“Voyage of Love”
Jennifer Frautschi, violin
Oliver Neubauer, violin
Che-Yen Chen, viola
Hsin-Yun Huang, viola
Dmitri Atapine, cello
Nicholas Canellakis, cello
Hyeyeon Park, piano
Program:
Clara SCHUMANN (1819-1896): Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Op.22 (1853)
Arnold SCHOENBERG (1874-1951): Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) for String Sextet, Op.4 (1899)
Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897): String Sextet No.2 in G Major, Op.36 (1864-65)
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Two-time GRAMMY nominee and Avery Fisher career grant recipient Jennifer Frautschi has garnered worldwide acclaim as a deeply expressive, musically adventurous violinist with impeccable technique and a wide-ranging repertoire. Equally at home in the classic and contemporary repertoire, her recent seasons have featured performances and recordings of works ranging from Robert Schumann and Lili Boulanger to Barbara White and Arnold Schoenberg. She has also had the privilege of premiering several new works composed for her by prominent living composers. Critics have described her performances as ‘electrifying,’ ‘riveting’ and ‘mesmerizing’, lauding her ‘staggering energy and finesse’ and ‘fierce expression.’ After a recent performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto, Cleveland Classical wrote: ‘We witnessed the most magnificent performance by a guest soloist in recent memory. From the outset of the Brahms Concerto, she was a stunning presence, her playing a breathtaking conflation of grace and grit, and at times downright ferocious.’
Ms. Frautschi’s concerto appearances have included the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach, Minnesota Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä, Boston Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, Florida Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, and Orchestra of the Teatro di San Carlo Opera House. Her 2022-23 season features engagements with the Indianapolis Symphony and New World Symphony, re-engagements with the New Mexico Philharmonic and the Santa Rosa Symphony, and a residency at the North Carolina School of the Arts. During the 2022 summer season, she has been invited to perform with Chamber Music Northwest, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Santa Fe Music Festival, Salt Bay Chamberfest, Sarasota Music Festival, Tippet Rise, and Vivace Festival.
Ms. Frautschi is an Artist Member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and has performed at virtually all of the premier chamber music series and festivals in the United States: Caramoor, Charlottesville, Lake Champlain, La Musica, Moab, Newport, Ojai, Salt Bay, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Spoleto USA Chamber Music Festivals; Bravo! Vail, Chamber Music Northwest, La Jolla Summerfest, Music@Menlo, and Tippet Rise Arts Center; and at the Library of Congress, New York’s Metropolitan and Guggenheim Museums of Art, the 92nd Street Y, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Phillips Collection, and Mainly Mozart in San Diego.
Internationally, she has been invited to present recitals in the Salzburg Mozarteum, Vienna Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, La Cité de la Musique in Paris, Brussels’ Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Beijing’s Imperial Garden, and toured England with musicians from Prussia Cove. She has performed at Chanel’s Pygmalion Series in Tokyo, the Cartagena International Music Festival in Columbia, San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico, the Spoleto Festival of the Two Worlds and Rome Chamber Music Festival in Italy, Pharo’s Trust in Cyprus, Kutna Hora Festival in the Czech Republic, Toronto Summer Music in Canada, and St. Barth’s Music Festival in the French West Indies. She has premiered important new works by Barbara White, Mason Bates, Oliver Knussen, Krzysztof Penderecki, Michael Hersch, and others, and has appeared at New York’s George Crumb Festival and Stefan Wolpe Centenary Concerts.
Her extensive discography includes several discs for Naxos: the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, conducted by the legendary Robert Craft, and two GRAMMY-nominated recordings— Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra and the Schoenberg Third String Quartet. Her most recent releases are with pianist John Blacklow on Albany Records: the complete sonatas of Robert Schumann, and American Duos, featuring works by contemporary American composers Barbara White, Steven Mackey, Elena Ruehr, Dan Coleman, and Stephen Hartke. The three recordings she released on Artek have received universal acclaim: the two Prokofiev Concerti with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony; music of Ravel and Stravinsky for violin and piano; and 20th-century works for solo violin. Other recent recordings include a disc of Romantic Horn Trios, with hornist Eric Ruske and pianist Stephen Prutsman, and the Stravinsky Duo Concertant with pianist Jeremy Denk.
