21. Game Changers
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:53 |
| 2. | Brahms: Scherzo, WoO 2, from "F-A-E" Sonata for Violin and Piano | 00:08:18 |
| 3. | Debussy: Quartet in G minor for Strings, Op. 10 | 00:25:52 |
| 4. | Dean: Twelve Angry Men for Twelve Cellos | 00:23:26 |
| 5. | Closing | 00:00:30 |
Program
Brahms Scherzo, WoO 2, from "F-A-E" Sonata for Violin and Piano
Ani Kavafian, violin; Alessio Bax, piano
Debussy Quartet in G minor for Strings, Op. 10
Escher String Quartet (Adam Barnett-Hart, Aaron Boyd, violin; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello)
Dean Twelve Angry Men for Twelve Cellos
Sumire Kudo, cello I; Carter Brey; cello II; Sarina Zhang, cello III; Jerry Grossman, cello IV; Kevin Mills, cello V; Timothy Eddy, cello VI; Dmitri Atapine, cello VII; Richard Aaron, cello VIII; Yi Qun Xu, cello IX; Rafael Figueroa, cello X; James Jeonghwan Kim, cello XI; David Finckel, cello XII
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Ani Kavafian
Alessio Bax
Escher String Quartet
Timothy Eddy
Dmitri Atapine
David Finckel
Violinist Ani Kavafian enjoys a prolific career as a soloist, chamber musician, and professor. She has performed with many of America’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony. In the 2019-20 season, she continued her longtime association as an artist of the Chamber Music Society with appearances in New York and on tour. Last summer she participated in several music festivals, including the Heifetz International Institute and the Sarasota Chamber Music, Bridgehampton, Meadowmount, Norfolk, and Angel Fire festivals. She and her sister, violinist and violist Ida Kavafian, have performed with the symphonies of Detroit, Colorado, Tucson, San Antonio, and Cincinnati, and have recorded the music of Mozart and Sarasate on the Nonesuch label. She is a Full Professor at Yale University and has appeared at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall numerous times with colleagues and students from Yale. She has received an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions award and has appeared at the White House on three occasions. Her recordings can be heard on the Nonesuch, RCA, Columbia, Arabesque, and Delos labels. Born in Istanbul of Armenian heritage, Kavafian studied violin in the US with Ara Zerounian and Mischa Mischakoff. She received her master’s degree from The Juilliard School under Ivan Galamian. She plays the 1736 Muir McKenzie Stradivarius violin.
Alessio Bax won first prize at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions, and has appeared with nearly 200 orchestras, including the New York, London, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras; the Boston, Baltimore, Dallas, Cincinnati, Seattle, Sydney, BBC Scottish, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras; the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras; and the Tokyo and NHK Symphonies in Japan. He is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. At age 14, Bax graduated with top honors from the conservatory of Bari, Italy. He is a former member of CMS’s Bowers Program and is on the faculty at New England Conservatory. For ten years, Bax has been Artistic Director of the Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, and is the Artistic Director of the London Festival of Chamber Music at Smith Square Hall in London. He also serves as Co-Artistic Director of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation for emerging pianists.
The Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its profound musical insight and rare tonal beauty. A former BBC New Generation Artist and recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the quartet has performed at the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall and is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall. In its home town of New York, the ensemble appears regularly at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
The quartet achieved critical success in their performances of the entire cycle of string quartets by Béla Bartók in single-concert format, both at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Recordings of the complete Mendelssohn quartets and beloved Romantic quartets of Dvorák, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky were released on the BIS label in 2015–18 and were received with the highest critical acclaim.
Beyond the concert hall, the quartet is proud to announce the creation of a new non-profit, ESQYRE (Escher String Quartet Youth Residency Education). ESQYRE’s mission as a non-profit classical music organization is to provide a comprehensive educational program through music performance and instruction for people of all ages. In addition to their non-profit work, the quartet has also held faculty positions at Southern Methodist University and the University of Akron.
