Beethoven and Britten
Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:30 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
“Perpetual motion” in musical terms is just that: the relentless rapidity of the notes builds enormous excitement, and in the crystal-clear timbre of chamber ensembles, every note can be easily heard. This one-of-a-kind concert is united by musical finales that hit the ground running and just can’t seem to stop.
Program
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)Trio in G major for Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 9, No. 1
(1797-98)Benjamin Britten
(1913–1976)Sonata in C major for Cello and Piano, Op. 65
(1960-61)Joseph Haydn
(1732–1809)Trio in G major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Hob. XV:25
(1795)Camille Saint-Saëns
(1835–1921)Sonata No. 1 in D minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 75
(1885)Anne-Marie McDermott
Evren Ozel
Paul Huang
Daniel Phillips
Sterling Elliott
For over 25 years Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals, and chamber music in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She also serves as artistic director of the Bravo! Vail Music and Ocean Reef Music festivals, as well as Curator for Chamber Music for the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego. Recent performance highlights include appearances with the Colorado Symphony, Florida Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony, New World Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic, Tucson Symphony, Mexico National Symphony, and Taipei Symphony. She also returned to play Mozart with the Chamber Orchestra Vienna-Berlin at the Bravo! Vail Festival. She has performed with leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Seattle Symphony, National Symphony, and Houston Symphony. Her recordings include the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas, Bach’s English Suites and partitas (Editor’s Choice, Gramophone), Gershwin’s complete works for piano and orchestra with the Dallas Symphony (Editor’s Choice, Gramophone), and, most recently, the Haydn piano sonatas and concertos with the Odense Philharmonic in Denmark. McDermott studied at the Manhattan School of Music, has been awarded the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and won the Young Concert Artists auditions.
American pianist Evren Ozel has established himself as a musician of “refined restraint” (Third Coast Review), combining fluent virtuosity with probing, thoughtful interpretations. Having performed extensively in the United States and abroad, Ozel is the recipient of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2022 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and is currently represented by Concert Artists Guild as an Ambassador Prize Winner of their 2021 Victor Elmaleh Competition.
Since his debut with the Minnesota Orchestra at age 11, Ozel has been a featured soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, and The Orchestra Now at Bard College, with conductors Jahja Ling, Ruth Reinhardt, Courtney Lewis, and Leon Botstein. In March of 2025, his first album of Mozart Concertos with the ORF Radio Symphony of Vienna and conductor Howard Griffiths will be released on Alpha Classics.
Ozel’s 2024–25 season highlights include solo recitals for La Jolla Music Society, Capital Region Classical, and Cal Performances. Previously, he has performed recitals for Harvard Musical Association, Schubert Club, Chopin Society of Minnesota, and The Gilmore. Carrying a vast and varied recital repertoire, his 2023–24 season included a program ranging from Bach and Rameau to Ligeti, as well as a program of Beethoven’s last three Piano Sonatas. As a laureate of the 2024 Cleveland International Piano Competition, Ozel will appear in recitals internationally in the coming years at Salle Cortot in Paris, Brandenburgische Sommerkonzerte in Germany, and Vilnius Piano Festival in Lithuania.
An esteemed chamber musician, Ozel performs alongside artists like David Finckel and Wu Han, Stella Chen, Zlatomir Fung, Paul Huang, and Peter Wiley. He spent four summers at the Marlboro Festival, and is currently a 2024–27 Bowers Program Artist for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. His 2024–25 season includes a tour with Musicians from Marlboro, as well as CMS concerts at Alice Tully Hall.
Ozel resides in Boston, where he is currently part of New England Conservatory’s prestigious and highly-exclusive Institute for Concert Artists, under the tutelage of Wha Kyung Byun. Other important mentors include Jonathan Biss, Imogen Cooper, Richard Goode, Sir András Schiff, and Mitsuko Uchida.
Recipient of a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, violinist Paul Huang has made recent appearances with the Rotterdam Philharmonic with Lahav Shani, Dallas and NHK Symphonies with Fabio Luisi, Detroit Symphony with Leonard Slatkin, Baltimore Symphony and Seoul Philharmonic with Markus Stenz, San Francisco Symphony with Mei-Ann Chen, and Houston Symphony with Andrés Orozco-Estrada. In the 2024–25 season, he returns to the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, Hiroshima Symphony, and Residentie Orkest Den Haag with Jun Markl, and makes his London debut at the Barbican Hall with BBC Symphony and Marie Jacquot. He recently stepped in for Anne-Sophie Mutter at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, playing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 with Chamber Orchestra Vienna-Berlin, and made recital debuts at the Lucerne and Aspen Music Festivals, all to critical acclaim. In fall 2021, he also became the first classical violinist to perform his own arrangement of the US national anthem for the opening game of the NFL at the Bank of America Stadium to an audience of 75,000. Winner of the 2011 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Huang earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Juilliard School. He plays on the legendary 1742 ex-Wieniawski Guarneri del Gesù on loan through the Stradivari Society of Chicago. He is on the faculty of Taipei National University of the Arts and resides in New York.
Violinist Daniel Phillips enjoys a versatile career as a chamber musician, solo artist, and teacher. A graduate of Juilliard, his major teachers were his father Eugene Phillips, Ivan Galamian, Sally Thomas, Nathan Milstein, Sandor Végh, and George Neikrug. Since winning the 1976 Young Concert Artists Competition, he has performed as a soloist with many orchestras, including the Pittsburgh, Houston, New Jersey, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Yakima symphonies. He appears regularly at the Spoleto USA Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Chesapeake Music Festival, the International Musicians Seminar in England, Marlboro Music Festival, and Music from Angel Fire, where he is co-artistic director. He has served on the faculty of the Heifetz Institute and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar at Stanford. He was a member of the renowned Bach Aria Group and has toured and recorded in a string quartet for Sony with Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, and Yo-Yo Ma. A judge in the 2022 Leipzig Bach Competition and 2018 Seoul International Violin Competition, Phillips is a professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music, Bard College Conservatory, and the Juilliard School. He lives with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O'Connor, and their two dachshunds on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
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, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Dallas and Detroit symphonies. The 2022–23 season saw debuts with the Colorado Symphony and the Cincinnati Symphony, among others, with return appearances including the Buffalo Philharmonic. He was presented in recital by the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, Shriver Hall, and Tippet Rise. This summer, Sterling returns to the Hollywood Bowl to perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He also 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 performs on a 1741 Gennaro Gagliano cello on loan through the Robert F. Smith Fine String Patron Program, in partnership with the Sphinx Organization.