Born in Pasadena, California, Ms. Frautschi began the violin at age three under the Suzuki Method. She was a student of Robert Lipsett at the Colburn School for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles. She attended Harvard, the University of Southern California, the New England Conservatory of Music, and finished her studies with Robert Mann at The Juilliard School. She is an Artist-in-Residence at Stony Brook University. She performs on a glorious Antonio Stradivarius violin from 1722, the ‘ex-Cadiz,’ on generous loan to her from a private American foundation with support from Rare Violins In Consortium.
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Praised for his uniquely beautiful playing and mature artistry, 24-year-old violinist Oliver Neubauer is quickly establishing himself as one of the most exciting young artists of his time. First prize winner of the 2023 Susan Wadsworth Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Oliver is a YCA Jacobs Fellow and is managed worldwide by Young Concert Artists.
Highlights of the 2023-24 season include Oliver’s debut with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra playing the Korngold Concerto (as first prize winner of the 26th Hellam Competition), a concert and video-audio recording in Rome (as third prize winner of the ArsClassica International Competition), and a performance of the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante along with his father, Paul Neubauer, and an orchestra comprised of members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Oliver will also be making appearances at Jupiter Chamber Players (NY), Apex Concerts (Reno, NV), PMP Suncoast (FL), Mostly Music (NJ), Parlance Chamber Concerts (NJ), and will perform recitals at Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Auditorium and the Juilliard School’s Paul Hall. During the summer of 2024, Oliver will attend the Marlboro Music Festival.
Past seasons have included appearances at Music@Menlo, Verbier Festival Academy, Four Seasons Winter Workshop, Palm Beach Chamber Music Society, Bravo! Vail, YoungArts Miami, Parlance Chamber Concerts, If Music Be the Food NYC, Mostly Music Series, Summerfest La Jolla, Music@Menlo, Lake Champlain Music Festival, OKM Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Music in the Vineyards, Art in Avila in Curaçao, and Music from Angel Fire. Oliver has performed at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall on numerous occasions as well as Symphony Space, the American Museum of Natural History, Neue Gallery, Alice Tully Hall, and David Geffen Hall. Oliver also performed with his sister Clara at the Waldorf Astoria for a 9/11 Memorial and Museum Benefit Dinner, where they shared the stage with Robert De Niro and Bernadette Peters.
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Taiwanese-American violist Che-Yen Chen has established himself as an active performer and educator. Since winning First Prize in the 2003 Primrose International Viola Competition and the “President Prize” of the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, he was described as a musician whose “most impressive aspect of his playing was his ability to find not just the subtle emotion, but the humanity hidden in the music.” As the founding and former member of the Formosa Quartet, he won the first prize in the 2006 London International String Quartet Competition, founded the Formosa Chamber Music Festival in Taiwan, and has released recordings on EMI, Delos, New World, and Bridge Records. Chen was the principal violist of the San Diego Symphony and Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra for eight years and has appeared as guest principal viola with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, and Toronto Symphony. A former Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Two member, Chen frequently performs and teaches at music festivals across North America and Asia. Professor of Viola Performance and Chamber Music at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Chen has previously served on the faculty of USC Thornton School of Music, UC San Diego, San Diego State University, California State University Fullerton, and McGill University. A native of Taipei, Chen began his viola study with Ben Lin and became a four-time winner of the National Viola Competition in Taiwan. As a fourteen- year-old, he came to the U.S.A. to matriculate at The Curtis Institute of Music under the mentorship of Michael Tree and Joseph de Pasquale and later at The Juilliard School studying viola performance and string quartet with Paul Neubauer and The Juilliard Quartet. Chen joined the renowned Ehnes Quartet in 2023.
