ARTISTS & STAFF AT THE LYRIC

Artistic Director | Artist in Residence |
2009-2010 Composers | 2009-2010 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 2009-2010 COMPOSERS

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685 - 1750)
- November 11, 2009: Opening Night

Works Presented:
- Suite No. 5 in C minor for Solo Cello

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.

BOHUSLAV MARTINU (1890 - 1959)
November 11, 2009: Opening Night
Works Presented:
Three Madrigals for Violin and Viola

Bohuslav Martinů (Martinu) was a prolific Bohemian Czech composer, who wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works.

He became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and taught music in his home town. In 1923 Martinů left Czechoslovakia for Paris, and deliberately withdrew from the Romantic style in which he had been trained. In the 1930s he experimented with expressionism and constructivism, and became an admirer of current European technical developments, exemplified by his orchestral sentences Half-time and La Bagarre. He also adopted jazz idioms, for instance in his Kuchyňské revue ("Kitchen Revue"). Of the post-war avant-garde styles, neo-classicism influenced him the most. He continued to use Czech and Moravian folk melodies throughout his oeuvre, usually nursery rhymes—for instance in Otvírání studánek ("The Opening of the Wells").

He emigrated to the United States in 1941, fleeing the German invasion of France. Although as a composer he was successful in America, receiving many commissions, he became homesick for Czechoslovakia. He never returned to his native country, and he died in Switzerland.

Martinů was born in a bell tower in Polička, Bohemia, where his father (a shoemaker by trade) was a watchman. As a child he developed a local reputation, giving his first public concert in his hometown in 1905. In 1906 he became a violin student at the Prague Conservatory, where he studied briefly before being dismissed for "incorrigible negligence". He continued his studies on his own.

He spent the First World War in his home town as a teacher, where he pursued his interests in composition. He also joined the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra as a violinist. His ballet Istar was completed in 1922. He left Czechoslovakia for Paris in 1923, where he became a pupil of Albert Roussel, though he retained many links with his birthplace. When the German army approached Paris early in the Second World War, he fled, first to the south of France, and then to the United States in 1941, where he settled in New York with his French wife. Life in America was difficult for him, as it was for many of the other outstanding artists who arrived in similar circumstances. Lack of knowledge of English, lack of funds, and lack of opportunities to use their talents were problems common to all such émigré artists at first. However, Martinů did acclimatise himself. He composed a great deal and taught at the Mannes College of Music for most of the period from 1948–1956. His six symphonies were written in the eleven-year period 1942–1953, the first five being produced between 1942 and 1946.

His notable students include Alan Hovhaness, H. Owen Reed, Jan Novák, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Howard Shanet, Peter Pindar Stearns, and Burt Bacharach. Martinů spent his later years in Switzerland, never returning to his homeland. He died in Liestal on August 28, 1959.

Martinů was a very prolific composer, writing almost 400 pieces. Many of his works are regularly performed or recorded, among them his choral work, The Epic of Gilgamesh (1955); his symphonies, a modern cycle of six; his concertos, including those for cello, violin, oboe and five for the piano; his anti-war opera Comedy on the bridge; and his chamber music, including eight surviving string quartets, a flute sonata, and a clarinet sonatina.

His music displays a wide variety of influences: works such as La Revue de Cuisine (1927) are heavily influenced by jazz, while the Double Concerto for two string orchestras, piano and timpani (1938) is one of many works to show the influence of the Baroque concerto grosso. Other works are influenced by Czech folk music. He also admired the music of Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, among other composers.

A characteristic feature of his orchestral writing is the near-omnipresent piano; most of his orchestral works include a prominent part for piano, including his small concerto for harpsichord and chamber orchestra. The bulk of his writing from the 1930s into the 1950s was in a neoclassical vein, but with his last works he opened up his style to include more rhapsodic gestures and a looser, more spontaneous sense of form. This is easiest to hear by comparing his sixth symphony, titled Fantaisies symphoniques, with its five predecessors, all from the 1940s.

One of Martinů's lesser known works is a piece featuring the theremin commissioned by Lucie Bigelow Rosen. Martinů started working on this commission in the summer of 1944 and finished his Fantasia for theremin, oboe, string quartet and piano on October 1, dedicating it to Rosen, who premiered the piece as theremin soloist in New York on November 3, 1945, along with the Koutzen Quartet and Robert Bloom.

His opera The Greek Passion is based on the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis.

DANIEL SCHNYDER (b. 1961)
- December 9, 2009: A Holiday Concert
- February 3, 2010: Schumann and all that Jazz
Works Presented:
- Euphoria
- selected other pieces
Daniel Schnyder is known as a composer/performer with a dynamic reputation in both jazz and classical fields. He recorded over ten CDs of his own music for Enja Records, Col Legno, Koch Jazz, CCnc, Universal, BIS, TCB, Arabesque and Red Records. As a performer Daniel toured and recorded with many well known classical musicians, world music artists and jazz players.

Daniel was born 1961 in Zurich, Switzerland and lives in New York City. His orchestral works and his chamber music compositions have been performed and recorded all over the world. Among his credits as a composer are commissions to write compositions for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York, the Tonkuenstler Orchestra in Vienna, the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Berlin, The Norrlands Operan in Sweden, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Vienna Art Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich (4th Symphony, commissioned by David Zinman), the Opera of Bern ("Tempest" by Shakespeare), the NDR Orchestra in Hannover, the NDR Big Band in Germany, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the New York based new music group "Absolute Ensemble" under the direction of Kristjan Jaervi (Bass Trombone Concerto for David Taylor) and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra among many others.

The Album "Absolution" (Enja Nova) featuring Daniel Schnyder's Trombone Concerto received a Grammy nomination for "Best Classical Small Ensemble Recording" in 2002.

Daniel toured Europe and Australia with his trio, featuring David Taylor and Kenny Drew jr., playing the music of Gershwin, Bach, Vivaldi, Wagner and Ellington in addition to his own new compositions bridging the worlds of classical music and jazz.

He frequently performs with his special chamber music project for saxophone and string quartet, combining composition and improvisation, jazz and traditional chamber music. His third string quartet was commissioned by the Carmina Quartet, the 4th string quartet was a commission by the Amar Quartett, the 5th str 4tet a commission by the Stradivari Quartet.

Daniel appears as a soloist with orchestras playing his "Songbook for Saxophone and Orchestra" and his ‘Oriental Suite’ beside other works. He played Songbook in Germany and Switzerland on a tour with the NDR Radio Philharmonic in November 2006 and with the MDR Orchestra in 2008. In the Fall 2008 he tours with the Saarlaendische Rundfunk Orchestra as a soloist.

The vast catalogue of his chamber music works has been performed by many famous artists like Emmanuel Pahud, Eroica Trio, Schweizer Klaviertrio, Radek Baborak, Borislav Strulev, Ole Edvard Antonsen, Reinhold Friedrich, Carmina Quartett, David Jolley, David Taylor and the Graham Ashton Brass Ensemble just to mention a few.

He also writes orchestral variations on themes by non classical music icons like the Rolling Stones, Duke Ellington or Jimi Hendrix, picking up on a 19th century tradition designing whole programs for orchestras outside the mainstream concert format - as played by the Calgary Symphony, the Absolute Ensemble, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810 - 1856)
CHAMZZ: February 3, 2010: Schumann and all that Jazz
Works Presented:
selected lieder, arranged for saxophone and piano

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.

 

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809 - 1847)
Mendelssohn: What's New?
- May 12. 2010 - Celebrating Fanny and her Circle
Works Presented:
- Selected works
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.

FANNY MENDELSSOHN HENSEL (1805 - 1847)
Mendelssohn: What's New?
- May 12, 2010 - Celebrating Fanny and her Circle
Works Presented:
- Selected works
Fanny Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, the oldest of four children. She was descended on both sides from distinguished Jewish families; her parents were Abraham Mendelssohn, (who was the son of Moses Mendelssohn and later changed the family surname to Mendelssohn Bartholdy), and Lea, née Salomon, a granddaughter of the entrepreneur Daniel Itzig.

Fanny benefited from the same musical education and upbringing as her brother Felix, sharing a number of his music tutors, including Zelter. Like Felix (who was born in 1809), Fanny showed prodigious musical ability as a child and began to write music. Visitors to the Mendelssohn household in the early 1820s, including Ignaz Moscheles and Sir George Smart, were equally impressed by both siblings.

However, she was limited by prevailing attitudes of the time toward women, attitudes apparently shared by her father, who was tolerant, rather than supportive, of her activities as a composer. Her father wrote to her in 1820 'Music will perhaps become his [i.e. Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament'. On the other hand, Felix was supportive of her, as a composer and a performer, although cautious (professedly for family reasons) of her publishing her works under her own name. He did however arrange with her for a number of her songs to be published under his own name. In turn Fanny helped Felix by constructive criticism of pieces, which he always considered very carefully.

In 1829, after a courtship of several years, Fanny married the painter Wilhelm Hensel who was supportive of her composing. Subsequently, her works were often played alongside her brother's at the family home in Berlin in the concerts which were held there. Her public debut at the piano (and only known public performance) came in 1838, when she played her brother's Piano Concerto No. 1.

Fanny Hensel died in Berlin in 1847 of complications from a stroke suffered while rehearsing one of her brother's oratorios, 'The First Walpurgis Night'. Felix himself died less than six months later.

In recent years, her music has become better known thanks to concert performances and a number of CDs being released on labels such as Hyperion and CPO. Her reputation has also been advanced by those researching female musical creativity, of which she is one of the relatively few exemplars in the early 19th century. Fanny Mendelssohn composed 466 pieces of music. Her compositions include a piano trio and several books of solo piano pieces and songs. A number of her songs were originally published under Felix's name in his opus 8 and 9 collections. One of these songs , 'Italy', was a favorite of Queen Victoria, who thought Felix had written it. Her piano works are often in the manner of songs, and many carry the name Lied ohne Worte (Song without Words). This style (and title) of piano music was most successfully developed by Felix Mendelssohn, though some modern scholars assert that Fanny may have preceded him in the genre. She also wrote a cycle of pieces depicting the months of the year, Das Jahr ('The Year').

