Shadow and Memory
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:53 |
| 2. | Penderecki: Quartet No. 3 for Strings, "Leaves of an unwritten diary" | 00:18:37 |
| 3. | Bloch: Quintet No. 1 for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello | 00:38:59 |
PROGRAM
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Krzysztof Penderecki (1933–2020) |
Quartet No. 3 for Strings, "Leaves of an unwritten diary" (2008) Shanghai Quartet (Weigang Li, Violin I; Yi-Wen Jiang, Violin II; Honggang Li, Viola; Nicholas Tzavaras, Cello) |
|
Ernest Bloch (1880–1959) |
Quintet No. 1 for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello (1923) Gloria Chien, Piano; Kristin Lee, Violin; James Thompson, Violin; Yura Lee, Viola; Dmitri Atapine, Cello |
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Gloria Chien
Kristin Lee
Yura Lee
James Thompson
Dmitri Atapine
Shanghai Quartet
Pianist Gloria Chien has a diverse musical life as a performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at age 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard. In 2009 she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, and the following year was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as Co-Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became Artistic Directors at Chamber Music Northwest in 2020, and were named the recipients of the 2021 Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music from CMS. Ms. Chien received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from New England Conservatory, where she was named the Advisor for the prestigious Institute for Concert Artists in 2024. She is an artist-in-residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee; a Steinway Artist; and an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.
A recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant as well as a top-prize winner of the International Naumburg Violin Competition and the Astral Artists’ National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. Lee has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and many others. She is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of Emerald City Music in Seattle. Lee released her critically acclaimed debut solo album, American Sketches, on First Hand Records in November 2024. In 2026, she will collaborate with Grammy-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion, featuring a new commission by Vivian Fung. Lee’s violin was crafted in Naples in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul and Linda Gridley. She is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.
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/violist James Thompson enjoys a multifaceted career as a chamber musician, concertmaster, educator, and lecturer. He is a recent graduate of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program. Thompson performs regularly for chamber music organizations across the country, and he serves as the director of Music@Menlo’s annual winter residency in California. Solo engagements include appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Asheville Symphony, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, and the Cleveland Pops orchestra. He currently serves as concertmaster of the Erie Philharmonic, the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, and the Caroga Arts Ensemble. As a guest artist, he has recently led classes for the Eastman School of Music and the Music Institute of Chicago, among others. Thompson holds bachelor’s, master’s, and artist diploma degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music; his primary teachers include Jaime Laredo, William Preucil, and Paul Kantor.
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 worldwide and 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 recordings appear on Naxos, Bridge, MSR, and other labels, and include a world-premiere release of cello sonatas by Lowell Liebermann. He has received awards including first prize at the Carlos Prieto Cello Competition and top honors at the Premio Vittorio Gui and Plowman competitions. He holds a doctorate from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Aldo Parisot. Atapine is cello professor at the University of Nevada, Reno; Artistic Co-Director of Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City; founder of Apex Concerts (Nevada); and Co-Director of Music@Menlo’s Young Performers Program.
Over the past 40 years, the Shanghai Quartet has become one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles. The quartet’s elegant style, impressive technique, and emotional breadth allows the group to move seamlessly between masterpieces of Western music, traditional Chinese folk music, and cutting-edge contemporary works. Formed at the Shanghai Conservatory in 1983, soon after the end of China’s harrowing Cultural Revolution, the group came to the United States to complete its studies; since then the members have been based in the US while maintaining a robust touring schedule at leading chamber music series throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.
Recent performance highlights include performances at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Freer Gallery (Washington, DC), the Festival Pablo Casals in France, the Brevard Music Center, the Beethoven Festival in Poland, and throughout China. The quartet also frequently performs at Wigmore Hall, the Budapest Spring Festival, Suntory Hall, and with the NCPA and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras. Recent highlights include the premiere of a new work by Marcos Balter for the Quartet and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo for the Phillips Collection, return performances for Maverick Concerts and the Taos School of Music, and engagements in Los Angeles, Syracuse, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake City.
Among innumerable collaborations with eminent artists, they have performed with the Tokyo, Juilliard, and Guarneri Quartets; cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Lynn Harrell; pianists Menahem Pressler, Peter Serkin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Yuja Wang; pipa virtuoso Wu Man; and the vocal ensemble Chanticleer. The Shanghai Quartet appears regularly at many of North America’s most prominent chamber music festivals, including annual performances for Maverick Concerts, the Brevard Music Center, and Music Mountain.
The Shanghai Quartet has a long history of championing new music, with a special interest in works that juxtapose the traditions of Eastern and Western music. The quartet has commissioned works from some of the most important composers of our time, including William Bolcom, Sebastian Currier, David Del Tredici, Tan Dun, Vivian Fung, Lowell Lieberman, Zhou Long, Marc Neikrug, Krzysztof Penderecki, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, and Du Yun. The quartet had a particularly close relationship with Krzysztof Penderecki; they premiered his third quartet, Leaves From an Unwritten Diary, at the composer’s 75th birthday concert and repeated it again at both his 80th and 85th birthday celebrations. Recent commissions include new works from Judith Weir, Tan Dun, and Wang Lei.
The Shanghai Quartet has an extensive discography of more than thirty recordings, ranging from Schumann and Dvořák piano quintets with Rudolf Buchbinder to Zhou Long’s Poems from Tang for string quartet and orchestra with the Singapore Symphony. The quartet has recorded the complete Beethoven string quartets and is currently recording the complete Bartók quartets.
Serving as Quartet-in-Residence at the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University since 2002, the Shanghai Quartet joined the Tianjin (China) Juilliard School in fall 2020 as resident faculty members. The Quartet also is the Ensemble-in-Residence with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and visiting guest professors of the Shanghai Conservatory and Central Conservatory in Beijing.