Prelude to Modernism
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:56 |
| 2. | Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune for Ensemble (arr. Schoenberg) | 00:15:41 |
| 3. | Ysaÿe: Rêve d’enfant> for Violin and Piano, Op. 14 | 00:05:31 |
| 4. | Grieg: Quartet in G minor for Strings, Op. 27 | 00:36:21 |
PROGRAM
|
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) |
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune for Ensemble (arr. Schoenberg) (1894) Tara Helen O'Connor, Flute; Stephen Taylor, Oboe; Jose Franch-Ballester, Clarinet; Daniel Ching, Violin I; William Fedkenheuer, Violin II; John Largess, Viola; Joshua Gindele, Cello; Scott Pingel, Double Bass; Michael Stephen Brown, Harmonium; Lucille Chung, Piano; Ian Rosenbaum, Percussion |
|
Eugène Ysaÿe (1859–1931) |
Rêve d’enfant for Violin and Piano, Op. 14 (1901) Arnaud Sussmann, Violin; Anne-Marie McDermott, Piano |
|
Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) |
Quartet in G minor for Strings, Op. 27 (1878) Erik Schumann, Violin I; Ken Schumann, Violin II; Liisa Randalu, Viola; Mark Schumann, Cello |
| Title | Date |
|---|---|
| Streaming live | {{ViewModel.StreamingOn.date}}, {{ViewModel.StreamingOn.time}} |
| Off-sale on | {{ViewModel.OffSaleDate.date}}, {{ViewModel.OffSaleDate.time}} |
| Available on-demand until | {{ViewModel.AvailableUntil.date}}, {{ViewModel.AvailableUntil.time}} |
{{ViewModel.BuySubscription.prompt}}
Anne-Marie McDermott
Tara Helen O'Connor
Stephen Taylor
Jose Franch-Ballester
Michael Stephen Brown
Ian Rosenbaum
Arnaud Sussmann
The Schumann Quartett
One of the most dazzling American pianists of her generation, Anne-Marie McDermott has performed concertos, recitals, and chamber music throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She is an insightful interpreter of Baroque and Classical masterpieces, 20th-century modernism, and music by influential contemporary composers. McDermott has soloed with the New York Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the National Symphony Orchestra. She is currently recording the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Mexico City’s Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería under Carlos Miguel Prieto. Her recordings also include the complete piano sonatas of Prokofiev, solo works by Chopin, Bach’s English Suites and Partitas, and Gershwin’s works for piano and orchestra. She received a 2024 Honorary Doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music. McDermott is the Artistic Director of the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival, and of the McKnight Center’s Chamber Music Festival. Her tenure as Artistic Director of Bravo! Vail Music Festival concluded in summer 2026.
Tara Helen O’Connor, recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a two-time Grammy nominee, was the first wind player to participate in CMS’s Bowers Program. A regular performer at major music festivals around the country, she is also the Co-Artistic Director of the Music from Angel Fire Festival in New Mexico, the Artistic Director of the Essex Winter Series, a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape, and a founding member of the Naumburg Award–winning New Millennium Ensemble. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, CMS Studio Recordings, and Bridge Records, and can be heard on numerous film and television soundtracks. She has premiered hundreds of new works and has collaborated with the Orion, St. Lawrence, and Emerson String Quartets. A Wm. S. Haynes flute artist, O’Connor is on faculty at Yale School of Music. Additionally, she teaches at Bard College and the Manhattan School of Music.
Stephen Taylor is solo oboist with the New York Woodwind Quintet, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the American Composers Orchestra, and the New England Bach Festival Orchestra, and is co-principal oboist of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Among his more than 300 recordings are Bach arias with Kathleen Battle and Itzhak Perlman, and Elliott Carter’s Oboe Quartet, for which he received a Grammy nomination. He has performed and recorded many of Carter’s works, giving several world and US premieres. He was awarded a performer’s grant from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University and has collaborated with the Vermeer, Shanghai, Orion, American, and Artis-Vienna String Quartets, among others. Taylor is on the faculties of the Manhattan, Juilliard and Yale schools of music. He plays rare James Caldwell model Lorée oboes, and spends as much time as possible with his old wooden boats in Maine.
Clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester is a captivating performer of “poetic eloquence” (The New York Sun) and “technical wizardry” (The New York Times). He plays regularly at the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Saratoga Chamber Music Festival, the Skaneateles Festival, Camerata Pacifica, and Music from Angel Fire. He has also appeared at the Usedomer Musikfestival in Germany, the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, the Cartagena Festival Internacional de Música in Colombia, and the Young Concert Artists Festival in Tokyo, Japan. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Santa Barbara Orchestra, and numerous Spanish orchestras. Winner of the 2004 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, he was presented in debut recitals in New York and in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center. In 2008, he won a coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant. He was awarded the Cannes Midem Prize, which aims to introduce artists to the classical recording industry. With the Chamber Music Society, he has recorded Bartók’s Contrasts on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Born in Moncofa, Spain into a family of clarinetists and Zarzuela singers, Mr. Franch-Ballester graduated from the Joaquin Rodrigo Music Conservatory. He earned a bachelor’s degree from The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Donald Montanaro and Pamela Frank. He is a former member of CMS’s Bowers Program.
