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
Acclaimed for her passionate, powerful performances, beautiful sound, and compelling command of her instrument, violinist Bella Hristova has appeared as a soloist with orchestras across the US, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and New Zealand. She was the featured soloist for an eight-orchestra concerto commission, written by her husband, composer David Serkin Ludwig, and recently recorded it with the Buffalo Philharmonic and JoAnn Falletta. Her discography also includes the complete Beethoven and Brahms sonatas with pianist Michael Houstoun. A champion of new music, her project Lineage features six new solo violin commissions by Dai Wei, Gloria Kravchenko, Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Eunike Tanzil, Joan Tower, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. She is a recipient of a 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant and first-prize winner of the Michael Hill and YCA competitions. Hristova studied with Ida Kavafian and Jaime Laredo, is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, and plays a 1655 Nicolò Amati violin.
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.