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810 - 1849)
Chamzz Series: March 24, 2010 - Chopin and Beyond
Works Presented:
- selected waltzes and nocturnes
The son of French émigré father (a schoolteacher working in Poland) and a cultured Polish mother, he grew up in Warsaw, taking childhood music lessons (in Bach and the Viennese Classics) from Wojciech Zywny and Jósef Elsner before entering the Conservatory (1826-9). By this time he had performed in local salons and composed several rondos, polonaises and mazurkas. Public and critical acclaim increased during the years 1829-30 when he gave concerts in Vienna and Warsaw, but his despair over the political repression in Poland, coupled with his musical ambitions, led him to move to Paris in 1831. There, with practical help from Kalkbrenner and Pleyel, praise from Liszt, Fétis and Schumann and introductions into the highest society, he quickly established himself as a private teacher and salon performer, his legendary artist's image being enhanced by frail health (he had tuberculosis), attractive looks, sensitive playing, a courteous manner and the piquancy attaching to self-exile. Of his several romantic affairs, the most talked about was that with the novelist George Sand (Aurore Dudevant) though whether he was truly drawn to women must remain in doubt. Between 1838 and 1847 their relationship, with a strong element of the maternal on her side, coincided with one of his most productive creative periods. He gave few public concerts, though his playing was much praised, and he published much of his best music simultaneously in Paris, London and Leipzig. The breach with Sand was followed by a rapid deterioration in his health and a long visit to Britain (1848). His funeral at the Madeleine was attended by nearly 3000 people.

No great composer has devoted himself as exclusively to the piano as Chopin. By all accounts an inspired improviser, he composed while playing, writing down his thoughts only with difficulty. But he was no mere dreamer - his development can be seen as an ever more sophisticated improvisation on the classical principle of departure and return. For the concert-giving years 1828-32 he wrote brilliant virtuoso pieces (e.g. rondos) and music for piano and orchestra; the teaching side of his career is represented by the studies, preludes, nocturnes, waltzes, impromptus and mazurkas, polished pieces of moderate difficulty. The large-scale works - the later polonaises, scherzos, ballades, sonatas, the Barcarolle and the dramatic Polonaise-fantaisie - he wrote for himself and a small circle of admirers. Apart from the national feeling in the Polish dances, and possibly some narrative background to the ballades, he intended notably few references to literary, pictorial or autobiographical ideas.

Chopin is admired above all for his great originality in exploiting the piano. While his own playing style was famous for its subtlety and restraint, its exquisite delicacy in contrast with the spectacular feats of pianism then reigning in Paris, most of his works have a simple texture of accompanied melody. From this he derived endless variety, using wide-compass broken chords, the sustaining pedal and a combination of highly expressive melodies, some in inner voices. Similarly, though most of his works are basically ternary in form, they show great resource in the way the return is varied, delayed, foreshortened or extended, often with a brilliant coda added.

Chopin's harmony however was conspicuously innovatory. Through melodic clashes, ambiguous chords, delayed or surprising cadences, remote or sliding modulations (sometimes many in quick succession), unresolved dominant 7ths and occasionally excursions into pure chromaticism or modality, he pushed the accepted procedures of dissonance and key info previously unexplored territory. This profound influence can be traced alike in the music of Liszt, Wagner, Fauré, Debussy, Grieg, Albéniz, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and many others.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 - 1827)
- November 11, 2009 - Opening Night
Works Presented:
String Trio in G major, Op. 9, No. 1

Ludwig van Beethoven studied first with his father, Johann, a singer and instrumentalist in the service of the Elector of Cologne at Bonn, but mainly with C.G. Neefe, court organist. At 11 ½ he was able to deputize for Neefe; at 12 he had some music published. In 1787 he went to Vienna, but quickly returned on hearing that his mother was dying. Five years later he went back to Vienna, where he settled. He pursued his studies, first with Haydn, but there was some clash of temperaments and Beethoven studied too with Schenk, Albrechtsberger and Salieri. Until 1794 he was supported by the Elector at Bonn but he found patrons among the music-loving Viennese aristocracy and soon enjoyed success as a piano virtuoso, playing at private houses or palaces rather than in public. His public debut was in 1795; about the same time his first important publications appeared, three piano trios op.l and three piano sonatas op.2. As a pianist, it was reported, he had fire, brilliance and fantasy as well as depth of feeling. It is naturally in the piano sonatas, writing for his own instrument, that he is at his most original in this period; the Pathetique belongs to 1799, the Moonlight ('Sonata quasi una fantasia') to 1801, and these represent only the most obvious innovations in style and emotional content. These years also saw the composition of his first three piano concertos, his first two symphonies and a set of six string quartets op.l8.

1802, however, was a year of crisis for Beethoven, with his realization that the impaired hearing he had noticed for some time was incurable and sure to worsen. That autumn, at a village outside Vienna, Heiligenstadt, he wrote a will-like document, addressed to his two brothers, describing his bitter unhappiness over his affliction in terms suggesting that he thought death was near. But he came through with his determination strengthened and entered a new creative phase, generally called his 'middle period'. It is characterized by a heroic tone, evident in the Eroica Symphony (no.3, originally to have been dedicated not to a noble patron but to Napoleon), in Symphony no.5, where the sombre mood of the c Minor first movement ('Fate knocking on the door') ultimately yields to a triumphant C Major finale with piccolo, trombones and percussion added to the orchestra, and in his opera Fidelio. Here the heroic theme is made explicit by the story, in which (in the post-French Revolution 'rescue opera' tradition) a wife saves her imprisoned husband from murder at the hands of his oppressive political enemy. The three string quartets of this period, op.59, are similarly heroic in scale: the first, lasting some 45 minutes, is conceived with great breadth, and it too embodies a sense of triumph as the intense f Minor Adagio gives way to a jubilant finale in the major embodying (at the request of the dedicatee, Count Razumovsky) a Russian folk melody.

Fidelio, unsuccessful at its premiere, was twice revised by Beethoven and his librettists and successful in its final version of 1814. Here there is more emphasis on the moral force of the story. It deals not only with freedom and justice, and heroism, but also with married love, and in the character of the heroine Leonore, Beethoven's lofty, idealized image of womanhood is to be seen. He did not find it in real life he fell in love several times, usually with aristocratic pupils (some of them married), and each time was either rejected or saw that the woman did not match his ideals. In 1812, however, he wrote a passionate love-letter to an 'Eternally Beloved' (probably Antonie Brentano, a Viennese married to a Frankfurt businessman), but probably the letter was never sent.

With his powerful and expansive middle-period works, which include the Pastoral Symphony (no.6, conjuring up his feelings about the countryside, which he loved), Symphony no.7 and Symphony no. 8, Piano Concertos nos.4 (a lyrical work) and 5 (the noble and brilliant Emperor) and the Violin Concerto, as well as more chamber works and piano sonatas (such as the Waldstein and the Appassionata) Beethoven was firmly established as the greatest composer of his time. His piano-playing career had finished in 1808 (a charity appearance in 1814 was a disaster because of his deafness). That year he had considered leaving Vienna for a secure post in Germany, but three Viennese noblemen had banded together to provide him with a steady income and he remained there, although the plan foundered in the ensuing Napoleonic wars in which his patrons suffered and the value of Austrian money declined.

The years after 1812 were relatively unproductive. He seems to have been seriously depressed, by his deafness and the resulting isolation, by the failure of his marital hopes and (from 1815) by anxieties over the custodianship of the son of his late brother, which involved him in legal actions. But he came out of these trials to write his profoundest music, which surely reflects something of what he had been through. There are seven piano sonatas in this, his 'late period', including the turbulent Hammerklavier op.106, with its dynamic writing and its harsh, rebarbative fugue, and op.110, which also has fugues and much eccentric writing at the instrument's extremes of compass; there is a great Mass and a Choral Symphony, no.9 in d Minor, where the extended variation-finale is a setting for soloists and chorus of Schiller's Ode to Joy; and there is a group of string quartets, music on a new plane of spiritual depth, with their exalted ideas, abrupt contrasts and emotional intensity. The traditional four-movement scheme and conventional forms are discarded in favour of designs of six or seven movements, some fugal, some akin to variations (these forms especially attracted him in his late years), some song-like, some martial, one even like a chorale prelude. For Beethoven, the act of composition had always been a struggle, as the tortuous scrawls of his sketchbooks show; in these late works the sense of agonizing effort is a part of the music.

Musical taste in Vienna had changed during the first decades of the 19th century; the public were chiefly interested in light Italian opera (especially Rossini) and easygoing chamber music and songs, to suit the prevalent bourgeois taste. Yet the Viennese were conscious of Beethoven's greatness: they applauded the Choral Symphony even though, understandably, they found it difficuit, and though baffled by the late quartets they sensed their extraordinary visionary qualities. His reputation went far beyond Vienna: the late Mass was first heard in St. Petersburg, and the initial commission that produced the Choral Symphony had come from the Philharmonic Society of London. When, early in 1827, he died, 10,000 are said to have attended the funeral. He had become a public figure, as no composer had done before. Unlike composers of the preceding generation, he had never been a purveyor of music to the nobility he had lived into the age - indeed helped create it - of the artist as hero and the property of mankind at large.

IGNAZ MOSCHELES (1794 - 1870)
- March 9, 2010: Principal Players Series
Works Presented:
Concertante for Flute, Oboe, and Piano in F Major

Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, whose career after his early years was based initially in London, and later at Leipzig, where he succeeded his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as head of the Conservatoire.


Moscheles was born in Prague to a well-off German-speaking Jewish merchant family. His first name was originally Isaac. His father played the guitar and was keen for one of his children to become a musician. Initially his hopes fixed on Ignaz's sister, but when she demurred her piano lessons were transferred to her brother. Ignaz early developed a passion for the (then revolutionary) piano music of Beethoven, which the Mozartean Bedřich Diviš Weber, his teacher at the Prague Conservatory, attempted to curb, urging him to concentrate on Bach, Mozart and Muzio Clementi. After his father’s early death Moscheles settled in 1808 in Vienna. Nevertheless his abilities were such that he was able to study in Vienna under Albrechtsberger for counterpoint and theory and Salieri for composition. At this time he changed his first name from 'Isaac' to 'Ignaz'. He was one of the leading virtuosi resident in Vienna during the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna and it was at this time that he wrote his enormously popular virtuosic 'Alexander Variations', Op. 32, for piano and orchestra, which he later played throughout Europe. Here too he became a close friend of Meyerbeer (at that time still a piano virtuoso, not yet a composer) and their extemporized piano-duets were highly acclaimed. Moscheles was also familiar with Hummel and Kalkbrenner. Among the virtuosi of the 1820s—Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Cramer, Herz and Weber were his most famous rivals.

