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| Lang Lang and Members of the New York Philharmonic |
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| Sun, April 13, 2008: Ticket Information |
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Meet the Artists |
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Program Notes |
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| Meet the Artists |
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| Lang Lang |
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Considered by the New York Times as the "hottest artist on the classical music planet," 25-year-old Lang Lang has played sold-out concerts in every major city in the world and is the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and all the top American orchestras.
In 2007, Lang Lang performed at Berlin's famous Waldbühne with Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskaeplle. At the invitation of H.R.H. Prince Charles, he performed a Piano Concerto commissioned in memory of the Queen Mother, and he recently appeared on Great Britain's Royal Variety Show attended by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and broadcast to 13 million people. 2008 highlights include the New Year's Eve opening of the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing with Seiji Ozawa, a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic around the closing of the Euro Cup in front of the Schönbrunn Palace and concerts in New York's Central Park and the Hollywood Bowl. Most recently, Lang Lang performed at the 50th Anniversary Grammy Awards with Herbie Hancock and broadcast live to 17.5 million viewers.
Lang Lang began playing piano at age 3, and won the Shenyang competition and gave his first public recital at 5. At 9 he entered Beijing's Central Music Conservatory and won first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians Competition at 13. Lang Lang's break into stardom came at 17 when he was called upon for a last-minute substitution at the "Gala of the Century" with the Chicago Symphony. He has appeared on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and 60 Minutes and featured in Vogue, GQ, Die Welt and People worldwide.
In 2004, he was appointed International Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and as a result of his enormous popularity with children, Steinway created the "Lang Lang Steinway." He serves on the Weill Music Institute Advisory Committee as part of Carnegie Hall's educational program and is the youngest member of Carnegie Hall's Artistic Advisory Board.
Lang Lang the global brand ambassador for Audi automobiles and Montblanc. He is featured soloist on the Golden Globe-winning score of The Painted Veil, composed by Alexandre Desplat, and can be heard on the soundtrack of The Banquet, composed by Tan Dun. Recording exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon/Universal, the newest release, Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 4 with Orchestre de Paris and Maestro Christoph Eschenbach, debuted at #1 on the Classical Billboard Chart. He was recently nominated for a Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist due to his work on the release and honored by The Recording Academy with the 2007 Presidential Merit Award.
Lang Lang received honorary professorships at all the top conservatories in China where he gives Master Classes regularly, as well as at Julliard, the Curtis Institute and Hannover. |
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| Michelle Kim |
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| Michelle Kim joined the New York Philharmonic as Assistant Concertmaster (The William Petschek Family Chair) in 2001. She previously served as concertmaster with the New Hampshire Music Festival, Fresno Philharmonic, Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, and Asia America Symphony. She has performed as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, and New Jersey Symphony. Recent solo engagements have included the Los Angeles Philharmonic, 20th Century Unlimited Chamber Orchestra, Riverside Philharmonic, and recitals in the U.S. and abroad. Kim has performed chamber music with Christopher O'Riley, Gary Hoffman, Cho-Liang Lin, and Yefim Bronfman; on the Aeolian and Palos Verde chamber music series; and at the La Jolla and Santa Fe chamber music festivals. She attended the USC/Thornton School of Music as a Starling Foundation scholarship recipient and the Colburn School of Performing Arts. In 1991, she was named a Presidential Scholar and performed in recital at the Kennedy Center and at the White House. She has served on the faculties of USC and the Colburn School of Performing Arts. |
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| Cynthia Phelps |
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| Cynthia Phelps is the New York Philharmonic's Principal Viola (The Mr. and Mrs. Frederick P. Rose Chair). Highlights of her solo appearances with the Orchestra have included performances on the 2006 Tour of Italy, sponsored by Generali, and the 1999 premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina's Two Paths, which the Orchestra commissioned for her and Philharmonic Associate Principal Viola Rebecca Young. Other solo engagements have included the Minnesota Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Bilbao, and Hong Kong Philharmonic. Phelps performs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Bargemusic and the Boston Chamber Music Society. She has toured internationally with the Zukerman and Friends Ensemble; has appeared with the Guarneri, American, Brentano, and Prague string quartets, and The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio; and has given recitals in the music capitals of Europe and the U.S. Phelps' honors include the Pro Musicis International Award and first prize in the Lionel Tertis International Viola and the Washington International String competitions. Her most recent recording is a solo CD on Cala Records. She has performed on PBS's Live From Lincoln Center, NPR, Radio France, and RAI in Italy. |
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| Carter Brey |
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| Carter Brey was appointed Principal Cello (The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Chair) of the New York Philharmonic in 1996 and has since performed as soloist with the Orchestra each season. His honors include the Rostropovich International Cello Competition, Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Prize, Avery Fisher Career Grant, and Young Concert Artists' Michaels Award; he was the first musician to win the Arts Council of America's Performing Arts Prize. Brey has appeared as soloist with virtually all of the major American orchestras, performing under the batons of conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Semyon Bychkov, Sergiu Comissiona, and Christoph von Dohnányi. He has collaborated regularly with the Tokyo and Emerson string quartets, in the Spoleto Festivals in the U.S. and in Italy, and in the Santa Fe and La Jolla chamber music festivals. His most recent recording is of Chopin's complete works for piano and cello with Garrick Ohlsson. Brey was educated at the Peabody Institute and at Yale University, where he was a Wardwell Fellow and a Houpt Scholar. His cello is a rare J.B. Guadagnini made in Milan in 1754. |
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| Program Notes |
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| BEETHOVEN: String Trio in C minor, Op. 9, No. 3 |
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Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770 and died in Vienna in 1827. He composed the String Trio in C minor, Op. 9, No. 3 in 1797-98.
