Sunday, May 15, 2022, at 4 pm

Program

Mendelssohn: Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 44, No. 3
Bartók: Quartet No. 3, Sz. 85
Tchaikovsk: Quartet No. 3 in e-flat minor, Op. 30
George Walker: Lyric for Strings

The Escher String Quartet (Adam Barnett-Hart, violin; Brendan Speltz, violin; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello) has received acclaim for its expressive, nuanced performances that combine unusual textural clarity with a rich, blended sound. A former BBC New Generation Artist, the quartet has performed at the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall and is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall. In its home town of New York, the ensemble serves as Season Artists of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where it has presented the complete Zemlinsky Quartets Cycle as well as being one of five quartets chosen to collaborate in a complete presentation of Beethoven’s string quartets. Last season, the quartet toured with CMS to China.

Within months of its inception in 2005, the ensemble came to the attention of key musical figures worldwide. Championed by the Emerson Quartet, the Escher Quartet was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be Quartet in Residence at each artist’s summer festival: the Young Artists Programme at Canada’s National Arts Centre; and the Perlman Chamber Music Programme on Shelter Island, NY. The quartet has since collaborated with artists including David Finckel, Leon Fleischer, Wu Han, Lynn Harrell, Cho Liang Lin, Joshua Bell, Paul Watkins and David Shifrin, as well as jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman, vocalist Kurt Elling, legendary Latin artist Paquito D’Rivera and Grammy award-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux. In 2013, the quartet became one of the very few chamber ensembles to be awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

The Escher Quartet has made a distinctive impression throughout Europe, performing at venues such as Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus, London’s Kings Place, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Slovenian Philharmonic Hall, Auditorium du Louvre and Les Grand Interprètes series in Geneva. With a strong collaborative approach, the group has appeared at festivals such as Heidelberg Spring Festival, Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, Dublin’s Great Music in Irish Houses, Risør Chamber Music Festival in Norway, Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival and Perth International Arts Festival in Australia.

Alongside its growing success in Europe, the Escher Quartet continues to flourish in its home country, performing at Alice Tully Hall in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Chamber Music San Francisco, and the Ravinia, Caramoor and Music@Menlo festivals.

Currently String Quartet in Residence at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and Tuesday Musical in Akron, Ohio, the quartet fervently supports the education of young musicians and has given masterclasses at institutions such as the Royal Academy of Music in London and Campos do Jordão Music Festival in Brazil.
In Autumn 2016, the quartet released the third and final volume of the complete Mendelssohn Quartets on the BIS label. The set has been received with the highest critical acclaim; Volume II was listed in the Top 10 CDs of 2016 by the Guardian and hailed for its “sheer finesse” by Gramophone, whilst Volume III was nominated for a BBC Music Magazine Award. The quartet has also recorded the complete Zemlinsky String Quartets in two volumes, released on the Naxos label in 2013 and 2014 respectively, to accolades including five stars in the Guardian with “Classical CD of the Year”, a Recommendation in The Strad, “Recording of the Month” on MusicWeb International and a nomination for a BBC Music Magazine Award.

The Escher Quartet takes its name from Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, inspired by Escher’s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.

Sunday, April 10, 2022, at 4 pm

Program

Dimitri Sitkovetsky (arr.): Complete Bach Goldberg Variations

Ida Kavafian, violin, Steven Tenenbom, viola, and Peter Wiley, cello, are longtime friends and musical collaborators. With pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, they perform as Opus One. They are veterans as well as present members of the world’s most prestigious chamber groups including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Tashi, the Beaux Arts Trio and the Orion and Guarneri String Quartets. As soloists as well as chamber musicians, they are each familiar figures in concert halls throughout the world.

Ida Kavafian has given premières of many new works including concertos by Toru Takemitsu and Michael Daugherty, has toured and recorded with jazz greats Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis, and has had a solo feature on CBS Sunday Morning. She recently retired as Artistic Director of Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico.

Steven Tenenbom has enjoyed a widely varying career as soloist, chamber musician, and teacher of the next generation of talented musicians. Mr. Tenenbom is a member of the viola faculty of The Juilliard School and The Bard College Conservatory of Music, and the coordinator of string chamber music at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Peter Wiley has played at leading festivals including the Marlboro Music Festival, for which he also tours and records. As a recitalist he has appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. He made his concerto debut at Carnegie Hall in 1986 with the New York String Orchestra conducted by Alexander Schneider. A past recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, Mr. Wiley joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1996. He also teaches at Bard College Conservatory of Music.

Photos copyright Christian Steiner (Kavafian), Orion String Quartet (Tenenbom), William Wegman (Wiley)

Sunday, March 20, 2022, at 4 pm

Program

CPE Bach: Suite in E minor Wq 65/12
Prokofieff: Sarcasms, op.17
Scriabin: 7th sonata, op.64 (‘White Mass’)
Beethoven: Sonata in B flat major, op.106 (‘Hammerklavier’)

Pianist Marc-André Hamelin is renowned for his fresh readings of the established repertoire and his intrepid exploration of lesser known works of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is admired for his brilliant technique and his questing, deep thinking approach to everything he plays.

In recent seasons Hamelin has appeared as recitalist or orchestral guest soloist in such cities as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Portland, and in Quebec, Canada and internationally in Antwerp, Berlin, London, Melbourne, Rotterdam, and Milan, among many other cities. A prolific recording artist, Mr. Hamelin has set to disk some 50 CDs for the Hyperion label; these range from the neglected masterpieces of Alkan, Ives, Medtner and Roslavets to brilliantly received performances of Haydn, Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, and Chopin.

