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RISING STARS PROGRAM noteS and artist bios
NOVEMBER 1 RISING STARS I
Saturday, 8:00pm ~ Music Room
NOVEMBER 2; RISING STARS II
Sunday, 4:00pm ~ Music Room
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PROGRAM NOTES
ABOUT THE NOVEMBER 1st PROGRAM
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
(1685-1750)
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major, BWV 1048
The “Brandenburg Concertos” have immortalized the name of the Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, to whom on March 24, 1721, Bach sent a lavishly beautiful presentation manuscript containing six splendid concertos representing a variety of different approaches to the concerto idea. The nickname of the set comes from the first great Bach scholar Philipp Spitta, and it has stuck. But the form in which we have these six works certainly owes more to the ensemble that Bach directed in Cöthen than to any possible inspiration from Brandenburg. Bach surely performed all of these works with his own ensemble and conceived the solo parts for musicians he knew well. The number of instruments called for in this set of concertos accords perfectly with the make-up of the ensemble at Cöthen. There is no evidence that any of these magnificently buoyant concertos was ever performed in Brandenburg, nor could the Margrave’s small orchestra have undertaken most of them.
The modern notion of concerto as a work for an orchestra with one or more soloists had not yet developed in Bach’s day. It is most likely that he never intended more than one player on a part in any of the Brandenburgs. Despite the presence of prominent and virtuosic solo parts, all of these works fall into the category of “ensemble concertos” rather than “solo concertos,” since the soloists share the glory and the difficulties about equally with the other members of the ensemble.
The Third Brandenburg is unusual in being scored for strings only, divided into nine parts (three each of violins, violas, cellos), plus continuo bass. Though it is completely instrumental, the shape of the opening movement corresponds to that of the Da Capo aria that filled Baroque operas: an opening statement (the ritornello) by the full ensemble, then a varied series of treatments of the material, ending in the home key with a restatement of the ritornello. The middle section is in (or at least ends in) a contrasting key. In the opera house this would be followed by a literal repetition of the opening “da capo”—that is, “from the head” of the piece, with elaborate ornamentation on the singer’s part. But in the Brandenburg No. 3, Bach writes out the complete final part because he continues to recast the musical material with different combinations of instruments, and even adds a new countermelody at the beginning of the restatement.
Then comes a mystery: two isolated chords that would normally end a movement in E-minor (the expected key of a slow movement for this concerto)—but there is no movement to precede them! It has clearly not been lost, because these two measures appear in Bach’s manuscript right in the middle of a page. Most likely the original performers improvised something over the two sustained harmonies, and something of the sort often happens today, too, for the lack of any more explicit indication from Bach.
It leads directly to the finale, a lively, racing dance movement in binary form—which is to say, in two sections, with each part repeated.
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ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
(1874-1951)
Verklarte Nacht, Op. 4
Arnold Schoenberg, that giant among twentieth century composers, wrote his most popular score, Verklärte Nacht, at the very end of the nineteenth century. Its popularity certainly has something to do with the work’s palpable links to the era that was ending, but it is at the same time remarkably forward looking, anticipating the composer that Schoenberg became.
Throughout the 1890s Schoenberg had composed string quartets, the medium he knew best as a performer (he played the cello). Most of these he destroyed, but one score, an enormously assured and competent quartet in D, dating from 1897, shows how much he had learned in his self directed study and his few formal lessons with his friend Alexander von Zemlinsky. Yet even this could scarcely prepare us for the artistic maturity of the string sextet he was to create two years later.
Like so many Schoenberg scores, Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”) was composed at a furious pace. He completed the bulk of the work in just three weeks in September 1899, though he was not ready to sign and date his score until December 1. The overt inspiration was a poem by the German writer Richard Dehmel (1863 1920), whose Weib und Welt (“Woman and World”) had made something of a stir at its publication in 1896 when government censors found some of the poems offensive. Schoenberg had set texts from Dehmel’s book almost at once in some of his earliest songs (Opus 2 and 3). Verklärte Nacht was a natural choice as an inspiration for a musical setting, since Dehmel’s poem is laid out almost in a musical way. The last line, for example, is a transformed echo of the opening line, a device that Schoenberg brilliantly mirrors in the music.
The poem is laid out in five short sections, of which the first, third, and fifth are impersonal narration describing the unnamed man and woman walking along on a moonlit night. At first the natural surroundings seem cold and bare. The second section is a speech by the woman, who confesses that she carries another man’s child. Before she met her companion, she explains, she had felt that motherhood would provide her with purpose. Now she has fallen in love with him and must confess her fault. A brief narrative interlude describes her faltering step and the moonlight flooding down upon them. The man’s response comprises the fourth section of the poem. He is understanding and magnanimous. The radiance of the natural world convinces him that they love they feel will draw them together and make the child theirs as well. The poem closes with another description of the moonlit night—now bright with hope.
Verklärte Nacht
[1] Zwei Menschen gehn durch kahlen, kalten
Hain;
der Mond läuft mit, sie schaun hinein.
Der Mond läuft über hohen Eichen,
kein Wölkchen trübt das Himmelslicht,
in das die schwarzen Zacken reichen.
Die Stimme eines Weibes spricht:
[2] Ich trag ein Kind, und nit von Dir,
Ich geh in Sünde neben Dir.
Ich habe mich schwer an mir vergangen.
Ich glaubte nicht mehr an ein Glück
und hatte doch ein schwer Verlangen nach Lebensinhalt, nach Mutterglück
und Pflicht; da hab ich mich erfrecht,
da liess ich schaudernd mein Geschlecht
von einem fremden Mann umfangen,
und hab mich noch dafür gesegnet.
Nun hat das Leben sich gerächt:
nun bin ich Dir, o Dir begegnet.
[3] Sie geht mit ungelenkem Schritt.
Sie schaut empor; der Mond läuft mit.
Ihr dunkler Blick ertrinkt in Licht.
Die Stimme eines Mannes spricht:
[4] Das Kind, das Du empfangen hast,
sei Deiner Seele keine Last,
o sieh, wie klar das Weltall schimmert!
