Palm Beach, FL
All BeethovenSun, Jan 14, 2024, 3:00 pm
Walter S. Gubelmann Auditorium, The Society of the Four Arts
Two hours, including intermission
Program
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)Trio in B-flat major for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano, Op. 11
(1797)Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)Trio in D major for Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 9, No. 2
(1797-98)Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)Septet in E-flat major for Winds and Strings, Op. 20
(1800)
Wu Han
Richard Lin
Aaron Boyd
Jonathan Swensen
David Finckel
Tommaso Lonquich
Marc Goldberg
David Byrd-Marrow
Pianist Wu Han, recipient of Musical America’s Musician of the Year Award, enjoys a multi-faceted musical life that encompasses artistic direction, performing, and recording at the highest levels. Co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2004 as well as Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Silicon Valley’s innovative chamber music festival Music@Menlo since 2002, she also serves as Artistic Advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns series and Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts, and as Artistic Director for La Musica in Sarasota, Florida. Her recent concert activities have taken her from New York’s Lincoln Center stages to the most important concert halls in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In addition to countless performances of virtually the entire chamber repertoire, her concerto performances include appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, and the Aspen Festival Orchestra. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of ArtistLed, classical music’s first artist-directed, internet-based recording label, which has released her performances of the staples of the cello-piano duo repertoire with cellist David Finckel. Her more than 80 releases on ArtistLed, CMS Live, and Music@Menlo LIVE include masterworks of the chamber repertoire with numerous distinguished musicians. Wu Han’s educational activities include overseeing CMS’s Bowers Program and the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. A recipient of the prestigious Andrew Wolf Award, she was mentored by some of the greatest pianists of our time, including Lilian Kallir, Rudolf Serkin, and Menahem Pressler. Married to cellist David Finckel since 1985, Wu Han divides her time between concert touring and residences in New York City and Westchester County.
Taiwanese-American violinist Richard Lin continues to gain international prominence since his Gold Medal prize at the 2018 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Following his June 2022 Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium recital debut, New York Concert Review asserted, “Richard Lin. Remember the name. For he has everything required to take the world by storm.” 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 has just joined the faculty of the National Taipei University of Education. He opened the 2022–23 season as soloist with the Chippewa Valley Symphony and Hong Kong Sinfonietta. He appeared in recitals in Indianapolis, Washington, DC, and Baton Rouge. Passionate about chamber music, he continues to perform with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, at many music festivals, and on tours of Asia. In the spring of 2023, 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.
Violinist Aaron Boyd enjoys a versatile career as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral leader, recording artist, lecturer, and teacher. Since making his New York recital debut in 1998, he has concertized throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Formerly a member of the Escher String Quartet, he was a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Martin E. Segal prize from Lincoln Center, and was also awarded a Proclamation by the City of Pittsburgh for his musical accomplishments. A passionate advocate for new music, he has been involved in numerous commissions and premieres, and has worked directly with such legendary composers as Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Charles Wuorinen. He is also founder of the Zukofsky Quartet (quartet-in-residence at Bargemusic); the only ensemble to have played all of Milton Babbitt's notoriously difficult string quartets. As a recording artist, he can be heard on the BIS, Music@Menlo Live, Naxos, Tzadik, North/South and Innova labels. He has been broadcast in concert by NPR, WQXR, and WQED, and was profiled by Arizona Public Television. Born in Pittsburgh, Mr. Boyd began his studies with Samuel LaRocca and Eugene Phillips and graduated from The Juilliard School where he studied with Sally Thomas and coached extensively with Paul Zukofsky and cellist Harvey Shapiro. He now serves as Director of Chamber Music and Professor of Practice in Violin at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University and lives in Dallas with his wife Yuko, daughter Ayu, and son Yuki.
Rising star of the cello Jonathan Swensen is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and was featured as “One to Watch” in Gramophone Magazine upon the release of his debut recording Fantasia, an album of works for solo cello which received rave reviews on its release. Jonathan fell in love with the cello upon hearing the Elgar Concerto at the age of six, and ultimately made his concerto debut performing that very piece with Portugal’s Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música. He has performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Mobile Symphony, Greenville Symphony, and the Aarhus, Odense, and Iceland symphonies. He made his critically acclaimed recital debuts at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater and New York’s Merkin Concert Hall, with additional performances in Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Morgan Library and Museum, and the Krannert Center. He is a frequent performer of chamber music in the US and Europe, appearing at the Tivoli Festival, Copenhagen Summer Festival, Chamberfest Cleveland, Krzyżowa-Music, Vancouver Recital Society, and San Francisco Performance, among others. He has captured first prizes at the Windsor International String Competition, Khachaturian International Cello Competition, and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. In 2024, he begins his tenure as a member of CMS’s Bowers Program. 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 receives his Artist Diploma in May 2023.