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Hsin-Yun Huang has forged a career as one of the leading violists of her generation, performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Ms. Huang has appeared as soloist with prominent ensembles worldwide including the Berlin Radio Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Bogotá Philharmonic, NCPA Orchestra in Beijing, Zagreb Soloists, International Contemporary Ensemble, London Sinfonia, and Brazil Youth Orchestra. She appears regularly at festivals including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Rome, Spoleto USA, Moritzburg, Music@Menlo, and the Seoul Spring Festival. She tours extensively with the Brentano String Quartet, most notably including performances of the complete Mozart string quintets at Carnegie Hall. A passionate proponent of music education, she began a hybrid educational space called VivaViola! with the mission to expand the viola repertoire while preserving musical values and history through dialogues with esteemed musicians of today.
In the 2023-24 season, Ms. Huang performs at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where she is a regular guest, including opening night; Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; Moss Art Center, featuring the world premiere of James MacMillan’s Viola Quintet with the Brentano String Quartet (Blacksburg, VA); Brown University, featuring the world premiere of Eric Nathan's Double Concerto No. 2 for Two Violas, with co-soloist Misha Amory and the New York Classical Players (Providence, RI); Asia Society, featuring the workshop premiere of sisila ila ila: saying goodbye, a musical about the environment, featuring shadow puppetry and whale songs, and presented in partnership with the National Theater and Concert Hall of Taiwan (Houston); and Amsterdam Biennale at Muziekgebouw, with Brentano String Quartet. She also tours with John Malkovich, Aleksey Igudesman, Hyung-ki Joo, and other great musicians with a program entitled “The Music Critic.”
Last season, Ms. Huang co-commissioned Lei Liang, a Grawemeyer Award winner, to curate “Strings of Soul,” a program for viola and pipa, featuring virtuoso Wu Man. The program is inspired by authentic folk elements from around the world. The previous year included multidisciplinary collaborations with choreography by Ashkenazy Ballet, based on Ms. Huang’s solo viola project FantaC.
Past highlights also include concerto performances conducted by David Robertson, Osmo Vänskä, Xian Zhang, and Max Valdés in Beijing, Taipei, and Bogotá, and appearances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Ms. Huang has performed the complete Paul Hindemith viola concertos with the Taipei City Symphony and was the first solo violist to be featured at the National Performance Center of the Arts in Beijing. She has also performed at New York’s 92nd Street Y and the Seoul Spring Festival.
In recent years Ms. Huang embarked on a series of major commissioning projects for solo viola and chamber ensemble. To date, the project includes compositions by Shih-Hui Chen (Shu Shon Key, which Ms. Chen also arranged for orchestra) and Steven Mackey (Groundswell), which premiered at the Aspen Festival. Ms. Huang’s 2012 album Viola Viola, on Bridge Records, includes the two pieces, along with music by Elliott Carter, Poul Ruders, and George Benjamin. The album won accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Her most recent releases are FantaC (2020), a collection of solo viola pieces all based on the C string, and Viola Lens (2019), which features the complete unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of J.S. Bach, in partnership with violist Misha Amory.
A native of Taiwan and an alumna of Young Concert Artists, Ms. Huang received degrees from The Juilliard School and The Curtis Institute of Music. She has given master classes at the Guildhall School in London, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, the San Francisco Conservatory, Yong Sie Tow Conservatory in Singapore, and the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University. She served on the jury of the 2011 Banff International String Quartet Competition, the 2022 Tokyo International Viola Competition and the 2023 Melbourne Chamber Music Competition.
Ms. Huang first came to international attention as the gold medalist and the youngest competitor in the 1988 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition; in 1993 she was the top-prize winner in the ARD International Competition in Munich, and was awarded the highly prestigious Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award. She was a member of the Borromeo String Quartet from 1994 to 2000.
Ms. Huang is currently on the viola faculty at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music; she is grateful for her teachers — David Takeno, Peter Norris, Michael Tree, and Samuel Rhodes. She is married to Misha Amory, violist of the Brentano String Quartet. They live in New York City and have two children, Lucas and Leah. She plays on a 1735 Testore Viola.
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Nicholas Canellakis has become one of the most sought-after and innovative cellists of his generation, praised as a “superb young soloist” (The New Yorker) and for being "impassioned ... the audience seduced by Mr. Canellakis's rich, alluring tone" (The New York Times). A multifaceted artist, Canellakis has forged a unique voice combining his talents as soloist, chamber musician, curator, filmmaker, and composer/arranger.