While in Vienna Moscheles was able to meet his idol Beethoven, who was so impressed with the young man's abilities that he entrusted him with the preparation of the piano score of his opera Fidelio, commissioned by his publisher Artaria. At the end of his manuscript, before presenting it to Beethoven, Moscheles wrote the words "Fine mit gottes Hülfe" (Finished with God's help). Beethoven approved Moscheles's version, but appended the words "O Mensch, hilf dir selber" (O Man, help thyself!). Moscheles's good relations with Beethoven were to prove important to both at the end of Beethoven's life.

Moscheles was still a practicing Jew in 1816, when he wrote for the Vienna Jewish community an oratorio celebrating the peace. Throughout his life, he (like many other musicians of Jewish origin) remained close to the circles of other musicians of Jewish origin (e.g. Felix Mendelssohn, Anton Rubinstein, Joseph Joachim, Ferdinand Hiller), and patrons of Jewish origin (the Eskeles family in Vienna, the Leo family in Paris, and the Rothschild banking family of England). He married in the Frankfurt synagogue in 1825 Charlotte Emden, daughter of a Jewish banker and a cousin of Heinrich Heine. Nonetheless, after he settled in England he clearly found it convenient to be, technically at least, a member of the Church. His children were all baptised at birth and he and his wife were baptised in 1832. Moscheles travelled extensively in Europe as a pianist and conductor, eventually settling in London from 1825-1846 where he became co-director of the Philharmonic Society in 1832. Moscheles never disavowed his Jewish origins and frequently took his family to visit his relatives in Prague, all of whom had retained their Jewish allegiances.

After his Viennese period there followed for Moscheles a sensational series of European concert tours— it was after hearing Moscheles play at Carlsbad that the boy Robert Schumann was inspired to become a piano virtuoso himself. But Moscheles found an especially warm welcome in London, where in 1822 he was awarded an honorary membership of the London Academy of Music (later to become the Royal Academy). At the end of the year he wrote in his diary: "I feel more and more at home in England" , and he had no hesitation in settling there after his marriage. Moscheles visited most of the great capitals of Europe, making his first appearance in London in 1822, and there securing the friendship of Muzio Clementi and Johann Baptist Cramer. Moscheles was also a student of Muzio Clementi.

Before that however in 1824 he had accepted an invitation to visit Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Berlin to give some lessons to his children Felix and Fanny. His comments on meeting them were: "This is a family the like of which I have never known. Felix, a boy of fifteen is a phenomenon. What are all prodigies compared with him? ...He is already a mature artist. His elder sister Fanny [is] also extraordinarily gifted." A couple of weeks later, he wrote: "This afternoon... I gave Felix Mendelssohn his first lesson, without losing sight for a moment of the fact that I was sitting next to a master, not a pupil."

Thus began a relationship of extraordinary intensity which lasted throughout and beyond Mendelssohn's life (he died in 1847). Moscheles was a major instrument in bringing Felix to London for the first time in 1829 - Abraham entrusted Felix to his care for this visit. Moscheles had carefully prepared for it. In London, apart from becoming a regular successful performer and a musical adviser for the soirées of the Rothschilds, he had become an invaluable aid for Sir George Smart and the Royal Philharmonic Society, advising them of the talents of European musicians he encountered on his own concert-tours. When Smart himself toured Europe in 1825 looking for new music and musicians for the Society, Moscheles furnished Smart with a list of contacts and letters of introduction, including both Beethoven and Mendelssohn. (In Prague, Moscheles's brother acted as Smart's guide). Smart visited the Mendelssohns in Berlin and was impressed with both Felix and Fanny. This eventually led to Mendelssohn's invitation to conduct at the Society on his 1829 visit.

In 1827 Moscheles acted as intermediary between the Philharmonic Society and the dying Beethoven. He helped persuade the Society to send Beethoven desperately needed funds during the composer's illness. In return Beethoven offered to write for the Society his Tenth Symphony. It was never completed. Mendelssohn's great success in England from 1829 until the end of his life also reflected well on his friend. Although Moscheles's music was now being looked on as a little old-fashioned, he was heavily in demand as a music teacher and included amongst his pupils many children of the rich and aristocratic classes. He was also appointed 'Pianist to Prince Albert', a sinecure which nevertheless confirmed his status.

Moscheles never ceased to promote the music of Beethoven and gave many recitals of his music: in 1832 he conducted the London premiere of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and he translated A.F. Schindler's biography of Beethoven into English. He was an early exponent of the piano recital - the concert of music for piano alone, the innovation of which is disputed between Liszt and Moscheles. Moscheles notably reintroduced the harpsichord as a solo recital instrument. He also often performed in concert with Mendelssohn in London (and elsewhere) - one great favourite of both musicians were Bach's concerti for multiple keyboard instruments. On these occasions Mendelssohn and Moscheles were renowned for vying with each other in impromptu cadenzas. Performances of the Three-Harpsichord Concerto were given, on one occasion with Thalberg at the third keyboard, on another with Clara Schumann. Moscheles often appeared as a conductor, especially of Beethoven.

During his years in Leipzig Moscheles continued to write music and travel on concert tours, but he depended heavily on teaching for income, and this placed him under considerable stress. When therefore Mendelssohn established a Conservatory at Leipzig in 1843 he was keen to attract his friend Moscheles there as a colleague, promising him ample time in his schedules for concertising and music-making. Moscheles gladly accepted and became the leader of the Conservatory after Mendelssohn's death in 1847.

It thus fell to Moscheles to lead the counter-attack on Wagner after the latter's snide attack on Mendelssohn (and Meyerbeer) in his notorious article Das Judenthum in der Musik (Jewry in Music), which he did by requesting the resignation from the conservatory's board of Wagner's editor, Brendel. Like Mendelssohn, Moscheles believed that music had reached its Golden Age during the period Bach to Beethoven, and was suspicious of (although not necessarily antagonistic towards) new directions such as those shown by Wagner, Liszt and Berlioz. Nevertheless his personal relations with all of these (except perhaps Wagner) remained cordial. The Mendelssohn legacy in Britain meant that the Leipzig Conservatory had a high reputation amongst English musicians and amongst those who studied there during Moscheles's time were Arthur Sullivan and Charles Villiers Stanford. Moscheles died in Leipzig on 10 March 1870, nine days after attending his last rehearsal with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Among his 142 opus numbers, Moscheles wrote a number of symphonic works. Apart from an overture and a symphony, all are scored for piano and orchestra: eight piano concertos (of which the last has only come down to us in fragmentary form, no orchestral parts having survived) and sets of variations and fantasias on folk songs. The main theme of the finale of his fourth piano concerto is based on the tune, British Grenadiers. Moscheles also left several chamber works (including a piano trio that has been recorded), and a large number of works for piano solo, including sonatas and the etudes that continued to be studied by advanced students even as Moscheles's music fell into eclipse. There are also some song settings.

In the last decade, with the modest but noticeable revival of interest in compositions by this composer and those of his colleagues, more of Moscheles's works are being made accessible on compact disc, especially by small and independent record labels. All the completed Piano Concerti and Fantasias for Piano and Orchestra are available on the Hyperion Records label, played by Howard Shelley who also conducts the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra; they have also issued the complete Piano Studies, played by Piers Lane. Ian Hobson has also recorded the first six, and included a pair of variations not recorded by Shelley.

JULES DEMERSSEMAN (1833 - 1866)
- Principal Players Series: March 9, 2010
Works Presented:
- Fantasie on "William Tell" for Flute, Oboe and Piano

Demersseman was born in Hondschoote, Département Nord, France, near the Belgian border. Already as an eleven year old, he was a student of Jean-Louis Tulou at the Conservatoire de Paris. He won the first prize there at the age of twelve and quickly became famous as a virtuoso. However, he was not considered for a professorship, since he, influenced by his teacher, did not want to decide in favor of the modern type of transverse flute designed by Theobald Böhm which had been introduced into France in the meantime. Demersseman was at the age of 33 when he died in Paris, presumably from tuberculosis.

Demersseman wrote numerous works for his instrument, the flute. Probably the best known of his works today is his Solo de Concert Nr. 6 op. 82. This work, also titled the "Italian Concert", uses a Neapolitan folk melody in the middle movement and closes with a saltarello. In addition, he was one of the first French composers who wrote music for the newly-developed saxophone.

FÉLIX-CHARLES BERTHÉLEMY (1829 - 1868)
Principal Players Series: March 9, 2010
Works Presented:
- Fantasie on "William Tell" for Flute, Oboe and Piano

Félix-Charles Berthélemy, was born on November 4, 1829. In 1849 Berthélemy received the Premier Prix from the Paris Conservatoire Nationale SupÉrieur de Musique Concours in Oboe Solo, where he later also taught. and served in the Opéra orchestra from 1855 to 1868.

PHILLIPPE GAUBERT (1879 - 1941)
Principal Players Series: March 9, 2010
Works Presented:
- Flute Sonata No. 3

Philippe Gaubert was a French musician who was a distinguished performer on the flute, a respected conductor, and a composer, primarily for the flute.

Gaubert was born in Cahors in Southwest France. After his family moved to Paris, he studied under Jules and later Paul Taffanel, Jules' son. After Jules Taffanel's appointment as Chair of the Paris Conservatoire, Gaubert soon enrolled as a student, where he studied composition with Charles Lenepveu and harmonics with Raoul Pugno and Xavier Leroux. At the turn of the century, he helped Taffanel develop his flute method which was published as Taffanel et Gaubert's 17 Daily Exercises. In 1905 he wins second prize in the Prix de Rome for composition.

During World War I Gaubert fought in Verdun as a draftee. After the war, ge became one of the most prominent French musicians and enjoyed a prominent career as a flautist with the Paris Opéra. Later, he was appointed to three positions that placed him at the very center of French musical life: Professor of flute at the Conservatoire de Paris (1919), Principal conductor of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (1919), Principal conductor of the Paris Opéra (1920) and Artistic Director in 1931. In 1923, Gaubert ended his career as a performer and became a full time conductor, leading many important premieres such as Gabriel Fauré's Masques et Bergamasques (1919), Padmâvati (1923), Albert Roussel's Bacchus et Ariane (1931), and Henri Sauget's adaptation of Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme (1939).

A prolific writer with many chamber works to his credit, Gaubert composed three symphonic poems for orchestra as well as the operas Fresques in 1923 and Naïla in 1927. Not widely regarded as a musical innovator himself, Gaubert's is credited nevertheless with perfecting many of the innovative approaches by French composers César Franck, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy. Three of his ballets were premiered at the Paris Opéra.

Gaubert died in Paris in 1941 of a stroke. His friend, the journalist Jean Bouzerand, convinced the town of Cahors to create a public garden named in his honor near the river Lot in the late-1930s.