Es ist ein Glanz um Alles her,
Du treibst mit mir auf kaltem Meer,
doch eine eigne Wärme flimmert
von Dir in mich, von mir in Dich,
Die wird das fremde Kind verklären,
Du wirst es mir, von mir gebären.
Du hast den Glanz in mich gebracht,
Du hast mich selbst zum Kind gemacht.
[5] Er fasst sie um die starken Hüften.
Ihr Atem küsst sich in den Lüften.
Zwei Menschen gehn durch hohe, helle Nacht.
Richard Dehmel |
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Transfigured Night
[1] Two people move through the bare, cold grove;
The moon runs alongside, they look into her.
The moon glides over high oaks, no bit of cloud darkens the sky’s light,
toward which the black branches reach.
The voice of a woman speaks:
[2] “I bear a child that is not yours,
I walk in sin beside you.
I have grievously offended.
I believed no more in good fortune
and yet had a deep longing
for a meaning to my life, for maternal joy
and responsibility; so I grew shameless,
I allowed myself to yield, shuddering,
to the embrace of an unknown man,
and have been blessed in this way.
Now life has taken revenge:
for now I have met you—ah, you.”
[3] She walks with faltering step.
She looks up; the moon runs alongside.
Her dark gaze is flooded with light.
The voice of a man speaks:
[4] “May the child that you have conceived
be no burden to your soul.
Look how the universe glimmers!
There is a splendor all around,
you are sailing with me on a cold sea,
yet a special warmth flickers
from you to me, from me to you,
which will transfigure that child of another;
you will bear it to me, by me.
You have kindled the splendor within me,
you have turned even me into a child."
[5] He catches her round her strong hips.
Their breaths kiss in the air. Two people move through the high, bright night.
translation by S.L. |
Perhaps the biggest surprise in the score is Schoenberg’s decision to write a piece of program music on this scale for a chamber ensemble, especially as the medium chosen—two each of violins, violas, and cellos—was a new one to him. It had been used twice by Brahms, of whom Schoenberg was a great admirer. Yet the style reflects Schoenberg’s new absorption of Wagnerian chromaticism. (Indeed, one of the most notorious comments ever made about the piece came from one of the program reviewers of the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein charged with deciding whether to recommend new works for performance: it looked, he said, as if the score of Tristan had been smeared while the ink was still wet.)
For all its reflection of the original poem, though, Verklärte Nacht thoroughly transcends the usual point to point descriptiveness of run of the mill romantic program compositions and provides a thoroughly satisfying musical shape on its own terms. It is the first of several works—including the later Chamber Symphony and Pelleas und Melisande—that Schoenberg lays out as a large single movement sonata. This one is, in fact, a double sonata, strictly following the five sections of Dehmel’s poem. The “narrative” parts are quite brief, but the second and fourth, representing the words of the woman and the man respectively, are full scale sonata forms.
The first is in D minor, the second in D major (though it must be remembered that these keys are already stretched considerably in their tonal function). Moreover the second of them is built out of musical ideas that affirm expressive ideas heard more tentatively in the first. From the literary point of view, this can be seen as a reflection of the woman’s anguish on the one hand and the man’s generous confidence on the other. But it functions equally well from a purely musical point of view, with the second sonata section truly completing and “transfiguring” the first. Schoenberg is so prodigal in inventing gradual transformations of his themes that the listener can discover new relationships even after many hearings of the score.
The nocturnal scene with its two walking figures is represented by a soft marchlike descending line, heard in bare, cold octaves at the outset, but transformed at the very end of the score into a passage shimmering with light.
The first sonata form section, in the minor mode, includes a split level theme, divided between the cello and upper parts. Later on this very Tristanesque material serves as a “second theme.” The second sonata form section opens with a characteristic figure in the cellos (the man’s voice?), but it immediately develops thematic ideas heard earlier, but now mostly in the major. New sonorities and the major mode reinforce the melodic development to provide a rich, satisfying conclusion in which the “transfiguration” of the night is musically suggested by Schoenberg’s eloquent and shimmering transformation of the opening music.
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FRANZ SCHUBERT
(1797-1828)
Quintet in C Major for Two Violins, Viola and Two Cellos, Op. 163, D. 956
Virtually nothing is known of the history of this, Schubert’s greatest chamber composition, except that he turned to it in August of 1828, only months before his tragically premature death in November, and that he probably completed the piece in September. We have no idea why he chose the particular ensemble (with two cellos, as Boccherini had used in his quintets, rather than the two violas Mozart preferred), nor if he wrote it at someone’s request. He almost certainly never heard a performance, and the work was not, in fact, published until a full quarter-century after the composer’s death (when it was listed as Opus 163, a pure invention of the publisher’s). Still, it remains the only truly great composition for a string quintet with two cellos; it outclasses Boccherini by a long shot and remained so overwhelming an example that even those composers who might have used it as a model gave up in the end and wrote their quintets with a second viola. Brahms, in particular, actually brought to conclusion the composition of a quintet in F minor directly modeled on Schubert’s work; but he finally converted it into two alternative forms: the F minor quintet, Opus 34a (for string quartet and piano), and the sonata for two pianos, Opus 34b. Both versions retain clear references to their Schubertian inspiration, above all in the treatment of Neapolitan harmonic turns, of which Schubert’s quintet is the unparalleled model.
Schubert’s ear for harmonic color is exploited here to a degree hitherto unknown. The first three chords are a good example: a C-major triad followed by a diminished-seventh chord on C, followed by another C-major triad to end the first part of the phrase. To an earlier composer, the diminished chord would have demanded harmonic movement, its tensions would have insisted on resolution. Here, the chord simply is, a characteristic sound in its own right, possibly suggesting foreboding, or immensity, or mysticism—but not harmonic movement. Soon these three chords become a kind of motto embedded in the principal theme.
Another unforgettable example of Schubert’s search for richer harmonic color—indeed the emotional high point of the first movement—is the arrival at the second theme. Conventional harmonic practice decreed that the secondary key must be G if the tonic is C. Schubert appears to accede to this practice with a vigorous modulation to G, but the moment he lands on it, he leaves the two cellos hanging on the note G without other accompaniment, and the second cello unexpectedly melts down the scale to E-flat, whereupon the cellos duet in a lush new theme in that key. But there is another surprise: having now convinced us that the secondary material would not be in the expected key, Schubert modulates yet again, this time to G, for still another thematic statement and the conclusion of the exposition.
