Summer Evenings III
This event has passedTue, Jul 15, 2025, 7:30 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
CMS’s summer tradition returns for its tenth anniversary. Get this year’s hottest ticket, featuring beloved chamber music works in the cool atmosphere of Alice Tully Hall. Stay after the performance and get to know the artists in the lobby with a complimentary glass of wine.
Program
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)Variations on "Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen" from Die Zauberflöte for Cello and Piano, WoO 46
(1801)Felix Mendelssohn
(1809–1847)Quartet in F minor for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 2
(1823)César Franck
(1822-1890)Quintet in F minor for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello
(1879)
Michael Stephen Brown
Stella Chen
Lun Li
Lawrence Dutton
Jonathan Swensen
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 her “silken grace” and “brilliant command” (The Strad), American violinist Stella Chen captured international attention as the winner of the 2019 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition, followed by the 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant. Her debut album, Stella x Schubert, was released in 2023 on Apple Music’s Platoon label to critical acclaim, garnering her the title of Young Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards. Stella has performed across North America, Europe, and Asia, appearing as soloist with orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Brussels Philharmonic, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. A recently appointed faculty member of the Juilliard School, she holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a doctorate from Juilliard, and is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. Chen performs on the 1720 “General Kyd” Stradivarius, generously loaned by Dr. Ryuji Ueno and Rare Violins In Consortium, Artists and Benefactors Collaborative.
Violinist Lun Li, a native of Shanghai based in New York, is the First Prize winner of the 2021 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions. He has appeared on major stages including Carnegie Hall, Helsinki Music Center, Konzerthaus Berlin, Kulturpalast Dresden, Wiener Konzerthaus, and Verizon Hall, and has recently made recital and concerto debuts at Merkin Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the Tokyo Symphony, the Osaka Symphony, and the Kyoto Symphony. An avid chamber musician, he has performed at the Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Verbier, Tippet Rise, Newport, and Bard music festivals. A member of CMS’s Bowers Program, Li holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School, where his teachers included Ida Kavafian, Catherine Cho, and Joseph Lin. He plays the 1735 “Samazeuilh” Stradivarius, on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.
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).
Cellist Jonathan Swensen is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and joint first prize of the Naumburg International Cello Competition, and was featured as “One to Watch” in Gramophone. He made his concerto debut performing the Elgar Concerto with Portugal’s Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, and has performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Mobile Symphony, Greenville Symphony, and the Aarhus, Odense, and Iceland symphonies. He has captured first prizes at the Windsor International String Competition, Khachaturian International Cello Competition, and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. A graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Swensen continued his studies with Torleif Thedéen at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo and Laurence Lesser at New England Conservatory, where he received his Artist Diploma. He is now an Artist in Residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel working with Gary Hoffman, and a member of CMS’s Bowers Program.