Virtuosity II: Duos
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:50 |
| 2. | Rolla: Duetto Concertante in E-flat major for Violin and Viola, Op. 15, No. 1 | 00:24:19 |
| 3. | Berio: Duets for Two Violins | 00:05:15 |
| 4. | Saint-Saëns: Sonata No. 1 in D minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 75 | 00:28:05 |
In the right setting, all musical instruments can be fantastic vehicles for showing off. This program celebrates virtuosity in all its forms. String duos always have an element of technical challenge: a pair of musicians has to present a multitude of musical lines. In the Duo Concertante for Violin and Viola that opens the broadcast, Romantic composer Alessandro Rolla pulls out all the stops—often by asking the musicians to play a lot of double stops! In his Duos for Two Violins, Luciano Berio asks the two fiddles to sing solemnly, but also to create all manner of eerie sounds that require a great deal of technical creativity. And in the uplifting Violin Sonata in D minor by Camille Saint-Saëns, which follows the same musical form as the composer’s beloved “Organ” Symphony, everything builds to the astonishingly fast and furious perpetual motion finale. You won’t believe how the violinist’s bow flies and the pianist’s fingers scamper in this performance by Elmar Oliveira and Juho Pohjonen.
PROGRAM
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Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942) |
Quartet No. 3 for Strings, Op. 19 (1924) Escher String Quartet (Adam Barnett-Hart, Aaron Boyd, violin; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello) |
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Alban Berg (1885–1935) |
Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5 (1913) Anthony McGill, clarinet; Gloria Chien, piano |
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Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) |
Kammersymphonie, arranged for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano, Op. 9 (arr. Webern) (1906, arr. 1922–23) Tara Helen O'Connor, flute; Tommaso Lonquich, clarinet; Kristin Lee, violin; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Gilbert Kalish, piano |
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Bella Hristova
Juho Pohjonen
Bulgarian-American violinist Bella Hristova has won international acclaim for her “expressive nuance and rich tone” (New York Times) and “impressive power and control” (Washington Post). A recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, she is known for a diverse repertoire, bold programming, and a warmly beguiling stage presence. Hristova has performed as a soloist with orchestras across the United States, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and New Zealand, and has given recitals at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. A devoted champion of living composers, she has premiered new concertos by Anthony Ritchie and her husband, David Serkin Ludwig. Her commissioning project, Lineage, features six new solo violin works and will be released as an album on Azica Records in 2027. She plays a 1655 Nicolò Amati violin once owned by Louis Krasner.
Pianist Juho Pohjonen is in demand internationally as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber performer. An ardent exponent of Scandinavian music, he has a growing discography offering music by Finnish compatriots such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kaija Saariaho, and Jean Sibelius. Recent engagements include the Taiwan, BBC, and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras; the Cleveland and Minnesota orchestras; and the symphonies of San Francisco, Atlanta, New Jersey, and Colorado. Pohjonen is an alum of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program and enjoys an ongoing relationship with the organization. Pohjonen earned a master’s degree from Meri Louhos and Hui-Ying Liu-Tawaststjerna at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He was selected by Sir András Schiff as the winner of the 2009 Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholarship. In 2019, Pohjonen launched MyPianist, an AI-based app that provides interactive piano accompaniment.