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864 - 1949)
Exciting Young Virtuosos: April 21 2010
Works Presented:
- Selected Lieder

Richard Strauss was a German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, particularly of operas, Lieder and tone poems. Strauss was also a prominent conductor.

To Richard Strauss went the honour of being the composer of the music on the first compact disc ever commercially released: Herbert von Karajan's 1980 recording of the Alpine Symphony, released by Deutsche Grammophon in 1983.

Strauss was born in Munich, the son of Franz Strauss, the principal horn player at the Court Opera in Munich. He received a thorough, but conservative, musical education from his father in his youth, writing his first music at the age of six. He continued to write music almost until his death.

During his boyhood he attended orchestra rehearsals of the Munich Court Orchestra, and he also received private instruction in music theory and orchestration from an assistant conductor there. In 1874 Strauss heard his first Wagner operas, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Siegfried. Wagner's influence on Strauss' music and style was to be profound, but at first his father forbade him to study it: it was not until the age of 16 that he was able to obtain a score of Tristan und Isolde. Indeed, in the Strauss household the music of Richard Wagner was considered inferior. Later in life, Richard Strauss said and wrote that he deeply regretted this.

In 1882 he entered Munich University, where he studied philosophy and art history, but not music. Nevertheless, he left a year later to go to Berlin, where he studied briefly before securing a post as assistant conductor to Hans von Bülow, taking over from him at Meiningen when von Bülow resigned in 1885. His compositions around this time were quite conservative, in the style of Robert Schumann or Felix Mendelssohn, true to his father's teachings. His Horn Concerto No. 1 (1882–1883) is representative of this period and is still regularly played.

Richard Strauss married soprano Pauline de Ahna in 1894. She was famous for being bossy, ill-tempered, eccentric and outspoken, but the marriage was happy, and she was a great source of inspiration to him. Throughout his life, from his earliest songs to the final Four Last Songs of 1948, he would prefer the soprano voice to all others. Nearly every major operatic role that Strauss wrote is for a soprano.

Strauss's style began to change when he met Alexander Ritter, a noted composer and violinist, and the husband of one of Richard Wagner's nieces. It was Ritter who persuaded Strauss to abandon the conservative style of his youth, and begin writing tone poems; he also introduced Strauss to the essays of Richard Wagner and the writings of Schopenhauer. Strauss went on to conduct one of Ritter's operas, and later Ritter wrote a poem based on Strauss's own Death and Transfiguration (Tod und Verklärung).

This newly found interest resulted in what is widely regarded as Strauss's first piece to show his mature personality, the tone poem Don Juan. Strauss went on to write a series of other tone poems, including Death and Transfiguration, 1888–1889), Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, 1894–95), Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1896), Don Quixote (1897), Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life, 1897–98), Sinfonia Domestica (Domestic Symphony, 1902–03) and An Alpine Symphony (Eine Alpensinfonie), (1911–1915).

Around the end of the 19th century, Strauss turned his attention to opera. His first two attempts in the genre, Guntram in 1894 and Feuersnot in 1901 were considered obscene and were critical failures. However, in 1905 he produced Salome (based on the play by Oscar Wilde), and the reaction was passionate and extreme. The première was a major success, with the artists taking more than thirty-eight curtain calls. When it opened at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, there was such a public outcry that it was closed after just one performance. Doubtless, much of this was due to the subject matter, and negative publicity at the time about Wilde's "immoral" behavior. However, some of the negative reactions may have stemmed from Strauss' use of dissonance, rarely heard then at the opera house. Elsewhere the opera was highly successful and Strauss reputedly financed his house in Garmisch completely from the revenues generated by the opera.

Strauss's next opera was Elektra, which took his use of dissonance even further. It was also the first opera in which Strauss collaborated with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The two would work together on numerous other occasions. For these later works, however, Strauss moderated his harmonic language somewhat, with the result that works such as Der Rosenkavalier (1910) were great public successes. Strauss continued to produce operas at regular intervals until 1940. These included Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1918), Die ägyptische Helena (1927), and Arabella (1932), all in collaboration with Hofmannsthal; and Intermezzo (1923), for which Strauss provided his own libretto, Die schweigsame Frau (1934), with Stefan Zweig as librettist; Friedenstag (1936) and Daphne (1937) (libretto by Joseph Gregor and Zweig); Die Liebe der Danae (1940) (with Gregor) and Capriccio (libretto by Clemens Krauss) (1941).

Strauss also made live-recording player piano music rolls for the Hupfeld system, all of which survive today and can be heard.

Strauss's solo and chamber works include early compositions for piano solo in a conservative harmonic style, many of which are lost; a rarely heard string quartet (opus 2); the famous violin sonata in E flat which he wrote in 1887; as well as a handful of late pieces. There are only six works in his entire output dating from after 1900 which are for chamber ensembles, and four are arrangements of portions of his operas. His last chamber work, an Allegretto in E for violin and piano, dates from 1940.

Much more extensive was his output of works for solo instrument or instruments with orchestra. The most famous include two horn concerti, which are still part of the standard repertoire of most horn soloists; a concerto for violin; Burleske for Piano and Orchestra; the tone poem Don Quixote, for cello, viola and orchestra; a late oboe concerto (inspired by a request from an American soldier and oboist, John de Lancie, whom he met after the war); and the Duet-Concertino for bassoon, clarinet and orchestra, which was one of his last works (1947). Strauss admitted that the Duet-Concertino had an extra-musical "plot", in which the clarinet represented a princess and the bassoon a bear; when the two dance together, the bear transforms into a prince.

There is much controversy surrounding Strauss' role in Germany after the Nazi Party came to power. Some say that he was constantly apolitical, and never cooperated with the Nazis completely. Others point out that he was an official of the Third Reich. Several noted musicians disapproved of his conduct while the Nazis were in power, among them the conductor Arturo Toscanini, who famously said, "To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again."

In November 1933, without consultation with Strass, Joseph Goebbels appointed him to the post of president of the Reichsmusikkammer, the State Music Bureau. Strauss decided to keep his post but to remain apolitical, a decision which has been criticized as naïve. While in this position he composed the Olympische Hymne for the 1936 Summer Olympics, and also befriended some high-ranking Nazis. Evidently his intent was to protect his daughter-in-law Alice, who was Jewish, from persecution. In 1935, Strauss was forced to resign his position as Reichsmusikkammer president, after refusing to remove from the playbill for Die schweigsame Frau the name of the Jewish librettist, his friend Stefan Zweig. He had written Zweig a supportive letter, insulting to the Nazis, which was intercepted by the Gestapo. By the time he conducted the Olympische Hymne at the Berlin Olympic Stadium in 1936, he was no longer president of the Reichsmusikkammer.

His decision to produce Friedenstag in 1938, a one-act opera set in a besieged fortress during the Thirty Years' War – essentially a hymn to peace and a thinly veiled criticism of the Third Reich – during a time when an entire nation was preparing for war, has been seen as extraordinarily brave. With its contrasts between freedom and enslavement, war and peace, light and dark, this work has been considered more related to Fidelio than to any of Strauss' other recent operas. Production ceased shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939.

When his daughter-in-law Alice was placed under house arrest in Garmisch in 1938, Strauss used his connections in Berlin, for example the Berlin Intendant Heinz Tietjen, to secure her safety; in addition, there are also suggestions that he attempted to use his official position to protect other Jewish friends and colleagues. Unfortunately Strauss left no specific records or commentary regarding his feeling about Nazi anti-Semitism, so most of the reconstruction of his motivations during the period are conjectural. While most of his actions during the 1930s were midway between outright collaboration and dissidence, it was only in his music that the dissident streak was, in retrospect, more obvious, such as in the pacifist drama Friedenstag.

In 1942, Strauss moved with his family back to Vienna, where Alice and her children could be protected by Baldur von Schirach, the Gauleiter of Vienna. Unfortunately, even Strauss was unable to protect his Jewish relatives completely; in early 1944, while Strauss was away, Alice and the composer's son were abducted by the Gestapo and imprisoned for two nights. Only Strauss's personal intervention at this point was able to save them, and he was able to take the two of them back to Garmisch, where they remained, under house arrest, until the end of the war.

Strauss completed the composition of Metamorphosen, a work for 23 solo strings, in 1945. It is now generally accepted that Metamorphosen was composed, specifically, to mourn the bombing of Strauss' favorite opera house, the Hoftheater in Munich. Strauss called this "the greatest catastrophe that has ever disturbed my life." However, some scholars suggest that the original intention of the piece was to be a choral setting of Goethe's poem, Niemand wird sich selber kennen (Nobody wants to know themselves).

In April 1945, Strauss was apprehended by American soldiers at his Garmisch estate. As he descended the staircase he announced to Lieutenant Milton Weiss of the US Army, "I am Richard Strauss, the composer of Rosenkavalier and Salome." Lt. Weiss, who, as it happened, was also a musician, nodded in recognition. Another musically knowledgeable American officer placed an 'Off limits' sign on the lawn to protect Strauss

In 1948, Strauss wrote his last work, Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra, reportedly with Kirsten Flagstad in mind. She certainly gave the first performance and it was recorded, but the quality of the recording is poor. It is available as a historic CD release for enthusiasts. All his life he had produced lieder, but these are among his best known (alongside Zueignung (Affection), Cäcilie, Morgen (Morning), and Allerseelen (All Souls)). When compared to the work of younger composers, Strauss' harmonic and melodic language was considered somewhat old-fashioned by this time. Nevertheless, the songs have always been popular with audiences and performers. Strauss himself declared in 1947, "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer!"

Richard Strauss died in 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany at the age of 85. Georg Solti who had arranged Strauss's 85th birthday celebration also directed an orchestra during Strauss' funeral.