The same Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776-1830), who later was so important to Franz Schubert, and whose ensembles performed that composer's late chamber music, was also an intimate friend of Beethoven. As principal violinist of Count Razumovsky's house quartet, a member of other ensembles, and as a musical impresario, Schuppanzigh occupied a central position in Vienna's musical life. He was the first violinist to perform both works on the present program: the Schubert B-flat Piano Trio and the Beethoven C-minor String Trio. Schuppanzigh first performed Beethoven's three Op. 9 String Trios along with two other members of the Lichnowsky Quartet at private musicales in Vienna; later, when he organized public chamber music concerts, Schuppanzigh included the Op. 9 works on those programs.
Schuppanzigh and Beethoven met soon after Beethoven settled for good in Vienna, in the early 1790s, and they maintained a devoted friendship until Beethoven's death more than 30 years later. As was his habit with close friends, Beethoven even took the liberty of choosing affectionate nicknames for Schuppanzigh, addressing the rotund violinist as "Falstaff" and "Sowbelly." Indeed, when Beethoven arrived in Vienna from Bonn, he possessed youthful energy and vivacity. Known in his first years as a virtuoso pianist with formidable talents for improvising, Beethoven was a very sociable young man who got around easily in Vienna's musical circles. His involvement with Vienna's finest musicians evolved quickly and naturally.
At the same time, under the influence of Haydn, whom he admired, Beethoven began his first compositions for string ensemble. His first ventures produced a String Trio (before 1794, Op. 3) and a String Quintet (1795, Op. 4), both in E-flat major. In 1796 and 1797 he produced a Trio String Serenade (Op. 8), which was published in 1797. During the same two-year period Beethoven composed the three String Trios of Op. 9, in G major, D major, and the present Trio in C minor. Although he ultimately became noted for his string quartets, Beethoven considered the string trio just as demanding and gratifying a musical challenge. So richly and skillfully did he essay the trio form, the listener can easily believe that there are four instruments playing.
At the time of publication, in 1798, Beethoven inscribed the title page with an elaborate dedication to one of his principal patrons, Count Johann Georg von Browne-Camus (1767-1827). Beethoven's flowery French phrases translate: "Sir: The author, filled with gratitude for your generosity, as tactful as it is magnanimous, is glad to be able to express his gratitude in public by dedicating this work to you. Even if the works of art which enjoy the honor of your understanding patronage were less the product of the inspiration of genius than the composer's intention to give of his best, he would still have the greatest satisfaction in offering the best of his works to the first patron of his muse." The Count, of Irish heritage and with a high ranking commission in the Russian army, lived a lavish life in Vienna, where he and his wife patronized the musical arts and particularly favored Beethoven. Browne was known to be somewhat eccentric and eventually had to be hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. Beethoven nonetheless dedicated to Browne, and to Browne's wife, Countess Anna Margareta von Browne, several of his piano and chamber music works written between 1797 and 1805. (Browne once gave Beethoven a horse, in which the composer apparently had little interest; his servant took over the care and feeding of the animal, eventually presenting the surprised Beethoven, who had forgotten all about the horse, with a significant cumulative bill for food and expenses.)
Beethoven's special feeling for the key of C minor—which was to find expression in such profound works as the Symphony No. 5, the slow movement of the "Eroica" Symphony, the two piano sonatas Op. 13 and Op. 111, and the Coriolanus Overture—already showed itself in 1797 in the third of the Op. 9 Trios. The concentration of the first movement, in C minor; the noble drama of the C major Adagio; the minor Scherzo with its major Trio; and the sonata-form Presto finale in C minor all gave notice to eighteenth-century Viennese musicians and their listeners that this Beethoven was much more than a virtuoso of the keyboard. |
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| SCHUBERT: Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 99, D. 898 |
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Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797 and died there in 1828. He composed the Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 99, D. 898 in 1828.
