Mozart's Winds
Fri, Feb 19, 2027, 7:30 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
A master of every genre he touched, Mozart elevated wind instruments in his symphonies, opera, and chamber music. Adding color and dimension, four indispensable members of the wind family combine with strings and piano in multiple innovative ensembles, with magical results.
Program
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756–1791)Quintet in E-flat major for Horn, Violin, Two Violas, and Cello, K. 407
(1782)Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756–1791)Quintet in E-flat major for Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, and Piano, K. 452
(1784)Quick Note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756–1791)Duo in G major for Violin and Viola, K. 423
(1783)Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756–1791)Serenade in C minor for Two Oboes, Two Clarinets, Two Bassoons, and Two Horns, K. 388
(c. 1782)
Sahun Sam Hong
Richard Lin
Paul Neubauer
Daniel Phillips
Sterling Elliott
James Austin Smith
Stephen Taylor
Sebastian Manz
David Shifrin
Marc Goldberg
Peter Kolkay
Radek Baborák
Richard Deane
Pianist Sahun Sam Hong is a prizewinner of numerous international competitions, including the Vendome Prize at Verbier, International Beethoven Competition Vienna, and Naumburg International Piano Competition. He has been invited to perform at major chamber music festivals, and is a prolific arranger of chamber music and orchestral works. He is the Co-Artistic Director of ensemble132, a chamber music collective that presents his transcriptions on annual tours all around the world. Hong’s primary mentors have included John Owings, Leon Fleisher, and Yong Hi Moon. A member of CMS’s Bowers Program, Hong is currently based in New York City and serves on the faculty of CUNY Queens College. Hong is a Steinway Artist.
Taiwanese-American violinist Richard Lin continues to gain international prominence since his Gold Medal prize at the 2018 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. He has collaborated with numerous orchestras and performed at celebrated concert venues throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. He is a laureate of the Sendai, Joseph Joachim, Singapore, and Michael Hill International Violin competitions and is on faculty at the National Taipei University of Education. In spring 2025, he released a new album with pianist Thomas Hoppe on the Azica label featuring his Carnegie Hall program with works by Vitali, Richard Strauss, John Corigliano, and Frolov. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in Taiwan, Lin graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School, where he studied with Aaron Rosand and Lewis Kaplan, respectively. He is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.
Violist Paul Neubauer, hailed by the New York Times as a “master musician,” released two new albums in 2025 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. He has premiered viola concertos by Bartók (revised version), Friedman, Glière, Jacob, Kernis, Lazarof, Müller-Siemens, Ott, Penderecki, Picker, Suter, and Tower. 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 Daniel Phillips co-founded the Orion String Quartet, which gave its last concert in April 2024 at CMS after an illustrious 37-year career. A graduate of Juilliard, he counts among his teachers 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 soloist with orchestras including the Pittsburgh, Houston, New Jersey, Phoenix, and San Antonio symphonies. He appears regularly at festivals including Music from Angel Fire, where he is co-artistic director. 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. Phillips is a professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and on the faculties of Bard College Conservatory and Juilliard. He lives with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, and their two dachshunds on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Acclaimed for his stellar stage presence and joyous musicianship, cellist Sterling Elliott is a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and winner of the 2019 National Sphinx Competition. He has appeared with major orchestras including the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras; the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics; and the Boston, Dallas, and Detroit Symphonies. In 2025–26 Sterling debuts with the Phoenix Symphony and the Buffalo Philharmonic, and at the BBC Proms. As featured soloist with the Sphinx Virtuosi, he will perform during a mutli-city tour at Carnegie Hall, Shriver Concert Series, and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. He also continues his residency in CMS’s Bowers Program, performing at Alice Tully Hall and on tour throughout the United States, as well as in trio performances with Anthony McGill and Gloria Chien. 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.
Performer, curator, and on-stage host James Austin Smith “proves that an oboist can have an adventurous solo career” (The New Yorker). Smith appears at leading national and international chamber music festivals, as Co-Principal Oboe of the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and as an artist of the International Contemporary Ensemble. As Artistic and Executive Director of Tertulia Chamber Music, Smith creates intimate evenings of music, food, and drink in New York and San Francisco, as well as an annual festival in a variety of global destinations. He serves as Artistic Advisor to Coast Live Music in the San Francisco Bay Area and mentors graduate-level musicians as a professor of oboe and chamber music at Stony Brook University and as a regular guest at London's Guildhall School. A Fulbright scholar and alum of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and CMS’s Bowers Program, he holds degrees in music and political science from Northwestern and Yale University.
Stephen Taylor is solo oboist with the New York Woodwind Quintet, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the American Composers Orchestra, and the New England Bach Festival Orchestra, and is co-principal oboist of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Among his more than 300 recordings are Bach arias with Kathleen Battle and Itzhak Perlman, and Elliott Carter’s Oboe Quartet, for which he received a Grammy nomination. He has performed and recorded many of Carter’s works, giving several world and US premieres. He was awarded a performer’s grant from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University and has collaborated with the Vermeer, Shanghai, Orion, American, and Artis-Vienna String Quartets, among others. Taylor is on the faculties of the Manhattan, Juilliard and Yale schools of music. He plays rare James Caldwell model Lorée oboes, and spends as much time as possible with his old wooden boats in Maine.
