Baroque Collection
Fri, Dec 1 & Sun, Dec 3, 2023
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
Renowned harpsichordist and CMS Artist Kenneth Weiss offers a collection of works, all of them captivating discoveries from the eternal wellspring of Baroque repertoire.
Seven leading composers provide invention, virtuosity, and the irresistible spirit so beloved in the music of this era.
Program
Georg Philipp Telemann
(1681–1767)Parisian Quartet No. 2 in A minor from Nouveaux Quatuors en Six Suites for Flute, Violin, and Continuo
(1738)Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
(1714–1788)Trio Sonata in C minor for Two Violins and Continuo, H.579, “Sanguineus et Melancholicus”
(1749)Dieterich Buxtehude
(1637–1707)Trio Sonata in B-flat major for Violin and Continuo, Op. 1, No. 4
(1694)François Couperin
(1668–1733)Le Parnasse, ou L’Apotheose de Corelli, Grande Sonate en Trio for Two Violins and Continuo
(1724)Jean-Philippe Rameau
(1683–1764)Concert IV from Pièces de Clavecin en Concerts for Flute, Violin, and Continuo
(1726–27)Jean-Féry Rebel
(1666–1747)Les Élémens for Flute, Two Violins, and Continuo
(1737)Kenneth Weiss
Alexander Sitkovetsky
James Thompson
Dmitri Atapine
Sooyun Kim
Kenneth Weiss has an active career as a soloist, conductor, chamber musician, and teacher. He has performed extensively in Europe, North America, and Asia—Wigmore Hall, Tokyo's Bunkakaikan Hall, Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, La Roque d'Anthéron, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. He is a frequent guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, and NYC's Music Before 1800. In May 2021 he made a live concert recording of Bach’s Art of Fugue at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon on the historic Taskin harpsichord belonging to the Portuguese National Music Museum. It will be released on the Paraty label in October. His recordings for Satirino records have been widely acclaimed. They include Bach's Goldberg Variations, partitas, and Well-Tempered Clavier, a recording of Rameau operas and ballets transcriptions, two Scarlatti albums, and two CDs devoted to Elizabethan keyboard music—A Cleare Day and Heaven & Earth. A native New Yorker, he attended the High School of Performing Arts and the Oberlin Conservatory where he studied with Lisa Goode Crawford, later studying with Gustav Leonhardt at the Amsterdam Conservatory. He is professor of harpsichord at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Geneva, Switzerland, and professor of chamber music at the Paris Conservatory.
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 James Thompson enjoys a multifaceted career as a chamber musician, soloist, educator, and lecturer. He is currently on faculty at Music@Menlo and has been a member of CMS’s Bowers Program since 2021. He has performed for prestigious chamber music organizations across the country, including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Music@Menlo, the Four Arts Society, Parlance Chamber Concerts, the Perlman Music Program, and the Taos School of Music. Solo engagements include appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and the Blue Water Chamber Orchestra. He was invited to perform in Budapest as part of the First Bartók World Competition and in Sendai for the Seventh Sendai International Violin Competition. Recently, his abilities as a presenter have earned him invitations to speak at a variety of established concert series. His multimedia live interview with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, hosted by CMS, was a highlight of his 2021–22 season. Alongside his career on stage, he is forming a strong reputation as a private instructor and chamber music coach, and has recently served as a teaching fellow at both the Encore Chamber Music Festival and the Western Reserve Chamber Music Festival. Thompson holds bachelor’s, master’s, and artist diploma degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music; his primary teachers include Jaime Laredo, William Preucil, and Paul Kantor.
Dmitri Atapine has been described as a cellist with “brilliant technical chops” (Gramophone), whose playing is “highly impressive throughout” (The Strad). He has appeared on some of the world's foremost stages. An avid chamber musician, he frequently performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is an alum of The Bowers Program. He is a frequent guest at leading festivals, including Music@Menlo, La Musica Sarasota, Pacific, Aldeburgh, Aix-en-Provence, and Nevada. His performances have been broadcast nationally in the US, Europe, and Asia. His many awards include first prize at the Carlos Prieto Cello Competition, as well as top honors at the Premio Vittorio Gui and Plowman chamber competitions. He has collaborated with such distinguished musicians as Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Wu Han, Bruno Giuranna, David Finckel, David Shifrin, and the Emerson Quartet. His many recordings include a critically acclaimed world premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s complete works for cello and piano. He holds a doctorate from the Yale School of Music, where he was a student of Aldo Parisot. Atapine is Professor of Cello at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is Artistic Co-Director of the Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City, Apex Concerts (Reno, Nevada), and the Ribadesella Chamber Music Festival (Spain), as well as the Co-Director of the Young Performers Program at Music@Menlo Chamber Music Institute (California).
Praised as “a rare virtuoso of the flute” by Libération, Sooyun Kim has established herself as one of the rare flute soloists on the classical music scene. Since her concerto debut with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, she has enjoyed a flourishing career performing with orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and Boston Pops. She has been presented in recital in Budapest’s Liszt Hall, Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center, Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and Kobe’s Bunka Hall. Her European debut recital at the Louvre was streamed live on medici.tv. A winner of the Georg Solti Foundation Career Grant, she has received numerous international awards and prizes including the third prize at the ARD International Flute Competition. Her summer appearances include the Music@Menlo, Spoleto USA, Yellow Barn, Rockport, Olympic, Charlottesville, Ravinia, and Tanglewood festivals. Her special interest in interdisciplinary art has led her to collaborate with many artists, dancers, and museums around the world such as Sol Lewitt, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Glassmuseet Ebeltoft in Denmark. She choreographed and performed in dance works for Chamber Music Northwest and the Tivoli Dance Troupe in Denmark. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, she studied at the New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Paula Robison. She is currently on the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College and teaches summer courses at Orford Musique. Kim plays a rare 18-karat gold flute specially made for her by Verne Q. Powell Flutes.