During Schubert's lifetime, concert life in Vienna began to open up to a wide spectrum of society. By 1800, the manufacture and distribution of musical instruments had created a market to which members of the well-off classes responded enthusiastically. Even before Vienna's conservatory of music opened its doors in 1817, private teachers and church choir schools saw to the musical education of the city's citizens, creating a new base of skilled performers and eager audiences. Everyone who aspired to the finer things learned an instrument, took singing lessons, and participated in impromptu Hausmusik evenings of chamber music and dancing.
At the same time, the relatively new media of music journals and newspapers flourished, providing a forum for lively discussion and leaving a valuable historical record of music criticism and contemporary taste. Thanks to these publications, as well as to the private memoirs, journals, diaries, and extant letters from that time, we can imagine Schubert's Vienna and its music environment with some accuracy.
The variety of performances that the journals covered ranged from the phenomenally popular demonstrations of instrumental virtuosity (Paganini, Hummel, et al.) to multiple concert series initiated by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society for the Friends of Music) after its founding in 1812. Private house concerts and music salons—such as the well-known so-called "Schubertiade"—abounded, drawing the gifted and the not-so-gifted to perform before enthusiastic gatherings in parlors and music rooms.
Beethoven's devoted violinist friend Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776-1830) was one of the gifted. A life-long devotee of chamber music, Schuppanzigh was leader of numerous string ensembles (including his own Schuppanzigh Quartet), and he presented concerts over several decades in Vienna. He and Schubert met in 1823, and Schubert dedicated the A minor String Quartet (D. 804) to him. Of Schuppanzigh's performance of Schubert's Octet (its first public hearing), the Theaterzeitung (Theater Newspaper) reported:
Visiting artists, connoisseurs and amateurs who attended these recitals assured us that at no time or place had they encountered such perfect execution. Most of these performances could indeed be called "perfect." None of the players sought the spotlight; no single part, no single passage was allowed to dominate. How different from other such events! [The] artists have but one common goal; they pursue it with supreme command of their instruments...
Schubert's acquaintance with Schuppanzigh—who had received quartet coaching from Josef Haydn himself—meant that the composer could count on excellent performances of his chamber music in the last five years of his life. In the case of the Piano Trios—the present one, in B-flat, as well as its sibling, the E-flat Piano Trio, composed a month later—Schubert had at his service not only Schuppanzigh, but also the cellist from the Schuppanzigh Quartet, Josef Linke (1783-1837), and one of Vienna's most able young pianists, Karl Maria von Bocklet (1801-1881). (Schubert and Bocklet performed Schubert's four-hand piano music together, and the composer dedicated to Bocklet his great D major Piano Sonata, D. 850.)
During his final winter, Schubert composed many significant works and engaged himself busily in Vienna's music life. Although the manuscript of this Piano Trio in B-flat has been lost—therefore contributing to some confusion about its actual date of composition—scholars have by now agreed that Schubert composed it in September and October of 1827, at the same time he was finishing the composition of his great song cycle Winterreise. It was published in 1836, after Schubert's death. (The extant E-flat Piano Trio manuscript bears the composer's signature and the date November 1827; it was published in 1828, a few months before Schubert died.)
Even though Schubert hardly needed a specific complement of performers to inspire his writing, his acquaintance with this particular trio of musicians—Schuppanzigh, Linke, and Bocklet—must have been gratifying. He provided them with superbly balanced works that fed their talent for remarkable ensemble playing. The Piano Trio in B-flat, although not virtuosic in a flashy, knock-your-socks-off sense, requires first-class technical preparation from all three performers, along with a refined sense of balance and sensitivity in the ensemble.
The B-flat Trio is an ebullient work. In the first movement—at about fifteen minutes the longest—Schubert introduces lively themes that he transposes deftly to various keys, delighting and surprising us with his dexterous transitions to wide-ranging tonalities before returning finally to the sunny B-flat of the opening. In the second movement, the piano introduces a gentle, rocking motion in E-flat, and the cello and violin, in turn, sing a lullaby of great sweetness. The evening air is disturbed by passionate explorations into minor keys before calm settles in the E-flat coda. The Scherzo, a lively dance, swirls by joyously; its leisurely Trio provides contrast. The Piano Trio closes with an amiable Rondo movement. The B-flat Rondo episodes alternate with thematic adventures into other keys, and a Presto coda completes the work with a flourish.
©2008 Sandra Hyslop
Sun, April 13, 2008: Ticket Information |
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© 2008 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
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