Clarinetist Sebastian Manz has performed as a soloist with major European orchestras such as the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, and the National Youth Orchestra of Germany. As a chamber musician, he has performed at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Beethovenhaus Bonn, Festspiele Mecklenburg Vorpommern, and MDR Musiksommer in Germany, collaborating with artists like Danae Dörken and the Danish String Quartet. At the ARD International Music Competition in 2008, he won first prize in the clarinet category, which had not been awarded for 40 years, and the coveted Audience Prize. He is Principal Clarinet of the SWR Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart. His recording A Bernstein Story was awarded with the Opus Klassik award in 2020, and he recently released a recording of clarinet concertos by Carl Nielsen and Magnus Lindberg, as well as a recital recording of works by Brahms and Schumann with pianist Herbert Schuch. He is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.
A Yale University faculty member since 1987, clarinetist David Shifrin is artistic director of Yale’s Chamber Music Society and the Yale in New York concert series. He has performed with CMS since 1982 and served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004, inaugurating CMS’s Bowers Program and the annual Brandenburg Concertos concerts. He was the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest from 1981 to 2020. Winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant (1987) and the Avery Fisher Prize (2000), he has held principal clarinet positions in numerous orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra and the American Symphony under Leopold Stokowski. As soloist, Shifrin has performed recitals at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Library of Congress. Notable concerto performances include the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras; the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, and Denver symphonies; as well as orchestras in China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. Shifrin performs on clarinets made by Morrie Backun in Vancouver, Canada, and Légère synthetic reeds.
A member of the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble and New York Woodwind Quintet, Marc Goldberg is principal bassoonist of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, American Ballet Theater, the Saito Kinen Orchestra, and the NYC Opera. Previously the associate principal bassoonist of the New York Philharmonic, he has also been a frequent guest of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, touring with these ensembles across four continents and joining them on numerous recordings. A long-time season artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he has been a guest of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the Brentano Quartet, Music@Menlo, Musicians from Marlboro, and Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Band. Goldberg is on the faculty of the Juilliard School Pre-College Division, Mannes College, New England Conservatory, the Hartt School, and the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Called “stunningly virtuosic” by the New York Times and “superb” by the Washington Post, Peter Kolkay is the only bassoonist to be awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. In addition to performing with CMS, he regularly appears as a chamber musician at the Sarasota, Music@Menlo, and Bridgehampton summer festivals. Kolkay has commissioned and premiered solo works by Joan Tower, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Elliott Carter, and Tania León, among many others, and his most recent recordings include an album of music for bassoon and strings with the Calidore String Quartet, and the Christopher Rouse concerto with the Albany Symphony. He is Professor of Bassoon at the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music and has given master classes throughout the US, Mexico, and South Korea. Kolkay is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, and holds degrees from Lawrence University, the Eastman School of Music, and Yale University. He is a native of Naperville, Illinois.
Horn player and conductor Radek Baborák was born in Pardubice in 1976 into a musical family. At the age of eight he started learning the horn with Prof. Karel Krenek. Under his leadership he became the overall winner of the Prague Radio Competition Concertino Praga, received third prize at the Prague Spring Competition, first prize in the Competition for Interpreters of Contemporary Music, and became laureate of the Grand Prix Unesco. He is a regular guest at prestigious festivals such as the Salzburger Osterfestspiele; Maggio Musicale, Fiorentino; Pacific Music Festival; White Nights Festival, St. Petersburg; Chamber Music Garden, Suntory Hall; International Music Festival, Utrecht; Julian Rachlin and Friends, Dubrovník; Le Pontes; Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival; Smetana’s Litomyšl; and Prague Spring. He founded and has been the leader of several ensembles: the Baborák Ensemble, in principal consisting of French horn and string quartet; the Czech Horn Chorus, which continues the 300 year-old tradition of horn playing in the Czech Lands; and the string ensemble Prague Chamber Soloists, whose founding in 1960 is linked with Václav Neumann. He is a member of the Afflatus Quintet, which received first prize at the ARD competition in Munich in 1997. Baborák plays in recitals with pianist Yoko Kukuchi (the winner of the Mozart Competition in Salzburg), organist Aleš Bárta, and harpist Jana Boušková. He is a member of Berlin-Munich-Vienna Oktett and collaborates with the Berlin Baroque Soloists. The 2022–23 season includes his first US tour outside of an orchestra.
Richard Deane is Associate Principal Horn of the New York Philharmonic since the 2014–15 season, and served as Acting Principal Horn from 2017 to 2022. Previously, he was the third horn of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra since 1987, participating in over 80 recordings, and 20 Grammy winners, for Telarc International. He has played Principal Horn with the Colorado Philharmonic and the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, and has served as guest Principal Horn of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Seoul Philharmonic. He has been a featured soloist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de México, the Lexington Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic. A native of Richmond, Kentucky, he received a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a master’s degree from the Juilliard School. His method book, The Efficient Approach: Accelerated Development for the Horn, was published by the Atlanta Brass Society Press.