Great Favorites
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:44 |
| 2. | Mozart: Duo in G major for Violin and Viola, K. 423 | 00:18:55 |
| 3. | Tchaikovsky: Sextet for Two Violins, Two Violas, and Two Cellos, Op. 70, "Souvenir de Florence" | 00:38:49 |
PROGRAM
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) |
Duo in G major for Violin and Viola, K. 423 (1783) Ida Kavafian, Violin; Yura Lee, Viola |
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) |
Sextet for Two Violins, Two Violas, and Two Cellos, Op. 70, "Souvenir de Florence" (1890) Philip Setzer, violin; Eugene Drucker, violin; Lawrence Dutton, viola; Paul Neubauer, viola; Paul Watkins, cello; Colin Carr, cello |
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Lawrence Dutton
Ida Kavafian
Paul Neubauer
Yura Lee
Paul Watkins
Lawrence Dutton was the violist of the nine-time Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet, which in 2023 performed its final concert after a storied 47-year career. He has also performed as guest artist with the Beaux Arts and Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trios and the Juilliard and Guarneri String Quartets. With the late Isaac Stern he collaborated on the International Chamber Music Encounters at Carnegie Hall and in Jerusalem. He began violin studies with Margaret Pardee and viola studies with Francis Tursi at the Eastman School. He holds degrees from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Lillian Fuchs. Currently, Dutton is Distinguished Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at Stony Brook University; Distinguished Artist at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia; and Artistic Director of the Hoch Chamber Music Series in Bronxville, New York. He exclusively uses Thomastik Spirocore strings, and his viola is a Samuel Zygmuntowicz (Brooklyn, 2025).
Violinist/violist Ida Kavafian recently retired after 35 successful years as artistic director of Music from Angel Fire, the renowned festival in New Mexico. She leaves a legacy of over 40 world premieres commissioned by the festival. Her close association with The Curtis Institute continues with her large and superb class, the endowment of her faculty chair by former Curtis Board President Baroness Nina von Maltzahn, and the awarding of the Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, which is presented in recognition of outstanding service in stimulating and guiding Curtis students. In addition to her solo engagements, she continues to perform with her piano quartet, OPUS ONE and Trio Valtorna. Co-founder of those ensembles as well as Tashi and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival (which she ran for ten years), she has toured and recorded with the Guarneri, Orion, Shanghai, Harlem, and American string quartets (as violist); as a member of the Beaux Arts Trio for six years; and with such artists as Chick Corea, Mark O'Connor, and Wynton Marsalis. A graduate of The Juilliard School, where she studied with Oscar Shumsky, she was presented in her debut by Young Concert Artists with her long time chamber music partner, pianist Peter Serkin. Kavafian and her husband, violist Steven Tenenbom, have also found success outside of music in the breeding, training, and showing of champion Vizsla dogs, including the 2003 Number One Vizsla All Systems in the US, the 2007 National Champion, and a recent Gold Grand Champion as well as a master hunter. She has performed with the Chamber Music Society since 1973.
Last summer, violist Paul Neubauer premiered a new viola concerto by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich with conductor JoAnn Falletta at the Brevard Music Center. This season, he will record and perform the work with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2025, he released two albums 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. 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/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.
Paul Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as soloist, chamber musician, and conductor. The cellist of the Emerson String Quartet from 2013 until its disbanding in 2023, he was also Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival from 2014 to 2026, and in 2019 was appointed Professor of Cello at the Yale School of Music. He has performed as soloist with prestigious orchestras worldwide. A dedicated chamber musician, he was a member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 until 2013 and appears regularly at CMS. Watkins has held the positions of Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra. His extensive discography as a cellist includes more than 70 recordings, and his first recording as a conductor, of the Britten and Berg violin concertos with Daniel Hope, received a Grammy nomination. His recent recording of the Beethoven Cello Sonatas with Alessio Bax was Gramophone’s June 2026 Recording of the Month.