Saratoga Springs, NY
Spanish JourneySun, Aug 13, 2023, 3:00 pm
Spa Little Theatre, Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Two hours, including intermission
Spend a musical evening in Spain, a country of enchanting colors, rhythms, and textures. The intoxicating sounds of the guitar and the seductive tones of the Spanish language combine with piano and violin for a program of unbridled flair.
Program
Fernando Obradors
(1897–1945)Canciones Clásicas Españolas for Voice and Guitar
(1921)Isaac Albéniz
(1860–1909)Mallorca for Guitar, Op. 202
(1891)Enrique Arbós
(1863–1939)Tres Piezas Originales in Estilo Español for Violin, Cello, and Piano, Op. 1
(c. 1886)Manuel de Falla
(1876–1946)Siete canciones populares españolas for Voice and Piano
(1914)Pablo de Sarasate
(1884–1908)Romanza Andaluza from Spanish Dances for Violin and Piano, Op. 22
(1878)Joaquín Rodrigo
(1901–1999)Tres canciones españolas for Voice and Guitar
(1951)Joaquín Turina
(1882–1949)Trio No. 2 in B minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 76
(1933)
Soyeon Kate Lee
Kristin Lee
Dmitri Atapine
Jason Vieaux
First prize winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition and the Concert Artist Guild International Competition, Korean-American pianist Soyeon Kate Lee has been lauded by the New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style,” and by the Washington Post for her “stunning command of the keyboard.”
Highlights of recent seasons include appearances at the National Gallery, Library of Congress, Gina Bachauer Concerts, Purdue Convocations, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on tour, San Francisco Performances, Camerata Pacifica tour, Chamber Music Chicago, and the Cleveland Art Museum. She was a member of CMS’s Bowers program, and is a regular participant in numerous chamber music festivals including the Great Lakes, Santa Fe, and Music Mountain Chamber Music Festivals. Ms. Lee has collaborated with conductors Carlos Miguel Prieto, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jahja Ling, and Jorge Mester with the London, San Diego, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Naples symphony orchestras, among others.
She has commissioned works by prominent composers and has given world premieres of works written by Frederic Rzewski, Paola Prestini, Marc-André Hamelin, Alexander Goehr, Gabriela Lena Frank, Texu Kim, and Huang Ruo.
As a Naxos recording artist, her discography spans a wide range of repertoire from two volumes of Scarlatti Sonatas, Liszt Opera Transcriptions, two volumes of Scriabin, and Clementi Sonatas. Ms. Lee’s recording of Re!nvented under the E1/Entertainment One (formerly Koch Classics) label garnered her a feature review in the Gramophone Magazine and the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year Award.
A second prize and Mozart Prize winner of the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition and a laureate of the Santander International Piano Competition in Spain, she is a graduate of the Juilliard School where she was awarded the William Petschek Piano Debut Award at Lincoln Center and the Arthur Rubinstein Award upon graduation, and received her Doctor of Musical Arts from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her major mentors and teachers have been Richard Goode, Julian Martin, Robert McDonald, Jerome Lowenthal, and Ursula Oppens.
In 2022, Soyeon Kate Lee joined the piano faculty at the Juilliard School, and serves on the piano faculty at the Bowdoin International Music Festival during the summers. She resides in New York with her husband, pianist Ran Dank, and their two children, Noah and Ella.
A recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant as well as a top-prize winner of the International Naumburg Violin Competition and the Astral Artists’ National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. Lee has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and many others. She is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of Emerald City Music in Seattle. Lee released her critically acclaimed debut solo album, American Sketches, on First Hand Records in November 2024. In 2026, she will collaborate with Grammy-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion, featuring a new commission by Vivian Fung. Lee’s violin was crafted in Naples in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul and Linda Gridley. She is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.
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).
Grammy-winner Jason Vieaux, “among the elite of today's classical guitarists” (Gramophone), is described by NPR as “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation.”
His appearances at San Francisco Performances, Caramoor Festival, Ravinia Festival, Round Top Festival, PCMS, 92nd St Y, CMS, Wolf Trap, and others, have cemented his reputation as one of the world’s leading guitarists. He has performed as soloist with over 100 orchestras, including Cleveland, Toronto, Houston, Nashville and St. Louis, working with renowned conductors such as Giancarlo Guererro, Jahja Ling, Gerard Schwarz, and David Robertson.
His strong presence on radio and streaming services continues with his long-awaited Bach Volume 2: Works for Violin, released in April 2022 to rave reviews from Gramophone and others. Shining Night, a CD featuring his duo with acclaimed violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, was released in May 2022 on Avie Records to great acclaim. He recorded Pat Metheny’s Four Paths of Light (dedicated to Jason) for Metheny’s 2021 album Road to The Sun on BMG Modern. Of his Grammy-winning 2014 solo album Play, the Huffington Post declared that the album is “part of the revitalized interest in the classical guitar.”