BEYLE SCHAECHTER-GOTTESMAN (b. 1920)
CHAMZZ Series: Classics for the 21st Century: June 9 2010
Works Presented:
- SVinter Ovnt... Winter Evening
- Uhu Fayft der Vint... Uhu Whistles the Wind
- Shoyn Farendikt zikh dos Lidl Funem Tog... The Song of the Day has Ended
- Ir Freygt Mikh Farvos... You Ask Me Why
- Bleter... Leaves
- Harbstlid... Autumn Song
- A Zemerl Aza... A Little Tune Like This
- Zumerteg... Summer Days
- Geven Amol Iz a Shtetll... There Once Was a Town
- Mayn Khaverte Mintsye... My Friend Mintsye
- Der Saksafon Shpiler...The Saxophone Player
- Under Your White Starry Heaven, Beltz, Oygn and perhaps
- Brother Can You Spare A Dime ( Brider Gib Mir Khotsh Eyn Daym)

Beyle Schaechter was born in Vienna into an Eastern-European, Yiddish-speaking family; her family left for Czernowitz, Ukraine (then Romania) and settled there when she was a young child. She was brought up in a multi-lingual environment that included Yiddish, German, Romanian, and Ukrainian; she also studied French and Latin at school. They were a singing family and her mother, Lifshe Schaechter, was known for her wide folk repertoire. Schaechter-Gottesman was sent to Vienna for art lessons, but was forced to return to Czernowitz when the Germans invaded Austria in 1938. In 1941 she married a medical doctor, Jonas (Yoyne) Gottesman, and together they lived out the war in the Czernowitz ghetto, along with her mother and several other family members. After the war, Schaechter-Gottesman lived several years in Vienna, where her husband had a chief position ("Chefarzt") in the DP camps in the area. Their daughter Taube was born there in 1950; the family moved to New York in 1951, where the Gottesmans had two other children, Hyam and Itzik.

In New York the Gottesmans took part in an experimental Yiddish community in the Bronx, centered around Bainbridge Avenue. There a half-dozen Yiddish-speaking families bought adjacent houses and reinvigorated the existing Sholem Aleichem Yiddish School. Schaechter-Gottesman became an important member of this community, writing classroom materials, plays and songs for the school as well as editing a magazine for children (Kinderzhurnal) and a magazine of children’s writings (Enge-benge). Schaechter-Gottesman’s first book of poetry, Mir Forn (We’re Travelling) appeared in 1963. Her books, eight in total, have appeared regularly since then. They include poetry for adults, children’s books and song books. She has recorded three CDs of her songs and one recording of folk songs. Her work does not revolve around a single theme but ranges widely from Eastern European subjects to contemporary New York, and from lighthearted children’s fare to such sombre reflections as Di Balade Funem Elftn September (The Ballad of September 11th). Her best-known single work is Harbstlid (Autumn Song). Schaechter-Gottesman’s songs have been performed by Theodore Bikel, Adrienne Cooper, Theresa Tova (performing with the Lyric on June 9, 2010), Lucette van den Berg, Michael Alpert, Lorin Sklamberg, Sharon Jan Bernstein, Fabian Schnedler, Massel-Tov and others. A song written for her nephew, Binyumele’s Bar Mitsve, was adapted by Adrienne Cooper for her daughter as Sorele’s Bas Mitsve and was recorded on the CD Mikveh.

Schaechter-Gottesman continues to serve as a resource for researchers of both Yiddish folk and art music. She has been recorded and interviewed numerous times and participated in such cultural events as KlezKamp, KlezKanada, Buffalo on the Roof, Ashkenaz Festival, and Weimar KlezmerWochen. Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman: Song of Autumn, a 72 minute film by Josh Waletsky, was released summer 2007 as part of the League for Yiddish's Series Worlds Within a World: Conversations with Yiddish Writers. A new collection of her poetry, Der tsvit fun teg (The Blossoms of Days) is slated to be released in the autumn of 2007.

In 1998 Schaechter-Gottesman was inducted into the People's Hall of Fame at City Lore in New York; and in 2005 she received a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship, one of the highest cultural honors given by a United States government agency. She was the first Yiddish poet or musical figure to receive this honor.

The entire Schaechter-Gottesman family has been productive in the field of Yiddish culture. Her mother, Lifshe Schaechter-Widman, wrote a memoir, Durkhgelebt a Velt (A Full Life) in 1973, as well as serving as an informant for folk song researchers with her recording Az Di Furst Avek (When You Go Away). Her brother, Mordkhe Schaechter, was the world’s leading Yiddish linguist. Her son, Itzik Gottesman, is an editor of The Forward and the Tsukunft, and a scholar of Yiddish folklore. Her niece, Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath is also a Yiddish poet; nephew Binyumen Schaechter is a composer and musical director in Yiddish and English; and niece Rukhl Schaechter is a journalist with The Forward. Her granddaughter, Esther Gottesman, teaches children Yiddish and sings on Shaechter-Gottesman's most recent release, Fli mayn flishlang (Fly, Fly My Kite).

MATT HERSKOWITZ
Chamzz Series: Classics for the 21st Century
- February 3, 2010: Schumann and all that Jazz
- June 9, 2010: Celebrating the Music of Beyle Schechter-Gottesman
Works Presented:
various arrangements of works by Robert Schumann for saxophone and piano
various arrangements of songs by Beyle Schechter-Gottesman for jazz trio, voice and trumpet

see bio above

2009-2010 SEASON PERFORMERS

SHERYL STAPLES
Principal Associate Concert Master, New York Philharmonic
November 11, 2009
Opening Night: Principal Players Series
A native of Los Angeles, Ms. Staples was a scholarship student at the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences, a Young Musicians Foundation Scholar, and a W.M. Keck Scholar at the Colburn School of Performing Arts, spending summers at the Encore School for Strings. She earned an Artist Diploma from the University of Southern California. Her principal teacher was Robert Lipsett and her ensemble mentor was Heiichiro Ohyama.

At the age of 26, Ms. Staples was appointed associate concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra, a position she held for three years. In addition, she taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Encore School for Strings, and Kent/Blossom Music Festival, and she was a member of the Cleveland Orchestra Piano Trio. Previously, in Southern California, she was concertmaster of the Pacific Symphony and the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, and held faculty positions at the University of Southern California and the Colburn School of Performing Arts. Currently on leave from the Manhattan School of Music, Ms. Staples has recently joined the faculty of The Juilliard School, teaching orchestral excerpts.

An active chamber musician, Ms. Staples has participated in the Santa Fe, La Jolla, Brightstar, Martha’s Vineyard, and Seattle Chamber Music festivals, and she has been a faculty artist at the Aspen, Bowdoin, and Sarasota music festivals. She appears on three Stereophile compact discs with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. In the New York area, she performs with the New York Philharmonic Ensembles and the Lyric Chamber Music Society.

Violinist Sheryl Staples joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Associate Concertmaster in September 1998. In addition to her orchestral career, she has performed as soloist with more than 40 orchestras nationwide, including The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, Pacific Symphony, Albany Symphony, and Louisiana Philharmonic. She made her solo debut with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic in 1999, performing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, and has since performed concertos of Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Haydn.


CYNTHIA PHELPS
Principal Viola, New York Philharmonic
November 11, 2009
Opening Night: Principal Players Series
Cynthia Phelps enjoys a versatile career as an established chamber musician, solo artist, and Principal Violist of the New York Philharmonic, a position to which she was appointed in 1992. Her concerto appearances with the Philharmonic have taken her to the major concert halls of North America and Europe, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, London’s Royal Festival Hall, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. She has also been engaged as soloist with orchestras such as the Minnesota Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Orquestra Sinfonica, de Bilbao, and Hong Kong Philharmonic.

Sought after by many chamber music organizations, Ms. Phelps regularly appears in New York with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, in Boston with the Boston Chamber Music Society, and as guest artist at the 92nd Street Y. She has performed with the Guarneri, American, Brentano, St. Lawrence, and Prague string quartets, as well as The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. She has appeared in the summer festivals of Marlboro, La Jolla, Santa Fe, Seattle, Mostly Mozart, Bridgehampton, Steamboat Springs, Vail, and Music at Menlo, as well was in Europe in Schleswig-Holstein, Naples, and Cremona. She is also a founding member of the chamber group Les Amies, a flute-harp-viola group recently formed with Philharmonic Principal Harp Nancy Allen, and flutist Carol Wincenc.

Ms. Phelps is a first-prize winner of both the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and the Washington International String Competition, and is the recipient of the Pro Musicis International award. Under the auspices of this philanthropic organization, she has appeared as soloist in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Rome, and Paris, as well as in jails, hospitals and drug rehab centers worldwide. Her most recent recording is a solo CD on Cala Records, and her television and radio credits include Live From Lincoln Center; St. Paul Sunday Morning on NPR; Radio France; Italy’s RAI; and WGBH in Boston. A native of Southern California and the fourth of five girls, all of whom are musicians, Ms. Phelps has served on the faculties at The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. She is married to cellist Ronald Thomas, with whom she has three girls, Lili, Christina, and Caitlin.

CARTER BREY
Principal Cello, New York Philharmonic
November 11, 2009
Opening Night: Principal Players Series

Carter Brey was appointed Principal Cellist of the New York Philharmonic in 1996, and made his subscription debut as soloist with the Orchestra in May 1997, performing Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations led by then-Music Director Kurt Masur. He has performed as soloist in subsequent seasons in the Elgar Cello Concerto with André Previn conducting; in William Schuman’s A Song of Orpheus with Christian Thielemann; in Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote with Music Director Lorin Maazel and with former Music Director Zubin Mehta; and in the Brahms Double Concerto with Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and conductor Christoph Eschenbach. The Brahms was repeated at the Tanglewood Music Center in the summer of 2002 as part of Kurt Masur’s final concerts as Philharmonic Music Director.

Carter Brey rose to international attention in 1981 as a prizewinner in the Rostropovich International Cello Competition. Subsequent appearances with Mstislav Rostropovich and the National Symphony Orchestra were unanimously praised. The winner of the Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Prize, Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Young Concert Artists’ Michaels Award, and other honors, he also was the first musician to win the Arts Council of America’s Performing Arts Prize, and has performed as soloist with many of America’s major symphony orchestras.

His chamber music career is equally distinguished. He has made regular appearances with the Tokyo and Emerson string quartets as well as The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Spoleto Festival in the U.S. and Italy, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music and La Jolla Chamber Music festivals, among others. He presents an ongoing series of duo recitals with pianist Christopher O’Riley; together they have recorded The Latin American Album, a disc of compositions from South America and Mexico (Helicon Records). His recording with Garrick Ohlsson of the complete works of Chopin for cello and piano was released by Arabesque in the fall of 2002 to great acclaim.

Mr. Brey was educated at the Peabody Institute, where he studied with Laurence Lesser and Stephen Kates, and at Yale University, where he studied with Aldo Parisot, and where he was a Wardwell Fellow and a Houpt Scholar. He lives in New York City with his wife, Ilaria Dagnini Brey, and their two children, Ottavia and Lucas. Among his outside interests are marathon running, ballroom dancing, and sailing (he holds two U.S. Sailing certifications and restored a classic sloop that he sails out of City Island).