Michael Stephen Brown is a composer and pianist hailed by the New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.” He has appeared as soloist with the Seattle Symphony, American Symphony Orchestra, The Orchestra Now, Phoenix Symphony, and Poland’s NFM Leopoldinum, and performs at major festivals worldwide. The recipient of the 2026 Andrew Wolf Award, Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, he was recently in residence at MacDowell and Yaddo. Recent highlights include a recital at Alice Tully Hall with CMS and collaborations with longtime artistic partner Nicholas Canellakis, as well as Pinchas Zukerman, Kristin Lee, and Arnaud Sussmann. His first album devoted entirely to his own music, Twelve Blocks, was released in 2026 to critical acclaim. Current projects include The Carnival of Endangered Wonders and the score for Angeline Gragasin’s film Look But Don’t Touch. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, Brown lives in New York City with his two 19th-century Steinways, Octavia and Daria.
Praised for his “spectacular performances” (Wall Street Journal), and his “unfailing virtuosity” (Chicago Tribune), percussionist Ian Rosenbaum has developed a musical breadth far beyond his years. As a passionate advocate for contemporary music, Mr. Rosenbaum has premiered dozens of new chamber and solo works, and his recordings have been nominated for eight Grammy awards. In 2012, Mr. Rosenbaum joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two) as only the second percussionist selected in the program’s history. Mr. Rosenbaum is a founding member of Sandbox Percussion, and is on faculty at the Peabody Institute, the Mannes School of Music, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Winner of a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Arnaud Sussmann has recently appeared as soloist with the Vancouver Symphony and the New World Symphony. As a chamber musician, he has performed at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Dresden Music Festival, and the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. He has also given concerts at the Moritzburg, Caramoor, Music@Menlo, La Jolla SummerFest, Mainly Mozart, Seattle Chamber Music, Chamber Music Northwest, and Moab Music festivals. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, Sussmann is Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach and Co-Director of Music@Menlo’s International Program, and teaches at Stony Brook University. In September 2022, he was named Founding Artistic Director of the Boscobel Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Sussmann plays a 1731 Stradivarius violin on loan from a private owner.
The Schumann Quartet has reached a stage where anything is possible, because it has let go of certainties. That includes the audience, which from one concert to the next have to be prepared for all eventualities: “A work really develops only in a live performance,” the quartet says. “That is 'the real thing', because we ourselves never know what will happen. On the stage, all imitation disappears, and you automatically become honest with yourself. Then you can create a bond with the audience – communicate with it in music.” In the near future, their live performances will be enriched by collaborations with artists such as Andreas Ottensamer, Kit Armstrong, Anna-Lucia Richter, Sabine Meyer, Katharina Konradi, Sharon Kam, and Alexey Stadler.
Highlights of the 2026/2027 season include appearances in renowned venues such as Wigmore Hall London, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Musikverein Vienna, Bozar Brussels, and the Laeiszhalle Hamburg.
The quartet will also perform at the Tsinandali Festival with Lisa Batiashvili, the Cartagena Music Festival in Colombia, and the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw. A US tour will follow in November 2026, with performances at the Lincoln Center in New York City and Stude Concert Hall in Houston, Texas, amongst others.
The quartet’s third album, Intermezzo (2018), featuring works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Robert Schumann, and Aribert Reimann – recorded in collaboration with soprano Anna-Lucia Richter – was praised nationally and internationally, and received the 2019 Opus Klassik Award in the category of Chamber Music Recording. In 2020, the ensemble expanded its discography with Fragment, a powerful exploration of the work of one of the great masters of the string quartet: Franz Schubert. To mark the 100th anniversary of radio broadcasting, the quartet undertook a unique project: in autumn 2023, they released an album entirely dedicated to the music of the year 1923. Created in collaboration with Bayerischer Rundfunk, the much-praised recording features works by Alban Berg, Leoš Janáček, Paul Hindemith, and Aaron Copland.
The three brothers, Mark, Erik and Ken Schumann, have been playing together since early childhood. They are joined by violist Matthew McDowell, who completes the quartet. The four musicians enjoy the way they communicate without words, and although the individual personalities clearly manifest themselves, a common space arises in every musical work in a process of spiritual metamorphosis. The quartet's openness and curiosity may be partly the result of the formative influences by teachers such as Eberhard Feltz, the Alban Berg Quartet, and partners such as Menahem Pressler.
Awards, album releases – it is always tempting to speculate on what factors have led to many people viewing the Schumann Quartet as one of the best in the world. But the four musicians themselves regard these stages more as encounters, as a confirmation of the path they have taken. “We really want to take things to extremes, to see how far the excitement and our spontaneity as a group take us,” says Ken Schumann. They charmingly sidestep any attempt to categorize their sound, approach or style, and let the concerts speak for themselves. And the critics approve: “Fire and energy. The Schumann Quartet plays staggeringly well [...] without doubt one of the very best formations among today’s abundance of quartets, […] with sparkling virtuosity and a willingness to astonish” (Harald Eggebrecht in Süddeutsche Zeitung).*
Erik Schumann plays a violin by Domenico Montagnana, Venice, c. 1733, generously on loan from a private collection.
Ken Schumann plays an Italian violin from the mid-18th century, kindly made available to him privately.
Matthew McDowell plays on a viola made for him by Frédéric Chaudière in 2025.
Mark Schumann plays a cello by Giovanni & Francesco Grancino from 1680, generously loaned to him by MERITO String Instruments Trust Vienna.