Within months of its inception in 2005, the ensemble came to the attention of key musical figures worldwide. Championed by the Emerson String Quartet, the Escher String Quartet was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be Quartet in Residence at each artist’s summer festival: the Young Artists Program at Canada’s National Arts Centre, and the Perlman Chamber Music Program on Shelter Island, New York.
The Escher String Quartet takes its name from the Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher, inspired by Escher’s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.
Cellist Timothy Eddy has earned distinction as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, chamber musician, recording artist, and teacher of cello and chamber music. He has performed with numerous symphonies, including Dallas, Colorado, Jacksonville, North Carolina, and Stamford. He has appeared at the Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Aspen, Santa Fe, Marlboro, Lockenhaus, Spoleto, and Sarasota music festivals. He has won prizes in numerous national and international competitions, including the 1975 Gaspar Cassado International Violoncello Competition in Italy. Eddy is currently Professor of Cello at the Juilliard School and New York’s Mannes College of Music, and he was a frequent faculty member at the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops at Carnegie Hall. A former member of the Galimir Quartet, the New York Philomusica, and the Bach Aria Group, he collaborates regularly in recital with pianist Gilbert Kalish. He has recorded a wide range of repertoire from Baroque to avant-garde for the Angel, Arabesque, Columbia, CRI, Delos, Musical Heritage, New World, Nonesuch, Vanguard, Vox, and Sony Classical labels. He performs on a 1728 Matteo Goffriller cello.
Cellist Dmitri Atapine has been praised for his “brilliant technical chops” (Gramophone) and performances that are “highly impressive throughout” (The Strad). He has appeared at leading venues, including Carnegie Hall’s Zankel and Weill halls, the National Auditorium of Spain, and Beijing’s Forbidden City Concert Hall. He performs frequently with CMS, where he is an alum of the Bowers Program. He has been featured at festivals including Music@Menlo, La Musica Sarasota, Aldeburgh, and Aix-en-Provence. His many recordings include a world-premiere release of Lowell Liebermann’s cello sonatas. He has received multiple performance and teaching awards, including first prize at the Carlos Prieto International Cello Competition. He holds a doctorate from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Aldo Parisot. Atapine is Professor of Cello at the University of Nevada, Reno. Together with pianist Hyeyeon Park, he serves as Artistic Co-Director of Music@Menlo, Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City, and Apex Concerts (Nevada).
Co-Artistic Director of CMS since 2004, cellist David Finckel’s dynamic musical career has included performances on the world’s stages in the roles of recitalist, chamber artist, and orchestral soloist. The first American student of Mstislav Rostropovich, he joined the Emerson String Quartet in 1979, and during 34 seasons garnered nine Grammy Awards and the Avery Fisher Prize. His quartet performances and recordings include quartet cycles of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorák, Brahms, Bartók, and Shostakovich, as well as collaborative masterpieces and commissioned works. In 1997, he and pianist Wu Han founded ArtistLed, the first internet-based, artist-controlled classical recording label. ArtistLed’s catalog of more than 20 releases includes the standard literature for cello and piano, plus works composed for the duo by George Tsontakis, Gabriela Lena Frank, Bruce Adolphe, Lera Auerbach, Edwin Finckel, Augusta Read Thomas, and Pierre Jalbert. In 2022, Music@Menlo, an innovative summer chamber music festival in Silicon Valley founded and directed by David and Wu Han, celebrated its 20th season. As a young student, David was winner of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s junior and senior divisions, resulting in two performances with the orchestra. Having taught extensively with the late Isaac Stern in America, Israel, and Japan, he is currently a professor at both the Juilliard School and Stony Brook University, and oversees both CMS’s Bowers Program and Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute. David’s 100 online Cello Talks, lessons on cello technique, are viewed by an international audience of musicians. Along with Wu Han, he was the recipient of Musical America’s 2012 Musicians of the Year Award.