MANHATTAN BRASS QUINTET
December 9, 2009
CHAMZZ Series: Classics for the 21st Century

The award winning Manhattan Brass Quintet is best known for its innovative repertoire, dynamic performances varied, eye-opening programming, and and commitment to educating audiences of all ages about live music and the brass idiom. The ensemble is an amalgam of individual virtuoso musicians, each bringing to the table their unique experience and vision. Comfortable in every genre from Gesualdo to jazz, the quintet is intent on taking brass ensemble playing to another level and bringing their audience with them.

In addition to its standard repertoire, the quintet places an emphasis on dynamic programming and on the commissioning and performance of new works, especially those which integrate new or unique styles into the repertoire. Throughout its history the quintet has commissioned and premiered the works of a wide range of composers, including jazz greats Wynton Marsalis and Paquito D' Rivera.

Lew Soloff, Trumpet
A fixture on the New York music scene for some 30 years, Lew Soloff's first jobs were with latin artists Machito, Tito Puente, and The Radio City Music Hall Orchestra. At this early point in his career he played with Maynard Ferguson, the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band, Clark Terry, the Joe Henderson-Kenny Dorham Big Band and sat in often with drummer Elvin Jones. In the spring of 1966 Lew started working with Gil Evans, a relationship that continued until Gil's death in 1988, and continues with his son, Miles.

From 1968 through 1973 Lew joined rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears. During this period, Lew toured and recorded numerous albums with the band, including one of the most popular trumpet solos in rock music; on their mega-hit 'Spinning Wheel'. After the BST years, Lew remained in New York, recording in the busy studio scene while maintaining his gig with Gil.

Soloff played lead trumpet with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. He has also done so for Frank Sinatra, Thad Jones and Barbra Streisand. He has been featured with Carla Bley since 1987, and is a charter member along with David Matthews, of the Manhattan Jazz Quintet; which has recorded 29 albums for Japan since 1984. Lew has also worked with Ornette Coleman and toured often with trombonist Ray Anderson.

Lew Soloff has nine solo albums to his credit. He presently works with Manhattan Brass, Manhattan Jazz Quintet and Orchestra, is a recurring soloist with both Absolute Ensemble and The Fab Faux, is on the board of Lyric Chamber Society, tours with Marianne Faithfull, Steve Tyrell, and also his own trio, quartet and quintet. He has just formed a new group with string quartet and trumpet.

Lew had a DVD released in Japan in April '05 on the "Spice Of Life" label of the Miles Davis-Gil Evans version of "Porgy And Bess", recorded with the Bohuslan Big Band of Sweden. He is a Bach/Selmer clinician and has been on the faculty of the Manhattan School Of Music for over 20 years. He is a graduate of the Eastman School Of Music.

Wayne du Maine, Trumpet
A native of St. Louis, Wayne J. du Maine currently performs with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Brooklyn and Long Island Philharmonics, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, New York City Opera, New York Big Brass, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and with contemporary music ensembles such as Speculum Musicae, Sospeso, and ST-X Xenakis. Mr. du Maine is a member of the Manhattan Brass and with Mercury, Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Brass Quintets, he is dedicated to performing and introducing live music to thousands of school children in the NYC area, NJ and PA. Wayne has worked with a broad spectrum of artists ranging from Leonard Bernstein and Leonard Slatkin to Hank Jones, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Patti Lupone and Audra MacDonald. He can be heard on recordings with the New York Philharmonic, Met Opera Orchestra, numerous commercials, motion pictures and with Prince on his New Power Soul recording.

Mr. du Maine is on the faculty of Columbia and Princeton Universities. At the Juilliard School, Wayne teaches trumpet in the Music Advancement Program, serves as a teaching assistant in the Instrumental Music Program and the Academy, a joint program including Carnegie Hall, The Weill Music Institute and Juilliard. He is also on the conducting faculty of the Elisabeth Murrow String Camp.

Mr. du Maine has performed at music festivals in Aspen, Spoleto, Tanglewood, Vermont Mozart, Bowdoin, Marlboro, Berkshire Choral, and the Manchester (VT) Music Festival. He has been a member of the pit orchestras for Titanic, Music Man, Man of La Mancha and.Fiddler on the Roof, where he was also an associate conductor. Wayne is currently associate conductor and trumpeter for the new revival of the Broadway classic; South Pacific. Highlights of recent performances include the Boys Choir of Harlem, Take 6, Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, the Pittsburgh Collective, American Ballet Theater, Bernadette Peters and the rock band, Jesus H. Christ, where he plays keyboards.

A member of two softball leagues in Central Park, Wayne resides in Manhattan with his wife, Sharon.

R. J. Kelley, French Horn
Resident in the New York area since 1990, R.J. Kelley has been heard with such distinguished ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, NY City Opera, NY City Ballet, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Orpheus, Aspen Wind Quintet, and many others.

Equally comfortable touring with Branford Marsalis and Orpheus, appearing on Saturday Night Live with Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page, or giving Bach's Quoniam under direction of Christopher Hogwood, Andrew Parrott, or Joshua Rifkin; playing the Carnivale di Venezia with the Duke Ellington orchestra, recording Mozart's complete Concerti for horn (MusicMasters/Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy/Thomas Crawford), R.J. has garnered critical praise ranging from "Dazzling!" (San Francisco Chronicle) to "...resident magician of the Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy..." (Hartford Courant).

RJ currently serves as principal horn of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under Nicolas McGegan; Santa Fe Pro Musica & Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra/Kenneth Slowik (NM,DC); American Classical Orchestra/Thomas Crawford (CT); Portland Baroque Orchestra/Monica Huggett (OR); Washington Bach Consort/Reilly Lewis; he has been featured as concerto soloist with the above-named ensembles, as well as the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, Connecticut Early Music Festival, Connecticut Orchestra, The Governor's Musicke (Williamsburg, VA), Tafelmusik (Toronto), Capella Nuova (Stockholm, Sweden), and others.

Festival appearances include the Edinburgh Festival, the BBC Proms-London, Mostly Mozart/Lincoln Center, Berkeley (CA) and Boston Early Music Festivals, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Blossom Festival, Gottingen Handel Festival, Brighton Festival (UK), and the Montreux-Detroit Jazz Festival. R.J. has been a guest artist of the Royal Court Theater Orchestra at Drottningholm (Sweden), Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, CBC Vancouver, Korean Chamber Ensemble, Mexico City Philharmonic, and others.

R.J. has served as artist faculty at Colorado College and Hartwick College (NY); presented lecture-recitals and/or master classes at Florida State University, San Jose State University, Rutgers University, University of Montana, and University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Of some 50+ CD's to his credit, a partial list includes: Beethoven's Sextet (horns and strings) and Septet/OoOFA/ MusicMasters, piano Quintets of Mozart and Beethoven/Helicon Winds/Helicon, Vivaldi's Concerti for Diverse Instruments /PBO/McGegan /Reference, and Rameau's Le Temple de la Gloire/PBO/McGegan/ Harmonia Mundi USA. Recent releases include Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust (with Hora Decima brass ensemble/David Chamberlain); Bach's Mass in F, BWV 233 (Washington Bach Consort/Reilly Lewis; and Schoenberg's reduction of Mahler's monumental Das Lied von der Erde (Santa Fe Pro Musica/Smithsonian Chamber Players/Slowik), which was nominated for a 2008 Grammy.

R.J. performs on an 1850 M.A. Raoux, an 1875 Besson (with three-piston sauterelle), and Seraphinoff/Haas Baroque horn. He also plays (exclusively) Alexander modern horns: 303, 307, 103, 90, and custom descant with a 103 bell.

David Taylor, Trombone
Receiving B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Julliard School of Music, David Taylor started his playing career as a member of Leopold Stowkowski's American Symphony Orchestra, and by appearing with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez. Almost simultaneously, he was a member of the Thad Jones Mel Lewis jazz band, and recorded with Duke Ellington (The New Orleans Suite), The Rolling Stones, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Mr. Taylor has recorded four solo albums (Koch, New World, and DMP) and has presented numerous recitals throughout the world).

He has appeared as a soloist with the St. Lukes Chamber Orchestra , Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Caramoor Festival Orchestra, NY Chamber Symphony, Basil Sinfonietta, Adelaide Philharmonic, and the Group for Contemporary Music. He has been involved in dozens of commissioning projects for the Bass Trombone in solo and chamber idioms; collaborating with composers including Alan Hovhaness, Charles Wuorinen, George Perle, Frederic Rzewski, Lucia Dlugoszchewski, Eric Ewazen, David Liebman, and Daniel Schnyder. He has appeared and recorded chamber music with Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and Wynton Marsalis. Throughout his career, David Taylor has appeared and recorded with many major jazz and popular artists including Barbara Streisand, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Frank Sinatra, and Aretha Franklin. Mr. Taylor has won the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Most Valuable Player Award for five consecutive years, the most it could be awarded and has been awarded the NARAS Most Valuable Player Virtuoso Award, an honor accorded no other bass trombonist. He has been a member of the Gil Evans Band, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band, George Russell's Band, the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, and the Chuck Israel Band to name a few. Although he has performed on numerous Grammy Award winning recordings, 1998 was special. In 1998 Taylor performed on four Grammy nominated CD's: The J.J. Johnson Big Band, Dave Grusin's West Side Story, the Joe Henderson Big Band, and the Randy Brecker Band. The latter two CD's were chosen for Grammys.

David Taylor currently performs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Charles Mingus Big Band, NY Chamber Symphony, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Michelle Camillo Band, Bob Mintzer Band, and the Daniel Schnyder, David Taylor, and the Kenny Drew Jr Trio. He appears frequently with Orpheus, and the St. Lukes Chamber Orchestra, and is on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College.

Upcoming events include the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and master classes and recitals in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. David has appeared with the Absolute Ensemble under the direction of Kristian Jarvi (this project was broadcast on European TV and recorded for Enja Records), the Niederoesterreichische Tonkuenstlerochester, and Tiroler Symphonie Orchester Innsbruck.

Michael Seltzer, Trombone
A native of Los Angeles, Michael Seltzer has performed internationally in many of the world's major concert halls and festivals. As a freelancer, Mr. Seltzer enjoys the variety of music he encounters in New York, and has performed with many of that region's finer orchestras and ensembles, often in Carnegie Hall or at Lincoln Center. Ensembles include the Orchestra of St Luke’s, Metropolitan Opera, NY City Opera, American Composer’s Orchestra, American Symphony, and many others. Recent appearances have been accompanying icons such as Joe Zawinul, Marcel Khalifé, Branford Marsalis, members of Frank Zappa’s band and the stars of Monty Python. He has also performed extensively on Broadway.