As the quintet proceeds, what are called “Neapolitan relationships” come increasingly to the fore; these occur when one key seems to “lean” on another that is a half-step lower. In the eighteenth century, such relationships occurred only briefly at the cadence to provide a colorful way of approaching the dominant. But Schubert expands the significance of these relationships so that entire sections of movements “lean” on the home key, giving a much wider and more piquant harmonic range, turned to vivid expressive use.
The slow movement begins in E major with an unearthly stasis of almost mystical quality; the middle section is a contrastingly nervous passage in F minor, the Neapolitan relationship to the main key of E.
Even more striking, perhaps, is the scherzo, which is as extroverted as one could wish for, only to have as its contrasting Trio a daringly imaginative slow section in D-flat (Neapolitan to the home key of C), asking urgent questions for which no answers are forthcoming. And even the questions are brusquely swept away in the return to the scherzo proper.
The finale, though it is in many respects lighter in character and expressive depth than the middle two movements, continues to exploit these relationships with sudden changes of harmonic color, which underline the shifts of emotional intensity. The surprising last two notes—a unison appoggiatura D-flat falling to a solid C—encapsulate the essence of this harmonic relationship.
- Program notes © Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)
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ABOUT THE NOVEMBER 2nd PROGRAM
JOSEPH HAYDN
(1732-1809)
Quartet No. 23 in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5, Hob. III:35
The string quartet and Haydn grew up together, and in his Opus 20 quartets, composed in 1772 when he was forty years old, both achieved their early maturity. Haydn’s great contribution to the medium of the string quartet—aside from the sheer breathtaking richness of his imagination in creating a varied series of works for the same medium over the span of a half century—was in developing a “conversational” style in which each player had a role, none was simply “filler” or “harmonic bass.” It was normal in Haydn’s time to publish chamber works like string quartets in groups of six, and Opus 20 was the third such work that Haydn had composed in the space of five years—years of steady achievement in the resources he brought to the medium. Many critics feel that the six masterpieces of Opus 20 finally demonstrate the real possibilities of the string quartet medium. And it is not only technical developments that are notable here, but expressiveness, too. Normally an “opus” contained one work in a minor key and five in the major. Opus 20 offers two minor-key works, and even the works in the major have a greater intensity than before. Of these six masterpiece, the fifth, in F minor, has frequently been hailed as the finest of the lot.
Its darkly passionate opening, upward-striving in broad phrases grabs the listener’s attention at once. The comparative brightness of the secondary theme offers a contrast throughout the development section, in which both themes contend, but the theme takes on a new character in the extended coda, of extraordinary harmonic daring and virtually a new development—a vast, subjective expression of passion.
The Menuetto comes next, but it is a dark dance, filled with mysterious twistings of melody and harmony, its darkness relieved by F major of the Trio. The slow movement offers the brightness of F major in a dreamy pastoral mood.
The finale is a surprise: it is marked Fuga a due Soggetti (“Fugue with two themes”). This double fugue is in part homage to the contrapuntal styles of older music that Haydn learned as a student (and he was a complete master of those skills); here he chooses a traditional contrapuntal subject familiar to most from Handel’s Messiah, where it appears to the words “And with His stripes.” But the fugue goes far beyond antiquarianism, for Haydn puts the technique in a modern setting as an objective kind of intellectual tension in contrast to the subjective emotion of the first movement. The virtuosic interplay between intellect and emotion, between subjectivity and objectivity, is practically a definition of that ultimate refinement of musical style we call Classical.
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LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
(1770-1827)
Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 59. No. 3 (Razumovsky)
Following the completion of the Opus 18 quartets, Beethoven avoided the string quartet medium for a time. The gap was not especially long—only about four years—but it was momentous for Beethoven’s creative development. Those four years saw the creation of the Eroica Symphony, which marked the opening of the floodgates. Never again was Beethoven to be so prolific, turning out symphonies, concertos, quartets, and an opera, along with many other works, all projected on a scale much larger than before.
Until very recently it was always the middle period that people referred to when they spoke of Beethoven’s style; the early works were too much influenced by his forebears, it was said, while the late ones were too bizarre and récherché. Even today, though we recognize the authentic Beethoven behind the masks of all three periods, we often feel that his middle period Beethoven’s works are individual in a way not always true earlier (though even here, his enormous debt to Haydn and Mozart is still evident).
Composition of the Opus 59 quartets occupied Beethoven in 1805 6, during which years he also composed the Fourth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Appassionata Sonata, and Fidelio (in its first incarnation as Leonore). These three quartets have often been compared with the Eroica Symphony and, rightly or not, their taut muscularity generally symbolizes our concept of what is Beethovenian.
A Viennese composer writing a quartet in C major with a slow introduction featuring mystifying and dissonant suspended harmonies cannot fail to call up the ghost of Mozart; and Beethoven’s Opus 59, No. 3, does indeed recall the “Dissonant” Quartet of the earlier master, at least in its opening measures, which play musical puns with Beethoven’s favorite chord of ambiguity, the diminished seventh. The Allegro vivace gets underway with a two-note rhythmic figure consisting of pickup and downbeat rising stepwise, a figure that become nearly ubiquitous in the movement to follow. The chords that support this figure punctuate interjections by the first violin taking off in solo flight. (The concerto-like flashiness of some of the soloistic writing calls to mind the fact that Beethoven was heavily involved in the composition of concertos immediately before and after the Opus 59 quartets: the third through fifth piano concerts, that for violin, and the Triple Concerto all appeared within a year or two on either side.)
The slow movement, in A minor, though not too slow (Beethoven modifies the marking Andante con moto with the addition specification “quasi Allegretto”), is filled with soulful “Russian” qualities, perhaps to make up for Beethoven’s failure to include a Russian folk song in this score, as he had done with the other two works in this set dedicated to a Russian nobleman. In any case, the hints of modal themes and scales in this extended movement may very well have been his idea of what Russian folk music sounded like.