Co-Artistic Director of CMS since 2004, cellist David Finckel’s dynamic musical career has included performances on the world’s stages in the roles of recitalist, chamber artist, and orchestral soloist. The first American student of Mstislav Rostropovich, he joined the Emerson String Quartet in 1979, and during 34 seasons garnered nine Grammy Awards and the Avery Fisher Prize. His quartet performances and recordings include quartet cycles of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorák, Brahms, Bartók, and Shostakovich, as well as collaborative masterpieces and commissioned works. In 1997, he and pianist Wu Han founded ArtistLed, the first internet-based, artist-controlled classical recording label. ArtistLed’s catalog of more than 20 releases includes the standard literature for cello and piano, plus works composed for the duo by George Tsontakis, Gabriela Lena Frank, Bruce Adolphe, Lera Auerbach, Edwin Finckel, Augusta Read Thomas, and Pierre Jalbert. In 2022, Music@Menlo, an innovative summer chamber music festival in Silicon Valley founded and directed by David and Wu Han, celebrated its 20th season. As a young student, David was winner of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s junior and senior divisions, resulting in two performances with the orchestra. Having taught extensively with the late Isaac Stern in America, Israel, and Japan, he is currently a professor at both the Juilliard School and Stony Brook University, and oversees both CMS’s Bowers Program and Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute. David’s 100 online Cello Talks, lessons on cello technique, are viewed by an international audience of musicians. Along with Wu Han, he was the recipient of Musical America’s 2012 Musicians of the Year Award.
Italian clarinetist Tommaso Lonquich enjoys a distinguished international career, having performed on the most prestigious stages of four continents. Praised by reviewers for his “passion, sumptuous tone, magical finesse, and dazzling virtuosity,” he is Solo Clarinetist with Ensemble MidtVest, the acclaimed chamber ensemble based in Denmark. As a chamber musician, he has partnered with Christian Tetzlaff, Pekka Kuusisto, Carolin Widmann, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Nicolas Dautricourt, David Shifrin, David Finckel, Nicolas Altstaedt, Wu Han, Gilbert Kalish, Anneleen Lenaerts, Yura Lee, Gilles Vonsattel, and the Danish and Vertavo string quartets. As a guest principal in several orchestras, he has collaborated with conductors including Zubin Mehta, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Fabio Luisi, and Leonard Slatkin. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Radio Television Orchestra of Slovenia, Orchestra Canova, and the Orchestra del Teatro Olimpico of Vicenza, among others. He is Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Schackenborg Musikfest, a summer festival set in a royal castle in Denmark. He has conceived several collaborative performances with dancers, actors, and visual artists and has been particularly active in improvisation, leading workshops at the Juilliard School. He has given master classes at the Manhattan School of Music, the Royal Danish Academy, and the Royal Welsh College of Music. Lonquich can be heard on more than twenty albums and is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. Alongside his artistic career, he is a practicing psychoanalyst and co-founder of the International Center for Lacanian Psychoanalysis in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
A member of the New York Woodwind Quintet and St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Marc Goldberg is principal bassoonist of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, American Ballet Theater, NYC Opera, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and a member of the American Symphony Orchestra. Previously the associate principal bassoonist of the New York Philharmonic, he has also been a frequent guest of the Metropolitan Opera, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, touring with these ensembles across four continents and joining them on numerous recordings. Solo appearances include performances throughout the US, in South America, and across the Pacific Rim with the Brandenburg Ensemble, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Saito Kinen Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Riverside Symphony, Jupiter Symphony, New York Chamber Soloists, and the New York Symphonic Ensemble. A longtime season artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he has been a guest of the Da Camera Society of Houston, Musicians from Marlboro, Music@Menlo, the Brentano Quartet, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Band, and the Boston Chamber Music Society. Summer festival appearances include Spoleto, Ravinia, Chautauqua, Tanglewood, Caramoor, Saito Kinen/Ozawa Music Festival, Bard Music Festival, and Marlboro. 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.
Hailed as “stunning and assured” by the New York Times, Atlanta native David Byrd-Marrow is the solo hornist of the International Contemporary Ensemble, as well as a member of The Knights. Working with a uniquely wide range of performers, he has premiered works by Matthias Pintscher, Arthur Kampela, George Lewis, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Du Yun, Marcos Balter, Anna Webber, Jörg Widmann, Miguel Zenón, and Chick Corea. He has performed at festivals including the Ojai Music Festival, the Spoleto Music Festival, the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Tanglewood Music Center, Summerfest! at the La Jolla Music Society, and as faculty at the Festival Napa Valley. Formerly a member of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, he has also made appearances with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Atlanta, Seattle, and Tokyo symphony orchestras, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, the Washington National Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has recorded on many labels including Tundra, More Is More, Nonesuch, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, and Naxos. Byrd-Marrow received his bachelor’s degree from the Juilliard School and his master’s from Stony Brook University. He is the Assistant Professor of Horn at the Lamont School of Music, of the University of Denver.