Mr. Seltzer is a multiple-time Grammy award nominee with numerous ensembles in which he has been a performer, including 2004’s winning Broadway Cast Album for Bernadette Peters’ revival of Gypsy. Recent tours have included New Zealand, Europe and Japan. Much of the recent international traveling and recording has been with Absolute Ensemble, the cutting-edge chamber orchestra, as their solo trombonist. Additionally, he has recorded for television and film, and has performed and recorded contemporary music with groups such as Bang-on-a-Can Marathon, and the ST-X Ensemble Xenakis. He has performed with the New York Collegium, New York's acclaimed baroque orchestra and also enjoys solo performance, appearing in recital at the Caramoor Festival's winter 'Artist Spotlight' series and for Lincoln Center’s ‘Meet-the-Artist’ series.

Mr. Seltzer has been a panelist for Chamber Music America's National Conferences and has been a guest clinician/lecturer at many esteemed institutions including UCLA, Princeton University, The Juilliard School, Indiana University at Bloomington and the Hochschulen für Music in Bremen and Stuttgart, Germany. He did doctoral work at New York University and received degrees from California State University, Northridge and Manhattan School of Music where he was a member of the inaugural class of their orchestral study and performance program. He has designed educational programs for Midori & Friends, the Fischoff Chamber Music Society, and the Manhattan Brass, of which he is a founding member.

DANIEL SCHNYDER
Saxophone
CHAMZZ Series: Classics for the 21st Century
- December 9, 2009: The Beginning of the Great Divide
- February 3, 2010: Schumann and all that Jazz
see bio under composers

BASSAM SABA
Oud
December 9, 2009
CHAMZZ Series: Classics for the 21st Century
Bassam Saba is a world-reowned virtuoso of Arabic music as performer, teacher and conductor. Saba is considered oe of the best Arabic nay players in the world, his innovation and presence unprecedented. Saba has been featured on the nay in ways that pioneer the instrument, performing Concerto written for nay, and performing as a soloist in prestigious Philharmonics worldwide. Saba is also master multi-instrumentalist of the oud (Mideast lute), buzuq (Arabic buzuki), saz (Turkish buzuki) and violin. In addition, Saba, classically trained in western flute, is one of the few known flutists to play microtonal scales.

Saba studied nay, oud and violin at the Lebanon National Conservatory. At the age of 17, he moved to Paris where he received his BA in Western Classical music and Flute Performance at the Conservatoire Municipal des Gobelins. In 1985, Saba received an MA in Western Flute Performance and Music Education at the prestigious Gnessin Musical Pedagogical Institute of Moscow. He later returned to Beirut where he began to tour extensively with Fairouz, Marcel Khalife and Ziad Rahbani.

Saba moved to New York in 1991. Since then, he has been featured soloist with Yo-Yo Ma, and has worked with Simon Shaheen, Marcel Khalife, Wadia El-Safi, Paul Simon, Alicia Keys, Sting, Santana, and jazz musicians like Herbie Hancock, Sonny Fortune and Quincy Jones. Saba currently performs his compositions with his own group, directs the New York Arabic Orchestra, and performs with Simon Shaheen's Al-Qantara and Near Eastern Music Ensemble; Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble; and Christian Jarvi's Absolute Ensemble, premiering a pioneering concerto for nay composed for him by Daniel Schnyder. As a soloist, Saba has performed with the Hannover, Detroit and East Oakland Bay Symphonic Orchestras. He has toured throughout the Middle East, Europe, North America, South America, Australia, Africa and Japan.

Saba is New York's primary teacher and conductor of Arabic music, and is one of the most sought-after teachers in the U.S. He has held numerous Arabic music workshops and lectures all over the U.S. and around the world, and has conducted numerous orchestras and ensembles at educational institutions such as Harvard University and Simon Shaheen's Arabic Music Retreat, the most prestigious camp for Arabic music in North America, attracting participants from all over the world. Saba also led orchestras for Kazim Al-Saher and Sarah Brightman, and served as director of the Beirut Symphonic Band. Saba continues to offer private lessons for nay, oud, and Arabic violin in New York.

"In 2007 Bassam Saba was recognized by the National Arab American Museum as one of the 10 most outstanding artists of the last decade to make a significant difference in bringing the beauty and rich cultural history of Middle East through music to American Audiences."

MATT HERSKOWITZ
Piano
Lyric Artist & Composer-In-Residence
CHAMZZ: Classics for the 21st Centurys
- February 3, 2010: Schumann and all that Jazz
- June 9, 2010: Celebrating the music of Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman

see bio above

ROBERT LANGEVIN
Principal Flute, New York Philharmonic
March 9, 2010
Principal Players Series
Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Mr. Langevin began studying flute at age 12 and joined the local orchestra three years later. While studying with Jean-Paul Major at the Montreal Conservatory of Music, he started working in recording studios, where he accompanied a variety of artists of different styles. He graduated in 1976 with two first prizes, one in flute, the other in chamber music. Not long after, he won the prestigious Prix d’Europe, a national competition open to all instruments with a first prize of a two-year scholarship to study in Europe. This enabled him to work with Aurèle Nicolet at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany, where he graduated in 1979. He then went on to study with Maxence Larrieu, in Geneva, winning second prize at the Budapest International Competition in 1980.

With the start of the 2000-2001 season, Robert Langevin joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Flute, in The Lila Acheson Wallace Chair. Most recently, Mr. Langevin held the Jackman Pfouts Principal Flute Chair of the Pittsburgh Symphony and was an adjunct professor at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh. Prior to his appointment to the Pittsburgh Symphony, Mr. Langevin served as Associate Principal of the Montreal Symphony for 13 years, playing on more than 30 recordings. As a member of Musica Camerata Montreal and l’Ensemble de la Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec, he premiered many works, including the Canadian premiere of Pierre Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maître. In addition, Mr. Langevin has performed as soloist with Quebec’s most distinguished ensembles and has recorded many recitals and chamber music programs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He also served on the faculty of the University of Montreal for nine years.

Mr. Langevin is currently on the faculties of The Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Orford International Summer Festival.

LIANG WANG
Principal Oboe, New York Philharmonic
March 9, 2010
Principal Players Series

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.

JOHN NOVACEK
Piano
March 9, 2010
Principal Players Series
Pianist John Novacek regularly tours the Americas, Europe and Asia as solo recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist; in the latter capacity he has presented over thirty concerti with dozens of orchestras.

John Novacek’s major American performances have been heard in New York City’s Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall, 92nd Street Y, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, Merkin Concert Hall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Symphony Space, Washington’s The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Chicago’s Symphony Center and Los Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Hollywood Bowl and Royce Hall, while international venues include Paris’ Theatre des Champs-Elysées, Salle Gaveau and Musée du Louvre, London’s Wigmore Hall and Barbican Centre, as well as most of the major concert halls of Japan. He is also a frequent guest artist at festivals, here and abroad, including New York City’s Mostly Mozart Festival and those of Aspen, Cape Cod, Caramoor, Chautauqua, Colorado College, Ravinia, Seattle, SummerFest La Jolla, Wolf Trap, BBC Proms (England), Braunschweig (Germany), Lucerne, Menuhin and Berbier (Switzerland), Majorca (Spain), Sorrento (Italy), Stavanger (Norway), Toulouse (France) and Sapporo (Japan).

Often heard on radio broadcasts worldwide, John Novacek has appeared on NPR’s Performance Today, St. Paul Sunday and, as both featured guest composer/performer, on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. He is also frequently seen and heard on television, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Entertainment Tonight and CNN International.

John Novacek is a much sought-after collaborative artist and has performed with Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Emmanuel Pahud, Truls Mork and Leila Josefowicz, as well as the Colorado, Harrington, New Hollywood and Ying string quartets. He has also given numerous world premieres and worked closely with composers John Adams, John Harbison, Jennifer Higdon, George Rochberg, John Williams and John Zorn.

John Novacek took top prizes at both the Leschetizky and Joanna Hodges international piano competitions, among many others. He studied piano with Peter Serkin, Bruce Sutherland and Jakob Gimpel and chamber music with Jamie Laredo and Felix Galimir, and occasionally coached with Gary Graffman and Isaac Stern.

John Novacek’s own compositions and arrangements have been performed by the Pacific Symphony, The 5 Browns, Concertante, Harrington String Quartet, Ying Quartet, Millennium, Quattro Mani and The Three Tenors. He has recorded over 30 CDs, encompassing solo and chamber music by most major composers from Bach to Bartók, as well as many contemporary and original scores. Mr. Novacek records for Philips, Nonesuch, Arabesque, Warner Classics, Sony/BMG, Koch International, Universal Classics, Ambassador, Pony Canyon, Four Winds, Arkay, Virtuoso and EMI Classics. CD titles include Road Movies (2004 GRAMMY nomination as “Best Chamber Music Performance”), Great Mozart Piano Works, Spanish Rhapsody, Novarags (original ragtime compositions), Classic Romance, Hungarian Sketches, Intersection, Romances et Meditations and, with Leila Josefowicz, Americana (GRAMOPHONE: “Editor’s Choice”), For the End of Time, Shostakovich and Recital (BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE: 5 stars/June 2005's chamber choice).

KENNY DREW JR.
Piano
March 24, 2010
CHAMZZ Series: Classics for the 21st Century - Chopin and Beyond
Kenny Drew Jr. was born in New York City in 1958. He started music lessons at the age of four. After studying classical piano with his Aunt Marjorie, he branched out into the area of jazz music.Kenny Jr. has performed worldwide with a comprehensive variety of musicians, including Stanley Jordan, Out of the Blue (OTB), Stanley Turrentine, Slide Hampton and the Jazz Masters, the Mingus Big Band, Steve Grossman, Yoshiaki Masuo, Sadao Watanabe, Smokey Robinson, Frank Morgan, Daniel Schnyder, and many others.

Kenny Drew Jr. was the winner of the 1990 Great American jazz Piano Competition in Jacksonville FL. He has appeared as a leader at many major festivals, including the Jacksonville Jazz Festival, Kyoto Jazz Festival, Savannah on Stage Festival, Clearwater Jazz Festival, and the Newark Jazz Festival. Kenny has also performed as leader at many major jazz clubs around the country, such as Bradley's (NY), Visiones (NY), The Blue Note (NY), Blues Alley (DC), Fat Tuesday's (NY), The VIllage Gate (NY), Trumpets (NJ), The Jazz Showcase (Chicago), Twins Lounge (DC), One Step Down (DC), and the Montreal Bistro (Toronto). He has recorded nine albums as a leader and has also made numerous recordings as a sideman. Kenny has performed at concerts & in clubs with The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Faddis/Hampton/Heath Sextet, Steve Turre, Jack Walrath, David Sanchez, Jack Wilkins, Michael Mossman, Ronnie Cuber, Steve Slagle, and Marlena Shaw. Other performances included appearances with Jon Faddis, Slide Hampton, and Jimmy Heath at the Montreal North Sea, and Lugano festivals and with the Mingus Big Band at the Chicago & Detroit festivals.