By way of contrast, the movement that follows is unexpectedly a Minuet, squarely phrased, a decidedly old-fashioned genre employed here as a buffer between the somber, heavily minor-key weight of the slow movement and the vigorous energy of the finale.
The last movement is one of Beethoven’s most vigorously pushy, even hectoring quartet movements, built on a racing, somewhat repetitious fugato designed to return at the recapitulation enriched by the addition of a new counterpoint. The emphatic buildup to climaxes (sometimes rudely undercut, other times allowed to grow to completion) obviously recalls the triumphant C-major conclusion of another work of those years—the Fifth Symphony. Here, as elsewhere in his quartet output, Beethoven strains the rhetorical possibilities of the medium to the limit so as to close in a burst of glory.
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FELIX MENDELSSOHN
(1809-1847)
Quintet No. 1 in A Major, Op. 18
One of Mendelssohn’s earliest and greatest masterpieces is the glorious Octet, Opus 20, for strings that he composed in 1825 for the twenty third birthday of the violinist Eduard Rietz, a close family friend, who had given the young composer violin lessons and was later to take part with him in the Bach revival. The following year he wrote the present quintet, which thus came between the Octet and the two remarkable early string quartets, published with the opus numbers 12 and 13 (as this sequence indicates, opus numbers, often assigned years after the fact, have little connection with chronology in Mendelssohn’s work).
Mendelssohn surely intended the first violin part of the quintet for Rietz as he had first composed it, but when Rietz died in January 1832, Mendelssohn wrote a new slow movement, Intermezzo, as a tribute; the manuscript of this movement bears the heading Nachruf (“In memoriam”). To make room for it within the traditional four movements, Mendelssohn cut a minuet and trio that had been in third place and moved the scherzo, originally the second movement, to its present position.
The quintet is scored for an ensemble of two violins, two violas, and cello, the same layout Mozart had used for his string quintets. Indeed, the spirit of Mozart hovers over the first movement, especially in reminiscences of that master’s clarinet quintet, which happens to be in the same key. Though all of the instruments have a certain unobtrusive independence—as should be the case with chamber music—the first violin nonetheless takes over rather noticeably at times, Mendelssohn’s offering to his friend Rietz.
How much more important the violin part becomes in the second movement, conceived as a tribute to the departed player! The first violin covers a very wide range and dominates the texture, at times, like a concerto soloist, though Mendelssohn never passes the boundaries of chamber music.
The scherzo is a brilliant contrapuntal workout, with a fugal texture showing how much Mendelssohn had learned from his study of Bach while retaining the witty lightness that we know from the Octet. And Mendelssohn is able to offer dramatic surprises such as the sudden grinding to a halt on a hushed diminished seventh chord before a final racing stretto.
Originally the two fastest movements of the quintet were separated by the discarded minuet. Now they are cheek by jowl at the end of the quintet, with some risk that the finale will not achieve its full effect, coming right after the scherzo. It, too, is fast and filled with contrapuntal figures, though the young composer seems to be far more involved here with echoes of Beethoven quartets than with either Mozart or Bach. In any case, this largely youthful work, like the octet and the two quartets surrounding it, reveal again the extraordinary imaginative and technical refinement of the seventeen year old boy, as he still was when he wrote this finale.
- Program notes © Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)
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2008 RISING STARS BIO
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Pamela Frank, Co-director for Rising Stars, violin ~ Violinist Pamela Frank was born in New York City in 1967. As the daughter of pianists Lilian Kallir and Claude Frank, she partook of a musically vibrant home life, including violin lessons from the age of five. Although she enrolled in the pre-college division of the Juilliard School of Music, she otherwise enjoyed a typical adolescence. She attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1989. Her violin teachers included Shirley Givens for eleven years, followed by Szymon Goldberg and Jaime Laredo. She officially launched her career in 1985, when she accompanied Alexander Schneider and the New York String Orchestra in four performances at Carnegie Hall. Not until ten years later, in 1995, did she make her Carnegie Hall solo recital debut. In 1999, she won the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize.
Accustomed to being surrounded by musicians at home, Frank continued the trend when away by spending many of her summers at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. In the course of practicing and performing chamber music with the musicians there, as well as touring with them on occasion, she formed significant and lasting professional associations with many of the world-class performers with whom she would later concertize in cities around the globe. Her father, pianist Claude Frank, and pianist Peter Serkin were two such performers.
Ms. Frank's passion for chamber music, and the finely tuned synergy of the groups in which she plays today, have produced many memorable performances, both live and recorded. Among Ms. Frank's noteworthy chamber music recordings are the Brahms Violin Sonatas with Peter Serkin on the London/Decca label, the Piano Trio of Frédéric Chopin with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma on Sony Classical, and the "Trout" Quintet of Franz Schubert, also on Sony Classical.
Aside from her chamber music activities, Pamela Frank carries on an active career as a soloist with major American orchestras, and as a recitalist. Although devoted to the standard repertoire, she frequently includes contemporary works by composers such as Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Toru Takemitsu, and Aaron Jay Kernis in her live and recorded performances.
Frank is a member of the faculties of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and Stony Brook University in New York. She and her husband, violinist Alexander Simionescu, live in the New York City area.
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Atar Arad, Distinguished Artist, viola ~ Atar Arad was born in Tel Aviv, where he began his early musical education and violin studies. In 1968 he was one of a few young artists to be selected to study in the renowned Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth under the patronage of the Queen of Belgium.
In 1971, drawn by the deep, warm sound of the viola and its broad but unfamiliar repertoire, he decided to devote himself to this instrument and its music. The following year, in July 1972 in his first appearance as a violist, he won the City of London Prize as a laureate of the Carl Flesch Competition for violin and viola. Two months later he was awarded the First Prize at the International Viola Competition in Geneva by a unanimous decision of the jury.
Numerous concerts followed -- as soloist with major orchestras, and in recitals at some of Europe’s most prestigious festivals. Mr. Arad’s recordings for Telefunken are widely acclaimed. His Sonata per la Grand’ Viola e Orchestra by Paganini was considered by stringed-instrument lovers and critics alike to be an astonishing demonstration of the technical capabilities of the viola. His album in collaboration with pianist Evelyne Brancart, was praised by High Fidelity Magazine as being “...perhaps the best-played viola recital ever recorded.”
