The Soldier's Tale
This event has passedSun, Apr 7, 2024, 5:00 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
Stories and tales come alive with dazzling effect when set to music.
From Telemann in his most outlandish mode, to Ravel at his most exotic, to the Respighi of operatic intensity, to Stravinsky in his incomparable theatrical vein, this concert is an extraordinary sonic anthology of adventures and tragedy.
Program
Georg Philipp Telemann
(1681–1767)Gulliver Suite from Der Getreue Musik-Meister (The Faithful Music Master) in D major for Two Violins
(1728)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Chansons madécasses (Madagascan Songs) for Voice, Flute, Cello, and Piano
(1925–26)Ottorino Respighi
(1879–1936)Il Tramonto (The Sunset) for Mezzo-Soprano and String Quartet
(1914)Igor Stravinsky
(1882–1971)L’Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) for Ensemble
(1918)
Ken Noda
Richard Lin
Alexander Sitkovetsky
Daniel Phillips
Mihai Marica
Tara Helen O'Connor
Sebastian Manz
Peter Kolkay
Ayano Kataoka
Ken Noda is Musical Advisor to the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. He has been a coach and teacher at the Met since 1991. He is also a guest coach at the Verbier Festival, Salzburg Mozartwoche, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. He has performed with CMS since 1989. Born in New York to Japanese parents in 1962, Mr. Noda worked as a solo pianist in the 1980s with Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Chailly, Rafael Kubelik, James Levine, and André Previn with such orchestras as the Berlin, Vienna, New York, Israel, and Los Angeles Philharmonics; the London, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphonies; the Cleveland Orchestra; and Orchestre de Paris. He has performed chamber music with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, and Nigel Kennedy, Cho-Liang Lin, and the Emerson Quartet. As a vocal accompanist, he has collaborated with Kathleen Battle, Hildegard Behrens, Maria Ewing, Aprile Millo, Kurt Moll, James Morris, Jessye Norman, Matthew Polenzani, Frederica von Stade, and Dawn Upshaw. He worked closely from the 1990s to 2010s with Marilyn Horne and Renata Scotto at their invitations as a faculty member in their training programs for young singers.
Richard Lin rose to international prominence after winning the Gold Medal at the 2018 Indianapolis International Violin Competition. He is also a top prizewinner of the Sendai, Joseph Joachim, Singapore, and Michael Hill International Violin Competitions.Since his Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium recital debut in 2022, he has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras worldwide, including the NDR Radiophilharmonie, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and the Taiwan Philharmonic, among others. He is also an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. His recordings include albums on Azica Records and Fontec, and he is on the faculty of the National Taipei University of Education. Lin performs on the 1714 Antonio Stradivarius “Joachim-Ma,” generously loaned by the YAGEO Foundation, Taiwan.
Violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky was born in Moscow into a family with a well-established musical tradition. Since his concerto debut at the age of eight, he has performed as soloist and chamber musician in many of the major venues around the world including Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Wigmore Hall in London. This season he will make his subscription debut with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, among other engagements. He is the Artistic Director of the NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra in Wrocław, Poland, and is a founding member of the Sitkovetsky Trio, which regularly performs throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas and is recognized as one of the most important ensembles performing today. 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 Daniel Phillips enjoys a versatile career as a chamber musician, soloist, and teacher. A graduate of Juilliard, he counts among his teachers his father, Eugene Phillips, Ivan Galamian, Sally Thomas, Nathan Milstein, Sándor Végh, and George Neikrug. He co-founded the Orion String Quartet, which played worldwide for 37 years. Since winning the 1976 Young Concert Artists Competition, he has performed as soloist with many major orchestras. Along with his wife, Tara Helen O’Connor, he is the Co-Artistic Director of Music from Angel Fire. 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 plays a violin made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz in 2017 and a 1702 Stradivarius, and a viola made by his grandfather, Benjamin F. Phillips.
Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica is a first-prize winner of the Dr. Luis Sigall International Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile, as well as the Irving M. Klein International Competition, and is a recipient of Charlotte White’s Salon de Virtuosi Fellowship Grant. He has performed with orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Chile, Xalapa Symphony in Mexico, the Hermitage State Orchestra of St. Petersburg in Russia, the Jardins Musicaux Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Santa Cruz Symphony in the US. He has also appeared in recital performances in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Holland, South Korea, Japan, Chile, the United States, and Canada. A dedicated chamber musician, he has performed at the Chamber Music Northwest, Norfolk, and Aspen music festivals where he has collaborated with such artists as Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, André Watts, and Edgar Meyer. He is a founding member of the award-winning Amphion String Quartet. A recent collaboration with dancer Lil Buck brought forth new pieces for solo cello written by Yevgeniy Sharlat and Patrick Castillo. He recently joined the acclaimed Apollo Trio. Marica studied with Gabriela Todor in his native Romania and with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music, where he was awarded master's and artist diploma degrees. He is an alum of CMS's Bowers Program.
Tara Helen O’Connor, recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a two-time Grammy nominee, was the first wind player to participate in CMS’s Bowers Program. A regular performer at major music festivals around the country, she is also the Co-Artistic Director of the Music from Angel Fire Festival in New Mexico, the Artistic Director of the Essex Winter Series, a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape, and a founding member of the Naumburg Award–winning New Millennium Ensemble. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, CMS Studio Recordings, and Bridge Records, and can be heard on numerous film and television soundtracks. She has premiered hundreds of new works and has collaborated with the Orion, St. Lawrence, and Emerson String Quartets. A Wm. S. Haynes flute artist, O’Connor is on faculty at Yale School of Music. Additionally, she teaches at Bard College and the Manhattan School of Music.
Clarinetist Sebastian Manz has performed as a soloist with major European orchestras, including the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he has appeared at venues such as the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Beethovenhaus Bonn, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. He has collaborated with artists like Danae Dörken, the Danish String Quartet, the Amaryllis Quartet, and the Schumann Quartett. At age 22, Manz won first prize in the clarinet category at the ARD International Music Competition, a prize that had not been awarded for 40 years, as well as the coveted Audience Prize. He is the principal clarinetist of the SWR Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart. His recordings include A Bernstein Story, which won the 2020 Opus Klassik award; clarinet concertos by Nielsen and Lindberg; and a recital of works by Brahms and Schumann with pianist Herbert Schuch. His double album, Quasi Cool, showcases his stylistic versatility as a clarinetist and arranger. He is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.
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.
The first percussionist to join CMS’s Bowers Program, Ayano Kataoka is known for her brilliant technique and the distinctive elegance and imagination she brings to her performances. With cellist Yo-Yo Ma, she gave the world premiere of Bruce Adolphe’s Self Comes to Mind, and she has presented a solo recital on the B to C (Bach to Contemporary) series at Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall. Additional highlights include Steven Mackey’s Micro-Concerto at Alice Tully Hall; Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat at 92nd Y with violinist Jaime Laredo and actors Alan Alda and Noah Wyle; and Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion at CMS with pianists Emanuel Ax and Yoko Nozaki. Ms. Kataoka is a full professor of percussion at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she received the 2023–24 Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series honor and the Chancellor’s Medal. She has also served as a visiting professor at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and on the faculty of Yellow Barn and the So Percussion Summer Institute.