String Abundance
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:53 |
| 2. | Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 | 00:15:54 |
| 3. | Beethoven: Quartet in E-flat major for Strings, Op. 127 | 00:41:42 |
| 4. | Closing | 00:00:30 |
A duo of unconventional works fill this program featuring an abundance of string instruments. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major is composed for the unusual instrumentation of three violins, three violas, three cello, and basso continuo with each part playing an even role throughout serving as both solo and tutti. The exceptional Danish String Quartet then perform the first of Beethoven's late quartets, his Quartet in E-flat major for Strings, Op. 127 which shocked audiences in it's early performances and pushed the boundaries of the string quartet forward.
PROGRAM
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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) |
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 (1720) Ani Kavafian, Yura Lee, Alexander Sitkovetsky, violin; Matthew Lipman, Paul Neubauer, Daniel Phillips, viola; Mihai Marica, Timothy Eddy, Inbal Segev, cello; Anthony Manzo, double bass; Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord |
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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) |
Quartet in E-flat major for Strings, Op. 127 (1824–25) Danish String Quartet (Frederik Oland, Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violin; Asbjørn Norgaard, viola; Fredrik Schøyen Sjolin, cello) |
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Ani Kavafian
Yura Lee
Alexander Sitkovetsky
Matthew Lipman
Paul Neubauer
Daniel Phillips
Mihai Marica
Timothy Eddy
Inbal Segev
Anthony Manzo
Paolo Bordignon
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.
Violinist/violist Yura Lee is a multifaceted musician, as a soloist and as a chamber musician, and one of the very few that is equally virtuosic on both violin and viola. She has performed with major orchestras including those of New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. She has given recitals in London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Salzburg’s Mozarteum, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. At age 12, she became the youngest artist ever to receive the Debut Artist of the Year prize at the Performance Today awards given by National Public Radio. She is the recipient of a 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the first prize winner of the 2013 ARD Competition. She has received numerous other international prizes, including top prizes in the Mozart, Indianapolis, Hannover, Kreisler, Bashmet, and Paganini competitions. Her CD Mozart in Paris, with Reinhard Goebel and the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, received the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award. As a chamber musician, she regularly takes part in the festivals of Seattle, Marlboro, Salzburg, Verbier, and Caramoor. Her main teachers included Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang, Miriam Fried, Paul Biss, Thomas Riebl, Ana Chumachenko, and Nobuko Imai. An alum of CMS's Bowers Program, Lee is on the faculty at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog Nugget.
Violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky was born in Moscow into a family with a well-established musical tradition. Since his concerto debut at the age of eight, he has performed as soloist and chamber musician in many of the major venues around the world including Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Wigmore Hall in London. This season he will make his subscription debut with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, among other engagements. He is the Artistic Director of the NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra in Wrocław, Poland, and is a founding member of the Sitkovetsky Trio, which regularly performs throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas and is recognized as one of the most important ensembles performing today. Sitkovetsky is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program and plays the 1679 “Parera” Antonio Stradivari violin, kindly loaned to him through the Beare’s International Violin Society by a generous sponsor.
American violist Matthew Lipman has made recent appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, American Symphony Orchestra, Munich Symphony Orchestra, and Minnesota Orchestra. He has performed recitals at Carnegie Hall and the Zürich Tonhalle, and has recorded on the Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, Cedille, and Avie labels. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, he performs regularly on tour and at Alice Tully Hall with CMS. An Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and major prize winner at the Primrose and Tertis International Viola Competitions, Lipman is on faculty at Stony Brook University. He performs on a 2021 Samuel Zygmuntowicz viola.
Violist Paul Neubauer, hailed by the New York Times as a “master musician,” released two new albums in 2025 on First Hand Records, featuring the final works of two great composers: an all-Bartók album including the revised version of the Viola Concerto, and a Shostakovich recording that includes the monumental Viola Sonata. Appointed principal violist of the New York Philharmonic at the age of 21, Neubauer has appeared as soloist with the New York, Los Angeles, and Helsinki Philharmonics; the Chicago, National, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, and Bournemouth Symphonies; and the Santa Cecilia, English Chamber, and Beethovenhalle Orchestras. He has premiered viola concertos by Bartók (revised version), Friedman, Glière, Jacob, Kernis, Lazarof, Müller-Siemens, Ott, Penderecki, Picker, Suter, and Tower. A two-time Grammy nominee, Neubauer is artistic director of the Mostly Music series in New Jersey and serves on the faculties of the Juilliard School and Mannes College.