In 1980 Mr. Arad moved from London to the U.S. in order to become a member of the Cleveland Quartet for the next seven years. With this great Quartet he toured throughout the U.S., South America, Western and Eastern Europe, Israel and Japan, collaborating with many leading musicians such as pianists Istomin, Curzon, Ax, Dichter and Kovacevich, violists Schidloff and Laredo, Cellists Ma and Rostropovich, flutists Gallway and Rampal, and clarinetist Stolzmann to name but a few. He has recorded for labels such as RCA, CBS and Telarc, and has appeared in music festivals including Aspen, Berlin, Edinburgh, Flanders, Israel, New York Mostly Mozart and Carnegie Hall, Paris, Salzburg, and many more. During that time he held the position of a Professor of Viola at the Eastman School of Music.
Mr. Arad was an artist/faculty member at the Aspen School and Festival. He also taught at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, TX, and served as an artist/lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He currently teaches at Indiana University, Bloomington, and at the Steans Institute (Ravinia Festival) in Chicago.
Mr. Arad appeared as a regular guest artist with Houston's Da Camera Society, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Upper Galilee Chamber Music Days (Israel), the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Intenational in Dallas, Sitka Festival, Chautauqua Festival and Ravinia Music Festival.
Atar Arad has published two important essays: “The Thirteen Pages” (The American String Teacher, Winter 1988) dealing with the authenticity of Bartók’s Viola Concerto and “Walton As Scapino” (The Strad, February 1989), which reveals a number of unusual compositional procedures used by William Walton in his Viola Concerto.
In 1992 he wrote his first musical composition - a solo sonata for viola. The sonata was premiered by Mr. Atar in 1993 as part of his recital at the Viola Congress in Chicago and was published by the Israel Music Institute (1995). Violist Roland Glassl, the winner of the 1997 Tertis International Competition, gave the London premier of the sonata in 1998 at the Wigmore Hall. In 1998, Mr. Arad completed his string quartet which was premiered in Bloomington in April of 1999 by the Corigliano Quartet. The Herald Times greatly appreciated the piece, concluding its review by stating: “Here is an assured composition, one that deserves life off the shelves and in concerts halls. It doesn’t make for easy listening, but it prompts involvement and invites praise.” His Tikvah for viola solo, commissioned by the Bayern Rundfunk for the Munich International Competition was premiered last September at the competition.
A frequent guest with today’s leading string quartets and musicians, Mr. Arad has performed with the Guarneri, Emerson, Tokyo, Mendelssohn, American, Chillingrian, Vermeer, Corigliano and New Zealand String Quartets as well as violinists such as Zuckermann, Fried, Bell and Weilerstein, violists Strongin-Katz, Tree and Biss, cellists Starker, Geringas, Hoffman, Katz and Edy, pianists Eschenbach, Frank, Pressler, Hokanson, Kalisch, and Brancart. Recent performances as a soloist include the Louisville Orchestra with conductor Segal, the Xalapa Orchestra with conductor Effron, The Brazil Symphony with conductor Batiz. . He also performed with the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra at the closing concert of the Viola Congress in Wellington, and gave the Mexican premier of the Schnittke viola Concerto with conductor Zollman, under whose baton he also performed with Haifa Simphony along with violinist Hagai Shaham.
In August of 2003, Arad premiered his new three Caprices for Viola, as a part of his recital at the Tertis International Competition and Workshop, where he also gave a master class and served as a judge. He also judged the 2004 Munich International Competition.
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Ronald Thomas, Distinguished Artist, cello - Ronald Thomas is an American cellist known for his work as a soloist and chamber musician. Thomas has made guest appearances with some of the world's finest orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Handel and Haydn Society, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, and the Blossom Festival Orchestra among others. He has played recitals in nearly every state including performances in the cities of New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Los Angeles. Thomas has also performed throughout Europe and Asia.
Mr. Thomas is the co-founder and artistic director of the Boston Chamber Music Society and has also appeared with the Seattle Chamber Music Society and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center both at Alice Tully Hall and on tour. Other chamber music appearances include the La Musica, Music at Menlo, Sarasota Festival, Music from Angel Fire, Music in the Mountains, Portland Chamber Music Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Seattle Music Festival, Bravo! Colorado Chamber Music Festival, Festival dei Due Mondi, Blossom Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Sarasota Music Festival, the Yale at Norfolk Festival, the Dubrovnik Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Amsterdam Festival, and others.
Mr. Thomas is the artistic director of Chestnut Hill Concerts of Madison, CT and was an original member of the Players in Residence committee and the Board of Overseers at Bargemusic in New York City. Mr. Thomas is also a former member of Boston Musica Viva and the Aeolian Chamber Players. While a meber of these two groups, Mr. Thomas premiered countless new works, including those by Gunther Schuller, Michael Colgrass, Ellen Zwillich, Donald Erb, William Bolcom, and William Thomas McKinley.
Mr. Thomas is a former member of the faculties at M.I.T., Brown University, the Boston Conservatory and, most recently, the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore where he spent nine years before resigning in 1997 in order to spend more time with his family and the cello. Mr. Thomas is married to violist Cynthia Phelps with whom he has three daughters: Lili, Christina, and Caitlin. They live just outside New York City in Leonia, N.J.
Prior to winning the Young Concert Artists auditions at the age of 19, Mr. Thomas attended the New England Conservatory and the Curtis Institute. Mr. Thomas' principal teachers were Lorne Monroe, David Soyer, and for early studies, Mary Canberg.
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Bradley Brookshire, Guest Artist, harpsichord ~ Hailed by New York Magazine as "a leading light of New York's original-instrument scene," Bradley Brookshire has emerged as one of most noted Bach interpreters of his generation. His distinctive approach to Bach’s harpsichord music has led to sustained critical acclaim by the New York Times (his interpretation of Bach’s French Suites was named a New York Times “Critic’s Choice” Recording of year 2001), Goldberg magazine, Stereophile magazine, and American Record Guide, among others.
