an accompanist - rather, she is an equivalent partner to the soloist." The Strad praises her for "super performances…accompanied with great character." She also received fantastic reviews in Gramophone,American Record Guide, and Muzyka 21.

Recent engagements include collaborations with the Daedalus, Jupiter and Formosa String Quartets, Wu Han, Paul Neubauer, Andres Diaz, David Shifrin, Ani and Ida Kafavian, Catherine Cho, Soovin Kim, Carolin Widmann, Edward Aaron and Anthony McGill. She has presented numerous duo recitals with pianist Ning An, and the cycle of Beethoven Violin Sonatas with James Buswell, featured live on Boston’s WGBH Radio.

Gloria began playing the piano at the age of five in her native Taiwan. She has a doctor of musical arts, a master’s and an undergraduate degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Her teachers have included Russell Sherman and Wha-Kyung Byun. In the fall of 2004, Ms. Chien was named Assistant Professor of Music at the Lee University in Cleveland, TN. During the 2009-2010 season, Gloria is launching String Theory at the Hunter, a new chamber music series at the Hunter Museum of American Art in downtown Chattanooga.