Kenny has also begun to gain a reputation as a performer of classical music. He has performed both jazz & classical music at the Barossa Music Festival in Australia. The classical repertoire included Bach concertos and music by African-American composers. These concerts consisted of solo piano recitals and appearances with renowned classical musicians such as violinist Jane Peters and pianist Peter Waters. Kenny participated in a performance of Charles Mingus' large-scale composition "Epitaph" at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam under the direction of Gunther Schuller. He performed a Mozart concerto with the Milwaukee Symphony conducted by Andreas Delfs, and appeared at the International Bach Festival in Leipzig, playing Bach's music with Daniel Schnyder and David Taylor. Further appearances as a classical performer include,the Luzern Piano Festival and in Key West.

In addition to his work as a soloist and jazz side man, Kenny has been playing with a classical/chamber-jazz trio led by composer/saxophonist/flautist Daniel Schnyder, with David Taylor on bass trombone. In addition to appearances at the Barossa Festival in 1997, the group has performed concerts in Switzerland and New York.

Among Kenny's recordings with Daniel Schnyder are, the "Sonata for Soprano Saxophone & Piano" and the "Sonata for Bass Trombone & Piano" (with David Taylor). Kenny also participated in the recording of Schnyder's Third Symphony with the Basel Radio Orchestra under the direction of Hans Drewanz.

Other groups and artists Kenny has performed with are: The Absolute Ensemble, The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Shirley Horn,Teddy Edwards and Henry Johnson. Kenny also played a solo piano tribute to Duke Ellington on Ellington's 100th birthday at the Tonhalle in Zurich. He has recently appeared with his own trio at the Village Vanguard in New York,the Jazz Showcase in Chicago and on the Queen Elizabeth 2 Jazz Cruise.

Kenny has recorded over twenty albums as a leader, amongst them, in 2001, "Autumn" for the Japanese label Pony Canyon. The CD features George Mraz on bass and Tony Jefferson on drums. Drew recorded a CD of two-piano jazz arrangements of music by Ravel with pianist Peter Waters. This CD, which was recorded in Switzerland, also features the Winterthur Chamber Orchestra. Kenny Drew Jr. taught at the Engadin International Summer Piano Academy in Switzerland, giving master classes and private lessons. He was one of the featured artists at the West Coast Jazz Party in California. He has touredSwitzerland with Daniel Schnyder, including a concert with members of the Zurich Opera Orchestra. Kenny played two concerts at the Umea Jazz Festival in Sweden, including a performance of Daniel Schnyder's Piano Concerto with the Norrlands Opera Orchestra under the direction of Krystian Jarvi. This concert was recorded for release as a CD.

YING HUANG
Soprano, Metropolitan Opera
April 21, 2010
Exciting Young Virtuosos - Songs from West and East
Chinese soprano Ying Huang has generated an extraordinary level of critical acclaim and popularity in a career that has already spanned many arenas, including opera and concert stages, television, recordings and motion pictures.  She made a sensational debut as Cio-Cio San in Francois Mitterand’s acclaimed feature film Madama Butterfly.

Ms. Huang opened the 2008–2009 season in concert as a soloist with the Seoul Philharmonic.  She then returns to the Metropolitan Opera to sing performances of Giannette in L’Elisir d’Amore and Amor in Orfeo, followed by a concert with the Lyric Chamber Music Society of New York.  Highlights of upcoming seasons include the title role in the world premiere of Madame White Snake with Opera Boston and the title role in Semele with Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels.

In the 2007–2008 season Ms. Huang made her company debut with Canadian Opera Company as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro.  She repeated this role with Michigan Opera Theatre, before traveling to China for a Gala concert at the Shanghai Grand Theatre commemorating the 80th Anniversary of her alma mater, the Shanghai Conservatory.

Ms. Huang is consistently sought after on stages throughout the world for her portrayals of Mozart soprano roles.  Her performances as Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Despina in Così fan tutte and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte have been seen in opera houses throughout North America, Asia, Europe and South America.  The 2006–2007 season marked her Metropolitan Opera debut in the role of Pamina in the new English language version of The Magic Flute and she starred in the Metropolitan Opera’s first high-definition simulcast into movie theaters across North America and the United Kingdom.  She has also sung this role with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Opera Colorado, and Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.  She made her debut at the Santa Fe Opera as Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Puerto Rico’s Teatro de la Opera as Susanna in a televised production of Le nozze di Figaro.  Other engagements in the 2006–2007 season included the world premiere of Poet Li Bai with Central City Opera, and performances as soprano soloist in Bach’s Wedding Cantata with the Seattle Symphony and Carmina Burana with the Pacific Symphony.

One of Ms. Huang’s most notable achievements is her creation of the role of Du Liniang in Tan Dun’s Peony Pavilion.  The world premiere production, by renowned director Peter Sellars, opened at the Vienna Festival and went on to London, Paris and California.  Other roles have ranged from Gilda in Rigoletto with Michigan Opera Theater to Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier with Danish National Opera. Ms. Huang made her operatic debut as Nannetta in a new production of Verdi’s Falstaff at Cologne Opera.  Soon afterwards, she debuted with L’Opéra de Nice as Serpetta in La finta giardiniera, and with Michigan Opera Theatre as Sophie in Werther opposite Andrea Bocelli and Denyce Graves.  She returned to Detroit as Despina in Così fan tutte and as Norina in Don Pasquale, a role that she later sang at Arizona Opera.

In the concert hall, Ms. Huang has a distinguished career as an interpreter of the Mahler repertoire.  Her many appearances include Mahler’s Second Symphony with the Houston Symphony under Christoph Eschenbach; the Fourth Symphony with the Detroit Symphony under Neeme Järvi and with the New World Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas; and the Eighth Symphony with the Chicago Symphony, again under Maestro Eschenbach.  She has had a close relationship with the Cologne Philharmonic and James Conlon, performing Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate, Debussy’s La Damoiselle Élue, and concerts of Mozart and Rossini.  Other engagements have included Carmina burana with the San Francisco and Houston Symphonies; Mozart’s Coronation Mass with the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York and Tokyo; Handel’s Messiah with the Seattle Symphony; and Bachianas Brasilieras with the Houston Symphony and with cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic.  She has made many special appearances, including a concert in Athens to commence festivities for the Olympics, a gala concert with Andrea Bocelli for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and “Christmas in Vienna,” a television special with Placido Domingo.  She was recently featured as soprano soloist in The Lord of the Rings: Six Movements for Orchestra and Chorus with the Montreal Symphony under Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore. Ms. Huang maintains an active career in Asia, singing many solo and orchestral performances throughout China, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea. She has toured with the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra in Chen Qigang’s Iris devoilee, and was a soloist with the Shanghai Quartet. Ying Huang has recorded the soundtrack of Madama Butterfly, in addition to her first solo disc, Operatic Arias with James Conlon and the London Symphony Orchestra, and Bitter Love, a collection of songs composed and conducted by Tan Dun, all on the Sony/BMG label.  Her most recent Sony release is Richard Danielpour’s Sonnets to Orpheus and Roger Waters’ Ça Ira on CD and DVD with Bryn Terfel and Paul Groves.  She can also be heard as Silvia in Haydn’s L’isola disabitata on the Arabesque label and on Operatica: Shine on the E-Magine label. A graduate from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, she first came to the attention of the West when she captured second prize at the 19th Concours International de Chant de Paris.  In her native China, she is a special guest soloist at the Shanghai Opera House and is widely considered one of China’s pre-eminent cultural ambassadors and singers.

KEN NODA
Piano, Metropolitan Opera
April 21, 2010
Exciting Young Virtuosos - Songs from West and East
Ken Noda studied with renowned pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim and made his concert debut in London in 1979 with the maestro conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. He has since performed as soloist with the great orchestras of the world: the Philharmonic Orchestras of Berlin, Vienna, New York, , Israel, and Los Angeles; the Symphony Orchestras of London, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, Toronto and San Francisco; the Cleveland Orchestra, Orchetre de Paris, and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London - under such famed conductors as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Chailly, Rafael Kubelik, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa and Andre Previn.

He has also collaborated as chamber musician with James Levine (at two pianos), Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, and Nigel Kennedy; and as lieder accompanist to Hildegard Behrens, Maria Ewing and Jessye Norman.

In 1991, Ken Noda retired from a full-time performing career as concert pianist and became Musical Assistant to James Levine on the Artistic Administration of the Metropolitan Opera. However, he continues to perform as accompanist to today's great vocal artists. He is also actively involved with the Met's Young Artist Development Program.

TATIANA GONCHAROVA
Piano
Mendelssohn: What's New:
- May 12, 2010: Fanny and her Circle
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.”

THERESA TOVA
Voice
June 9, 2010
CHAMZZ Series - Classics for the 21st Century
In one phrase the essence of a career that spans over 25 years is aptly described but remains incomplete. An award winning actor, singer and writer, she is a "classy, jazzy and deliciously sensuous performer". Some have written about her "sultry voice" and "spontaneous wit", others about the natural way in which she has gone from the Broadway musical stage to Concert and Jazz venues around the world.

Tova's unique approach blends the jazz idiom with Yiddish song, and often alternates between English and Yiddish. Her second CD, Live at the Top O' the Senator, recorded before a live audience at the jazz club, includes a witty Yiddish rendition of Cole Porter's Night and Day (Tog un Nakht), as well as an English version of Vos Geven Iz Geven (What Was Is What Was). It concludes with an electrifying performance of Der Saksafon Shpiler by New York poet Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman.

Tova is completely at ease playing to multicultural crowds at intimate and prestigious Jazz clubs in Toronto, Montreal, Paris and Luxembourg. But then she is also at home delighting thousands at Town Hall or Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, in San Francisco as guest vocalist of conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, or headlining majour festivals such as Toronto's Ashkenaz or the Amsterdam's Jewish festival.

Tova at her most intimate best is a high octane, emotionally charged performer. From Brel to Sondheim, Berlin to Ellington, Yiddish folk and theatre songs to Yiddish Jazz and new Yiddish gems, Tova has found the perfect fusion.

DAVID ROZENBLATT
Drums, Percussion
June 9, 2010
CHAMZZ Series - Classics for the 21st Century
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
June 9, 2010
CHAMZZ Series - Classics for the 21st Century
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.