As a soloist, continuo player, and chamber music partner, Mr. Brookshire has appeared with The Chamber Orchestra of Europe, The English Chamber Orchestra, Glimmerglass Opera, The Shanghai String Quartet, and many other leading artists, including David Daniels and Bejun Mehta. A noted conductor of baroque opera, Mr. Brookshire has served as Assistant Conductor at Glimmerglass Opera, as Cover Conductor at Virginia Opera, and has twice conducted concertante performances at New York City Opera.
Mr. Brookshire’s just-released recording of Bach’s Art of the Fugue integrates his audio recording with a full score of the work. For the past three years, Brookshire has been developing an interactive counterpoint teaching program which reconstructs J.S. Bach’s own instructional method, The Art of the Fugue serving as its primary source of musical exemplars.
Mr. Brookshire has recorded for Sony Classical, BBC Records, Vox Classics, Opus 111 (Paris), and Music and Arts, and has just completed recording the Flute Sonatas of Bach with Tara Helen O’Connor. Last year, he founded his own, artist-driven label –– Bach Harpsichord –– which can be accessed at www.BachHarpsichord.com. For this new label, Mr. Brookshire is undertaking an integral recording of all of Bach’s harpsichord music, interspersed with recordings of the harpsichord music of Bach’s circle –– among them Kuhnau, Buxtehude, Böhm, Fischer, Fux, Pachelbel, and the Bach Sons –– and of the composers outside of Bach’s orbit who nonetheless strongly influenced him, including Marcello, Frescobaldi, and Couperin.
A member of the Purchase College (SUNY) faculty since 1998, Mr. Brookshire holds the position of Director of Graduate Studies in the Conservatory of Music, where he leads the Purchase College Camerata and teaches graduate courses in musicology and counterpoint. The State University of New York honored him with the Chancellor’s Award in 2004. Previous to accepting that full-time appointment, he was a visiting professor at Yale University, where he led the Yale Collegium Musicum.
"Brookshire plays the harpsichord the way Nigella Lawson [of the BBC hit show "Nigella Bites"] eats chocolate: with enraptured absorption. What lifts Brookshire's performances out of the usual audiophile (or academic Baroque) dead end is his unusual leavening of drama with humor. Great late night listening...on an enviably high musical plane. You must hear this.” Stereophile
“...a fabulous release, notable in particular for Brookshire’s ultra-imaginative approach...By far, Brookshire’s release of the French Suites is the best on the market I’ve heard – ever." American Record Guide
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Emily Deans, viola ~ Violist Emily Deans was launched into the international stage after claiming second prize in the Primrose Viola Competition this summer. In addition to this she was awarded the Primrose Prize for best Primrose Transcription, and took 4th Place at the Irving M. Klein Competition. After concluding her summer at the Ravinia Steans Institute, she looks forward to a very busy season of travelling and performing.
Emily began her musical studies in Dallas at the age of five, and began taking lessons with Emmanuel Borok, concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony, just two years later. She would make her Meyerson Symphony Hall debut shortly after, and at thirteen she made her first solo appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the fall of 2000 she returned to perform with them under the baton of Wolfgang Sawallisch, and has also appeared with the Brentwood-Westwood and Greater Trenton Symphony Orchestras.
Now 24, Emily has won numerous competition prizes, including the Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra Competition, Mann Music Center Competition, and both the children and junior divisions of the Albert M. Greenfield Competition. She has soloed with the Disney Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra on national television, and performed in the Library of Congress for the National Teachers Awards. Also an enthusiastic chamber music player, her quartet attended the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar in 1998, and she has performed in ensembles with David Geber, Joseph Silverstein, Timothy Lees, Barbara Westphal, and Timothy Eddy, among others. Aside from her interests in solo and chamber music, Emily is a very committed orchestral musician and served as concertmaster of the New York Youth Symphony—which performs in Carnegie Hall—for the 2002/2003 season.
Emily is currently pursuing a Master of Music degree at the New England Conservatory with Kim Kashkashian, and is a recent graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she received a Bachelor of Music degree in violin and viola. Teachers there included Arnold Steinhardt, Pamela Frank, and Joseph de Pasquale. Previous teachers include Emanuel Borok, Robert Lipsett, Robert Chen, Judith Ingolfsson, and C.J. Chang, among others. Over the past few summers, Emily has attended ENCORE School for Strings, Music Academy of the West, Kneisel Hall, and the Taos School of Music. She has been a member of both the Haddonfield Symphony and the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra.
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Dmitry Kouzov, cello ~ A versatile performer, cellist Dmitry Kouzov has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Russia with orchestras, in solo and duo recitals, and in numerous chamber music performances. He has appeared with such orchestras as the National Symphony of Ukraine, as well as the South Bohemian Chamber Philharmonic (Czech Republic), and the North Caucasus and Rostov Philharmonics (Russia). He was awarded First Prize at the International Beethoven Competition in the Czech Republic, and he is a two-time laureate of the International Festival-Competition “Virtuosi of the Year 2000” in Russia. His credits include performances at several prominent concert venues throughout his native Russia, including both St. Petersburg Philharmonic Halls, the conservatoire halls of Moscow and St. Petersburg, respectively, and the Mariinsky Theatre. Mr. Kouzov made his New York orchestral début at Alice Tully Hall in 2005 under the baton of Maestro Raymond Leppard. Since that time he has also appeared at Merkin Hall and Bargemusic. During the 2006-07 season, Mr. Kouzov gave his New York recital début at the 92nd Street Y.
Highlights of Mr. Kouzov’s 2005-06 season included appearances at the Verbier, Aix-En-Provence and Schleswig-Holstein Festivals. In December 2005, Mr. Kouzov performed the entire cycle of Beethoven Cello Sonatas at New York’s Bargemusic with pianist Dmitry Shteinberg. He later gave a repeat performance at the St. Petersburg State Cappella, paired with the prominent Russian pianist Peter Laul, with whom he has continued to perform since 1991.
Mr. Kouzov has appeared in command performances before Mikhail Gorbachev and Prince Andrew, Duke of York. In 2005, he performed at the prestigious Verbier Festival in Switzerland, and that same year he was a guest artist at the inauguration season of the International Bach Festival in Bern. Additionally, he has performed at the “May of Janacek” Festival in the Czech Republic and the Kiev Summer Music Nights in Ukraine.
