Madison, NJ
Poulenc’s Homage to WindsSat, Nov 2, 2024, 7:30 pm
Concert Hall at Drew University
2 hours, including intermission
This outstanding collection of internationally renowned wind players, joined by CMS favorite Michael Stephen Brown, offers ensemble classics from the 18th through the 20th centuries. All the instruments gather for Poulenc’s effervescent Sextet, which he described as “an homage to the wind instruments I have loved from the moment I began composing.”
Program
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)Duo No. 3 in B-flat major for Clarinet and Bassoon, WoO 27
(1790–92)Reinhold Glière
(1875–1956)Four Pieces for Horn and Piano, Op. 35
(1908)Francis Poulenc
(1899–1963)Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon
(1922, rev. 1945)Bohuslav Martinů
(1890–1959)Sonata for Flute and Piano
(1945)Mikhail Glinka
(1804–1857)Trio pathétique in D minor for Clarinet, Bassoon, and Piano
(1832)Francis Poulenc
(1899–1963)Sextet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, and Piano
(1932–39)
Michael Stephen Brown
Adam Walker
James Austin Smith
David Shifrin
Marc Goldberg
Radek Baborák
Michael Stephen Brown has been described as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers” (New York Times). Winner of a 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. He makes regular appearances with orchestras such as the National Philharmonic and the Seattle, Phoenix, North Carolina, and Albany symphonies, and recently has made European recital debuts at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and the Chopin Museum in Mallorca. He has received commissions from many organizations and some of today’s leading artists, and recently toured his own Piano Concerto around the US and Poland with several orchestras. He performs regularly with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and has appeared at festivals worldwide. A prolific recording artist, he has three albums in the works, including Mendelssohn+, featuring world premieres of music by one of Mendelssohn’s muses, Delphine von Schauroth. He was the composer- and artist-in-residence at the New Haven Symphony, and winner of the Concert Artists Guild and Copland House Awards. He holds degrees in piano and composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal, Robert McDonald, and Samuel Adler. Additional mentors include András Schiff and Richard Goode. An Artist Ambassador for Creatives Care, Brown lives in New York City with his two 19th-century Steinway D pianos, Octavia and Daria.
At the forefront of a new generation of wind soloists, Adam Walker was appointed principal flute of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2009 at the age of 21 and received the Outstanding Young Artist Award at MIDEM Classique in Cannes. In 2010 he won a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Award and was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society Outstanding Young Artist Award. An ambassador for the flute with a ferocious appetite for repertoire, he regularly performs with the major UK orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony, Hallé, Bournemouth Symphony, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Elsewhere he has performed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Grant Park Festival, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Mexico, Seoul Philharmonic, Auckland Philharmonia, Malaysian Philharmonic, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Solistes Européens, Luxembourg, and the RTE National Symphony Orchestra. A committed chamber musician with a curious and creative approach to repertoire, 2018 saw Adam take up his place on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s prestigious Bowers Program. Recital highlights over recent seasons have included Wigmore Hall, LSO St. Luke’s, De Singel, Musée du Louvre, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Frankfurt Alte Oper, and the Utrecht, West Cork, Delft, and Moritzburg Chamber Music Festivals. Born in 1987, Adam Walker studied at Chetham’s School of Music with Gitte Sorensen and later at the Royal Academy of Music with Michael Cox. He was appointed professor at the Royal College of Music in 2017.
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.
A Yale University faculty member since 1987, clarinetist David Shifrin is artistic director of Yale’s Chamber Music Society, the Yale in New York concert series, and the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival. 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 Concerto concerts. He was the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, from 1981 to 2020. Winner of both the Avery Fisher Career Grant (1987) and the Avery Fisher Prize (2000), he is also the recipient of a Solo Recitalist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A top prize-winner in the Munich and Geneva competitions, he has held principal clarinet positions in numerous orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra and the American Symphony under Leopold Stokowski. His recordings have received three Grammy nominations and his performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra was named Record of the Year by Stereo Review. His most recent recordings are the Beethoven, Bruch, and Brahms clarinet trios with David Finckel and Wu Han on the ArtistLed label, a recording for Delos of works by Carl Nielsen, and an album of Poulenc’s music for clarinet. His 2012 Delos recording of Ellen Taaffe Zwillch’s Clarinet Concerto was chosen as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the National Recording Preservation Act by the Library of Congress in 2023. Shifrin performs on clarinets made by Morrie Backun in Vancouver, Canada, and Légère synthetic reeds.
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.
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.