Recent concert highlights include concerto appearances with the Virginia, Albany, Delaware, Stamford, Richardson, Lansing, and Bangor Symphonies, the Erie Philharmonic, The Orchestra Now, the New Haven Symphony as Artist-in-Residence, and the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. He performs recitals throughout the U.S. with his longtime duo collaborator, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown, and recent appearances have included Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Four Arts in Palm Beach, New Orleans Friends of Chamber Music, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and Wolf Trap near Washington D.C.
Canellakis is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with which he performs regularly in Alice Tully Hall and on tour internationally, including London’s Wigmore Hall, The Louvre in Paris, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea, and the Shanghai and Taipei National Concert Halls. He is also a regular guest artist at many of the world's leading music festivals, including Santa Fe, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Bard, Bridgehampton, La Jolla, Hong Kong, Moab, Chamberfest Cleveland, and Music in the Vineyards. He was recently renewed as the artistic director of Chamber Music Sedona, in Arizona, where he has made a major impact through his dynamic programming and educational and community outreach.
A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, his teachers included Orlando Cole, Peter Wiley and Paul Katz, and he was a student of Madeleine Golz at Manhattan School of Music Pre-College. He began his Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center career as a member of the Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two), and he has also been in residence at Carnegie Hall as a member of Ensemble Connect.
Canellakis’s next album with Michael Stephen Brown, (b)romance, featuring some of his original compositions and arrangements, will be released by First Hand Records in 2023.
Filmmaking and acting are special interests of Canellakis. He has produced, directed, and starred in several short films and music videos, including his popular comedy web series "Conversations with Nick Canellakis.” His latest film, “Thin Walls,” was nominated for awards at many prominent film festivals, and is currently available on Amazon Prime.
Canellakis plays on an outstanding Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, from 1840.
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Described as "splendid, elegant cellist, with a gorgeous sound" (MundoClasico), DMITRI ATAPINE has been hailed as a performer with “brilliant technical chops” (Gramophone), whose playing is “highly impressive throughout” (The Strad). As an avid soloist and recitalist, he has appeared on some of the world’s foremost stages, including Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Zankel and Weill halls at Carnegie Hall, the National Auditorium of Spain, to cite but a few. His performances have been broadcast on radio and TV in the USA, Spain, Mexico, and South Korea.
Highly in demand as a chamber musician, Mr. Atapine regularly performs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is an alum of The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two). His multiple festival festival appearances have included Music@Menlo (California), Chamber Music Northwest (Oregon), La Musica Festival (Florida), Nevada Chamber Music Festival, Cactus Pear Music Festival (Texas), Banff (Canada), Great Mountains Music Festival (South Korea), Malaga Clasica (Spain), Miguel Bernal Jimenez Festival (Mexico), the French Academy in Rome (Italy), Aldeburgh (England), Aix-en-Provence (France), and Pacific Music Festival (Japan). He collaborated with such eminent artists as the Tokyo String Quartet, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Wu Han, Ani and Ida Kavafian, David Finckel, David Shifrin, Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Bruno Giuranna and Peter Wiley, among many others.
As a soloist Mr. Atapine has performed as a soloist with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, Asturias Symphony Orchestra, the Leon Symphony Orchestra, the Gijon Chamber Orchestra, the 'Arche' Chamber Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as with Michigan State University Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras.
Mr. Atapine's many prizes and awards include the First Prize at the Carlos Prieto International Cello Competition and the Second Prize at the Vittorio Gui Chamber Music Competition. Other accolades include Top Prize and Yamaha Special Prize at the Florian Ocampo Spanish National Cello Competition, First and Second Prizes at the 2008 New England International Chamber Competition, the Grand Prize at the 2007 Plowman Competition, the 2005 Presser Foundation Award, the First Prize and Asturias Symphony Special Prize at the 2003 Llanes International String Competition (Spain), the Yale Woolsey Hall Competition, and the First Prize at the Sahagun International Music Competition at age 13.