A consummate chamber musician, Mr. Kouzov has been invited to collaborate with such esteemed artists as Krzysztof Penderecki, Joshua Bell, Yuri Bashmet, and Ilya Gringolts, and he has also performed with the St. Petersburg Chamber Players, the Soloists of St. Petersburg, and the Moscow Premiere-Trio. In 2004, Mr. Kouzov joined the Phaedrus String Quartet. He is a founding and active member of the Manhattan Piano Trio, with whom he has toured extensively throughout the United States. Most recently, the Trio captured First Prize at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition in 2006.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Dmitry Kouzov began his musical studies at the age of seven. Since then, he has trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatory Lyceum, at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s of Music degrees, and at The Juilliard School in New York, where he received an Artist’s Diploma. Mr. Kouzov’s principal teachers have included Mark Reisenstock, Viktoria Yagling, Joel Krosnick, and Dr. Darrett Adkins, and he has taken master classes with Maestro Mstislav Rostropovich and Natalia Gutman. (bio is from 2007 RS)
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Tessa Lark, violin ~ Kentucky native, Tessa Lark (19), started playing violin at age 6. Ms. Lark entered the Starling Strings Program at University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music in 2001 and studied with Kurt Sassmannshaus. Tours with Starling included solo performances in China, Europe, Russia, and at Aspen and the Kennedy Center. Ms. Lark has been a soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra, appeared on From the Top, and is featured on Violinmasterclass.com. Her many awards include fellowships to the Aspen Music Festival and the Great Wall International Music Academy in Beijing, China, as well as first prizes in both the 2006 Johansen International Competition for Young String Players and the 2008 Irving Klein International Strings Competition. Ms. Lark entered New England Conservatory in the fall of 2006 and studies with Miriam Fried.
Ms. Lark plays a Euginio Degani violin, dated 1897, on generous loan to her from the Ravinia Festival.
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Laura Lutzke, violin ~ Laura Lutzke, born in 1987, began studying the violin with her mother at the age of 3. She later studied with Burton Kaplan, Won-Bin Yim, Hyo Kang, Stephen Clapp and Donald Weilerstein, and she is now a student of Lewis Kaplan at the Juilliard School. Ms. Lutzke has performed in master classes given by Pierre Amoyal, Cho-Liang Lin, Gyorgy Pauk, Donald Weilerstein, Andras Keller, Rudolf Koelman, and Gerhard Schulz, among others, and for the past four years, she has served as the Concertmaster of the New York Youth Symphony, the country’s premier youth orchestra, with its yearly 3 concerts series At Carnegie Hall.
Ms. Lutzke was the winner of several competitions since the age of 9, she has performed as soloist with the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra at the age of twelve, and with the Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra in Philadelphia, at the age of fifteen. Ms. Lutzke has given recitals at Kent State and Rutgers Universities, Klavierhaus, Weill Recital Hall, the Royal Academy of Music, the Lausanne Academy, The IMS at Prussia Cove, the Emerald Hall in Yong Pyong’s Great Mountains Music Festival in South Korea, the International Holland Music Sessions, and the Mozarteum In Salzburg. Ms. Lutzke has performed on Radio Swisse Romande, on several WQXR broadcasts of Robert Sherman’s “Young Artists Showcase”, as well as on a television broadcast in Cleveland, Ohio, and her playing was described as “liquid, radiant and shimmering…with beautifully played solo lines”, by the New York Times.
Ms. Lutzke is the recipient of numerous scholarships and fellowships, such as the Rosengarten Chair and Fellowship of the New York Youth Symphony, the Irving Ludwig Scholarship, The Starling DeLay Scholarship, the Yellow Barn Music Festival and School Scholarship, the Keshet Eilon Violin Mastercourse Scholarship, the International Holland Music Sessions Fellowship, the Mozarteum Academy Scholarship, and the London Master Classes Scholarship.
Ms. Lutzke performs on an 1822 violin made by Pierre Pacherele, on a generous loan from The Christophe Landon Rare Violins Collection.
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David McCarroll, violin ~ David McCarroll has been described by the IndieLONDON as “a great talent” who plays “with an impressive depth of feeling.” Mr. McCarroll has performed as a soloist with the London Mozart Players, Santa Rosa Symphony, Marin Symphony, North State Symphony, Symphony of the Redwoods, and the Yehudi Menuhin School Orchestra. Mr. McCarroll has appeared in many venues throughout the U.K. including Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, St. Johns, Smith Square, and Fairfield Halls. Silver medalist at the 2007 Klein International Competition, Mr. McCarroll has received numerous prizes and awards and given performances in Switzerland, Tunisia, Thailand, England, Wales, Scotland, and the United States. An active chamber musician, Mr. McCarroll has played in many chamber ensembles with musicians including Miriam Fried, Anthony Marwood, Paul Katz, Bonnie Hampton, Natasha Brofsky, Katherine Murdock, Maria Lambros, and Seth Knopp. In the summers of 2007 and 2008, he took part in Ravinia’s Steans Institute and has also performed at Prussia Cove’s Open Chamber Music (England), Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival (US), Gstaad (Switzerland), Gower (Wales), Manchester Quartetfest (England), Wyastone (Wales), and Spittalfields (London) music festivals. Mr. McCarroll has participated in masterclasses and lessons with musicians such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Zakhar Bron, Dora Schwartzberg, Arnold Steinhardt, Midori, Robert Mann, Jamie Laredo, Pamela Frank, Gerhard Schulz, Ferenc Rados, Ida Kavafian, Zvi Zeitlin, Mauricio Fuchs, Robert Masters, Maciej Rakowski, Berent Korfker, Paul Kantor, Gilbert Kalish, and Ruggiero Ricci.
Mr. McCarroll was born in Santa Rosa, California in 1986 and grew up on his family’s Sonoma County farm. Mr. McCarroll began studying the violin with Helen Payne Sloat at the age of 4. At 8, he attended the Crowden School of Music in Berkeley studying with Anne Crowden. When Mr. McCarroll was 13, he received an invitation to join an international group of 60 young music students at the Yehudi Menuhin School outside London where he studied for five years with Simon Fischer. Mr. McCarroll is continuing his studies with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He is the recipient of the Presser Foundation Scholarship Award and the Vernon Scholarship.
