Fauré's Piano Quintet
Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 7:30 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
The astounding variety of chamber music is on full display here, each work sounding delightfully different from the next. The evening concludes with Fauré’s Piano Quintet No. 1, one of the composer’s most beloved works; describing the piece, none other than Aaron Copland praised Fauré’s “great powers of melody-making.”
Program
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756–1791)Duo in G major for Violin and Viola, K. 423
(1783)Anton Arensky
(1861–1906)Trio No. 2 in F minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 73
(c. 1905)Gian Carlo Menotti
(1911–2007)Suite for Two Cellos and Piano
(1973)Gabriel Fauré
(1845–1924)Quintet No. 1 in D minor for Two Violins, Viola, Cello, and Piano, Op. 89
(1890–94)
Anna Geniushene
Wu Qian
Lun Li
Alexander Sitkovetsky
Yura Lee
Nicholas Canellakis
Sterling Elliott
Anna Geniushene won the silver medal at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and is a current member of CMS’s Bowers Program. Born in Moscow in 1991, she made her recital debut just seven years later in the small hall of the Berlin Philharmonic. She has since developed a versatile career, with performances in major venues such as the Town Hall in Leeds, National Concert Hall in Dublin, Museum of Arts in Tel Aviv, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genova, Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, and Sala Greppi in Bergamo. A dedicated chamber musician, she has performed piano duo repertoire with her husband, Lukas Geniušas, and has collaborated with the Quartetto di Cremona. Recent and upcoming engagements include debuts with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Des Moines Symphony, Kristiansand Symfonieorkester, and Osaka Philharmonic. She also returns to the Taipei Symphony Orchestra and Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.
Winner of a 2016 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, as well as classical music’s bright young star award for 2007 by The Independent, pianist Wu Qian has maintained a busy international career for over a decade. She has appeared as soloist in many international venues including the Wigmore, Royal Festival, and Bridgewater halls in the UK, City Hall in Hong Kong, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. As a soloist she has appeared with the Konzerthaus Orchester in Berlin, the Brussels Philharmonic, the London Mozart Players, I Virtuosi Italiani, the European Union Chamber Orchestra, and the Munich Symphoniker. She won first prize in the Trio di Trieste Duo Competition and the Kommerzbank Piano Trio competition in Frankfurt, and has received numerous other awards. Appearances this season include performances in the UK, Germany, USA, Korea, Australia, Spain, and The Netherlands and collaborations with Alexander Sitkovetsky, Leticia Moreno, Cho-Liang Lin, Clive Greensmith, and Wu Han. Her debut recording of Schumann, Liszt, and Alexander Prior was met with universal critical acclaim. She is a founding member of the Sitkovetsky Piano Trio with which, in addition to performing in major concert halls and series around the world, she has released two recordings on the BIS label and also a disc of Brahms and Schubert on the Wigmore Live Label. Wu Qian an alum of The Bowers Program.
A native of Shanghai currently based in New York, violinist Lun Li won first prize in the 2021 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions. He has appeared on major stages around the world, including Helsinki Music Centre, Konzerthaus Berlin, Kulturpalast Dresden, Wiener Konzerthaus, and Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center. He recently made his solo recital debuts in Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center in New York and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, as well as his concerto debut at Lincoln Center. An avid chamber musician, he has participated in the Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Verbier, and Angel Fire music festivals. He is a member of CMS’s Bowers Program and holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School; his mentors include Ida Kavafian, Catherine Cho, and Joseph Lin. Li plays the Stradivarius “Samazeuilh” 1735 violin, on generous loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.
Violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky was born in Moscow into a family with a well-established musical tradition. His concerto debut came at the age of eight and in the same year he moved to the UK to study at the Menuhin School. Last season he debuted at Vienna’s Musikverein with the Tonkünstler Orchester, made return visits to Anima Musicae Budapest and Russian Philharmonic Novosibirsk and appeared with the Sitkovetsky Trio at festivals throughout Spain, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany. Recent concerto performances include appearances with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Moscow and St Petersburg Symphony Orchestras, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bolivia, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Philharmonia Orchestra. He directs and performs as a soloist regularly with chamber orchestras, including the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, London Mozart Players, New York Chamber Players, Camerata Zurich, and most recently with the Romanian Sinfonietta. He is a founding member of the Sitkovetsky Trio, which regularly performs throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The trio’s fourth disc for BIS Records, Ravel’s Piano Trio and Saint-Saëns’s Second Trio, was released to great critical acclaim in July 2021. Sitkovetsky is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program and plays the 1679 ‘Parera’ Antonio Stradivari violin, kindly loaned to him through the Beare’s International Violin Society by a generous sponsor.
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.
Nicholas Canellakis has become one of the most sought-after and innovative cellists of his generation, praised in the New Yorker as a “superb young soloist.” Recent highlights include solo debuts with the Virginia, Albany, Bangor, and Delaware symphony orchestras; concerto appearances with the Erie Philharmonic, the New Haven Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra; Europe and Asia tours with CMS; and recitals throughout the US with his longtime duo collaborator, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, he is a regular guest artist at many of the world’s leading music festivals. Canellakis is the Artistic Director of Chamber Music Sedona in Arizona and is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music (where he was recently appointed to the cello faculty) and New England Conservatory.
Cellist Sterling Elliott is a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and winner of the Senior Division 2019 National Sphinx Competition. He has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, and Detroit Symphony. Recent debuts include those with the Colorado and Cincinnati Symphonies. He also recently returned to the Hollywood Bowl to perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He serves on faculty at the Sphinx Performance Academy at Juilliard, and he performs chamber music at festivals including La Jolla SummerFest, Edinburgh Festival, Chamberfest Cleveland, and Festival Mozaic. Elliott is pursuing an Artist Diploma at the Juilliard School, studying with Joel Krosnick and Clara Kim. He is a member of CMS’s Bowers Program and performs on a 1741 Gennaro Gagliano cello on loan through the Robert F. Smith Fine String Patron Program, in partnership with the Sphinx Organization.