Mr. Atapine's keen interest in contemporary music produced fruitful collaborations with several distinguished composers, among them Ezra Laderman, Jennifer Higdon, and Martin Bresnick. In collaboration with pianist Hyeyeon Park Mr. Atapine recently released a critically acclaimed world-premiere recording of Lowell Liebermann’s complete works for cello and piano on BlueGriffin label, leading to their presentation in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall. Other recordings can be found on Naxos, Albany, Urtext Digital, and Music@Menlo LIVE labels.
Born into a family of musicians, Mr. Atapine began his musical education with his parents at the age of five and soon thereafter entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory School of Music. After his family moved to Spain, Mr. Atapine graduated with honors from the Asturias Conservatory under Alexander Fedortchenko. He came to the US and after receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees with high honors from Michigan State University under the tutelage of Suren Bagratuni, Mr. Atapine continued his studies with the legendary cellist Aldo Parisot at Yale University School of Music, where he completed the Master of Musical Arts degree, obtained the Artist Diploma, and since 2010 holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree.
Currently Mr. Atapine is the cello professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Since 2007 he serves as the Artistic Director of Ribadesella International Music Festival (Spain), since 2010 he is the founder and Artistic Co-Director of Apex Concerts, and in 2022 he was appointed as Artistic Co-Director of Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City.
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Described as "a pianist with power, precision, and tremendous glee" (Gramophone Magazine) and praised for her "very sensitive" (Washington Post) and "highly nuanced" (Lucid Culture) playing, Hyeyeon Park has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician on major concert stages throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Japan and her native Korea.
Since making her debut at the age of ten performing Beethoven's First Piano Concerto with Seoul Symphony Orchestra, Park soloed with Seoul Philharmonic, Seoul Symphony, KNUA Chamber Orchestra, Gangnam Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Arts Center Festival Orchestra and Incheon Philharmonic, to name but a few. Her recent concerts have been presented at the Dame Myra Hess Recital Series in Chicago, the Trinity Wall Street Series in New York City, Philips Collection in Washington, D.C., as well as such distinguished venues as Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Recital Hall, Kennedy Center and Seoul Art Center, among others.
A Seoul Arts Center "Artist of the Year 2012," Park is prizewinner of numerous international competitions, including Oberlin International Piano Competition (U.S.), Ettlingen International Piano Competition (Germany), Hugo Kauder International Piano Competition (U.S.), Maria Canals International Piano Competition (Spain), Prix Amadeo International Piano Competition (Germany) and Corpus Christi International Music Competition (U.S.). Her performances have been broadcast on KBS and EBS television in Korea, RAI3 (Italy), WQXR (New York), WFMT (Chicago), WBJC (Baltimore), WETA (Washington, D.C.), radio and channel LOOP in the States.
An avid chamber musician, Park has collaborated with such musicians as David Shifrin, Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, Paul Neubauer and many others appearing frequently at Yellow Barn Festival (Vermont), Santander Music Festival (Spain), Great Mountains Festival (Korea), Music@Menlo Festival (California),and Chamber Music Northwest (Oregon). She is the founding member of Atapine-Park duo and Atria Ensemble, groups that respectively won the prizes at Premio Vittorio Gui International Chamber Music Competition (Italy) and Plowman Chamber Music Competition (Missouri). Her duo recordings for cello and piano with cellist Dmitri Atapine were distributed by Naxos to a great critical acclaim. The duo's recent world-premiere recording of Lowell Liebermann's complete works for cello and piano was reviewed as "a valuable disc for the collector" by American Record Guide. Her solo CD "Klavier 1853" was released in 2017 under Blue Griffin label. An advocate for new music as a passionate musician who pursued career as a composer as well, Park enjoys working closely with contemporary composers.
Park holds a bachelor's of music degree at Korea National University with Professor Daejin Kim, master of music degree and artist diploma from Yale School of Music with Professor Peter Frankl, where she was a post-graduate artist associate following her graduation. She holds the doctor of musical arts degree from Peabody Conservatory with Professor Yong Hi Moon. Park has been recently appointed as co-director of Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City, and already serves as the co-director of Young Performers Program at Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival and Institute. She is the associate professor of piano at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she also is the artistic director of the Apex Concerts, and the Artistic Co-Director of the Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City.