In addition to music, Mr. McCarroll maintains an active interest in social concerns including the needs of those impacted by the AIDS pandemic and is currently working on projects of the Starcross Community to help AIDS orphans in Africa. Mr. McCarroll has played in programs encouraging world peace promoted by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and has given benefit concerts for Doctors Without Borders. With other members of his family, Mr. McCarroll has worked to get strings to young music students in Cuba where such items are very difficult to obtain. Mr. McCarroll plays a 1761 violin made by A & J Gagliano.
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Dimitri Murrath, viola ~ First prize winner at the 2008 Primrose International Viola Competition, Belgian violist Dimitri Murrath has had his debut recitals in Jordan Hall (Boston), Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room and Royal Festival Hall (London), and Palais des Beaux Arts (Brussels).
Born in Brussels in 1982, Mr. Murrath began his musical education at the Yehudi Menuhin School studying with Natalia Boyarsky, and went on to work in London with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Mr. Murrath graduated last year with an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory as a student of Kim Kashkashian.
Mr. Murrath has won numerous awards, including Verbier Festival Academy's Viola Prize, New England Conservatory's Presidential Scholar Award, and a fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation.
With repertoire extending from Bach to contemporary music by Ligeti, Kurtag and Sciarrino, Mr. Murrath is particularly keen on performing new works. Mr. Murrath has taken part in the Park Lane Group New Year Series in London to great critical acclaim, as well as commissioned and given the world premieres of several solo works.
As a chamber musician, Mr. Murrath has collaborated with violinist Gidon Kremer, whom invited him to his festival in Lockenhaus, Austria and to the Kronberg Academy's Chamber Music Connects the World project. Other artists with whom Mr. Murrath has worked with include Menahem Pressler, Donald Weilerstein, Laurence Lesser, Paul Katz and Kim Kashkashian. In the spring 2008, Mr. Murrath was invited to be part of the Ravinia Rising Stars Chamber Music Tour with violinist Miriam Fried.
Other festivals include IMS Prussia Cove (UK), Ravinia's Steans Institute for Young Artists (Chicago), Verbier Festival Academy, Gstaad Festival (Switzerland) and Marlboro Music Festival.
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Arnaud Sussmann, violin ~ Twenty-three year old violinist Arnaud Sussmann is quickly establishing a reputation as a multi-faceted and compelling artist, earning the highest praise from both critics and audiences alike. Mr. Sussmann has performed as a soloist throughout the United States, Central America, Europe, and Asia at many renowned venues such as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Smithsonian Museum and the Louvre Museum. Mr. Sussmann has recently appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Monaco Chamber Orchestra, the Nice Orchestra, the Orchestre des Pays de la Loire, the El Salvador National Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and presented recitals in numerous cities around the world including New York, Memphis, Chicago, Panama City, San Salvador, London, Paris, and St Petersburg among others.
In addition to his solo career, Mr. Sussmann is also a dedicated chamber musician. Mr. Sussmann was recently accepted into the prestigious Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two program for the 2006-2009 seasons and will appear in performances at Lincoln Center in New York as well as on tour throughout the United States. Mr. Sussmann has performed with many of today’s leading artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Kalichstein, Miriam Fried, Ani Kavafian, Paul Neubauer, Fred Sherry, and Andre-Michel Schub. In January 2008, he performed Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht on a Live from Lincoln Center TV broadcast with other members of the Chamber Music Society. Mr. Sussmann is also featured on a Deutsche Grammophone ‘Live’ recording (available through Itunes) of Schubert’s Trout Quintet with Menahem Pressler.
Mr. Sussmann is a winner of several International Competitions and awards including the Hudson Valley Philharmonic String Competition, the Andrea Postacchini Competition in Fermo, Italy and the Vatelot/Rampal Competition in Paris, France. In 2003, the Tanglewood Music Center awarded him the David Gritz Violin Award for his extraordinary commitment of talent and energy. Most recently the New York Salon de Virtuosi concert series awarded him with their fellowship grant, resulting in a live concert broadcast on WQXR’s “Young Artists Showcase” radio show. In the summer of 2006, Mr. Sussmann was chosen to perform on the Dame Myra Hess concert series in Chicago which was broadcast live on television and on WFMT radio.
Highlights of the 2007-08 season include a chamber music performance with Itzhak Perlman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, concerto and recital appearances in Poughkeepsie, Sarasota, New York, El Salvador, and a tour of Canada and the West Coast of the United States with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Other upcoming engagements include chamber music concerts with Menahem Pressler, Gary Hoffman and Ida Kavafian. Last season Mr. Sussmann performed at Carnegie's Stern and Zankel Halls, Santa Fe New Music, Rockefeller University, and the Music Festival of the Hamptons. Mr. Sussmann also appeared in chamber music concerts at the Virginia Arts Festival and participated in a Ravinia tour. In April 2006, Mr. Sussmann recorded a live CD of chamber works by Dvorak and Beethoven with David Finckel and Wu Han. Mr. Sussmann is also featured as the leader of the Suedama ensemble on a recording of Mozart piano concertos released on the Vanguard Classics label. Mr. Sussmann’s past summer festival appearances include Strings in the Mountains, Giverny Music Festival, San Miguel de Allende (Mexico), Ravinia, Tanglewood, and the Perlman Music Program.
Mr. Sussmann holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School where he studied with Itzhak Perlman who chose him to be a Starling Fellow, an honor qualifying him as his teaching assistant for the past two years.
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Yu-Wen Wang, cello ~ Yu-Wen Wang, a native of Taiwan, is currently studying with Peter Wiley at Curtis Institute of Music, where she also studied with Orlando Cole for several years. Ms. Wang has appeared as soloist with Temple University Youth Chamber Orchestra and Taipei Civic Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Wang has been performing actively as a chamber musician. In 2007, Ms. Wang attended chamber music festivals Music@Menlo and Music at Angel Fire. During the school year of 2008, Ms. Wang took part of the Curtis On Tour, which she performed with the Curtis President Roberto Diaz, including performances in Maine, Davis, Miami, and Sarasota. Also, Ms. Wang has just attended Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival this past summer.
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