Violinist Daniel Phillips co-founded the Orion String Quartet, which gave its last concert in April 2024 at CMS after an illustrious 37-year career. A graduate of Juilliard, he counts among his teachers his father Eugene Phillips, Ivan Galamian, Sally Thomas, Nathan Milstein, Sandor Végh, and George Neikrug. Since winning the 1976 Young Concert Artists Competition, he has performed as soloist with orchestras including the Pittsburgh, Houston, New Jersey, Phoenix, and San Antonio symphonies. He appears regularly at festivals including Music from Angel Fire, where he is co-artistic director. He was a member of the renowned Bach Aria Group and has toured and recorded in a string quartet for Sony with Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, and Yo-Yo Ma. Phillips is a professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and on the faculties of Bard College Conservatory and Juilliard. He lives with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, and their two dachshunds on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica is a first-prize winner of the Dr. Luis Sigall International Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile, as well as the Irving M. Klein International Competition, and is a recipient of Charlotte White’s Salon de Virtuosi Fellowship Grant. He has performed with orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Chile, Xalapa Symphony in Mexico, the Hermitage State Orchestra of St. Petersburg in Russia, the Jardins Musicaux Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Santa Cruz Symphony in the US. He has also appeared in recital performances in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Holland, South Korea, Japan, Chile, the United States, and Canada. A dedicated chamber musician, he has performed at the Chamber Music Northwest, Norfolk, and Aspen music festivals where he has collaborated with such artists as Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, André Watts, and Edgar Meyer. He is a founding member of the award-winning Amphion String Quartet. A recent collaboration with dancer Lil Buck brought forth new pieces for solo cello written by Yevgeniy Sharlat and Patrick Castillo. He recently joined the acclaimed Apollo Trio. Marica studied with Gabriela Todor in his native Romania and with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music, where he was awarded master's and artist diploma degrees. He is an alum of CMS's Bowers Program.
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.
Inbal Segev has appeared with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and Pittsburgh Symphony, collaborating with such prominent conductors as Marin Alsop, Stéphane Denève, Lorin Maazel, Cristian Macelaru, and Zubin Mehta. She has commissioned new works from Timo Andres, John Luther Adams, Anna Clyne, Avner Dorman, and others. A native of Israel, at 16 Segev was invited by Isaac Stern to continue her cello studies in the US, where she earned degrees from Yale University and the Juilliard School, before co-founding the Amerigo Trio with former New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and violist Karen Dreyfus. Segev’s cello was made by Francesco Ruggieri in 1673.
Anthony Manzo’s vibrantly interactive music-making has made him a ubiquitous figure in the chamber music world. He appears regularly with CMS and at festivals including Spoleto USA, La Jolla SummerFest, Santa Fe Chamber Music, and the Bowdoin Festival. Currently a core member of ECCO (the East Coast Chamber Orchestra), he was previously the solo bassist of the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. He has also been guest principal with Camerata Salzburg, where collaborations included a summer residency at the Salzburg Festival and two tours as soloist alongside bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, performing Mozart’s “Per questa bella mano.” Mr. Manzo also appears regularly with the Handel & Haydn Society and the Philharmonia Baroque, and is on the double bass and chamber music faculty at the University of Maryland. His instrument was made in Paris around 1890—and has been fitted with a removable neck for all his traveling!
Paolo Bordignon is harpsichordist of the New York Philharmonic and organist and choirmaster of St. Bartholomew’s Church, Park Avenue. Recent appearances include concertos with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the American Symphony Orchestra, and performances with Camerata Pacifica, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Company, and The Knights. He has also recently performed with the MET Orchestra Musicians, Boston Symphony Chamber Players, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, All-Star Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, and ECCO. Born in Toronto of Italian heritage, Bordignon attended St. Michael’s Cathedral Choir School before attending the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He is an Associate of the Royal Conservatory of Music and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, and he earned master’s and doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School.