In 2010 Mr. Hamelin joined the ranks on CD of noted composer-pianists by releasing his own highly inventive “12 Etudes in all the minor keys” on the Hyperion label and with publication by Edition Peters.

Winner of the 1985 Carnegie Hall Competition, Marc-André Hamelin was born in Montreal. He began to play the piano at the age of five, and by the age of nine had already won top prize in the Canadian Music Competition. Mr. Hamelin’s father, a pharmacist by trade who was also a keen pianist, had introduced him to the works of Alkan, Medtner and Sorabji when he was still very young. Mr. Hamelin is featured in the book The Composer-Pianists: Hamelin and the Eight by Robert Rimm, published by Amadeus Press.

Saturday, September 26, 2020 (rain date Sunday, September 27, 2020) at 2 pm
Location: 169 Belden Hill Road, Wilton CT 06897

Program

Haydn: Quartet in G Major, Op. 77, No. 1
Bartók: Quartet No. 6
Dvořák: Quartet in C Major, Op. 61

Omer Quartet is quickly gaining a reputation for both “fearless renderings” (The New York Times) of the standard quartet repertoire and compelling performances of works by today’s composers. It burst onto the scene with top prizes at Borciani, Trondheim, and Bordeaux in Europe all in one year, having already captured the Fischoff National Competition Grand Prize. The quartet was awarded First Prize in the 2017 YCA International Auditions and debuted at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall.
Frequent collaborations have made Omer Quartet one of the most versatile quartets in the industry, sharing the stage with David Krakauer, Kim Kashkashian, Ricardo Morales, Clive Greensmith, and YCA accordionist Hanzhi Wang, among others. The quartet relishes programming works written by living composers, including those written by Caroline Shaw, Gabriella Smith, and YCA composer Chris Rogerson.

Its ongoing commitment to community engagement includes the inauguration of a Music for Food concert series from 2017-2019 in the metro-DC/Maryland area to support local hunger relief. Their combined efforts in Maryland created over 10,000 meals and involved collaborations with violist and founder of Music for Food, Kim Kashkashian, cellist Paul Katz, and other University of Maryland faculty. Previous grant projects include a Boston Foundation award to sponsor performances in venues such as homeless shelters and drug rehabilitation centers in areas of Boston.

After completing a graduate residency at the New England Conservatory, and in the final stretches of a doctoral degree from the University of Maryland, Omer Quartet currently serves as Visiting Fellows at Yale School of Music.

The word Omer is a period of seven weeks in the Jewish calendar between Passover and Shavuot during which prayers centered around self-reflection, improvement of personality, and inner growth invite the possibility of affecting external results and potential. The Omer Quartet’s members hope to bring the spirit of this quest for self-development to everything they do, from music-making to connecting with their audiences.

Sunday, March 15, 2020 at 4:00 pm

Program

Haydn: Quartet in G Major, Op. 77, No. 1
Bartók: Quartet No. 6
Dvořák: Quartet in C Major, Op. 61

The Escher String Quartet (Adam Barnett-Hart, violin; Brendan Speltz, violin; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello) has received acclaim for its expressive, nuanced performances that combine unusual textural clarity with a rich, blended sound. A former BBC New Generation Artist, the quartet has performed at the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall and is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall. In its home town of New York, the ensemble serves as Season Artists of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where it has presented the complete Zemlinsky Quartets Cycle as well as being one of five quartets chosen to collaborate in a complete presentation of Beethoven’s string quartets. Last season, the quartet toured with CMS to China.

Within months of its inception in 2005, the ensemble came to the attention of key musical figures worldwide. Championed by the Emerson Quartet, the Escher Quartet was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be Quartet in Residence at each artist’s summer festival: the Young Artists Programme at Canada’s National Arts Centre; and the Perlman Chamber Music Programme on Shelter Island, NY. The quartet has since collaborated with artists including David Finckel, Leon Fleischer, Wu Han, Lynn Harrell, Cho Liang Lin, Joshua Bell, Paul Watkins and David Shifrin, as well as jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman, vocalist Kurt Elling, legendary Latin artist Paquito D’Rivera and Grammy award-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux. In 2013, the quartet became one of the very few chamber ensembles to be awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

The Escher Quartet has made a distinctive impression throughout Europe, performing at venues such as Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus, London’s Kings Place, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Slovenian Philharmonic Hall, Auditorium du Louvre and Les Grand Interprètes series in Geneva. With a strong collaborative approach, the group has appeared at festivals such as Heidelberg Spring Festival, Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, Dublin’s Great Music in Irish Houses, Risør Chamber Music Festival in Norway, Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival and Perth International Arts Festival in Australia.

The current season sees another extensive European tour, including debuts at Musik und Kunstfreunde Heidelberg, de Singel Antwerp, Budapest’s kamara.hu festival and Bath Mozartfest. Alongside its growing success in Europe, the Escher Quartet continues to flourish in its home country, performing at Alice Tully Hall in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Chamber Music San Francisco, and the Ravinia, Caramoor and Music@Menlo festivals.

Currently String Quartet in Residence at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and Tuesday Musical in Akron, Ohio, the quartet fervently supports the education of young musicians and has given masterclasses at institutions such as the Royal Academy of Music in London and Campos do Jordão Music Festival in Brazil.

In Autumn 2016, the quartet released the third and final volume of the complete Mendelssohn Quartets on the BIS label. The set has been received with the highest critical acclaim; Volume II was listed in the Top 10 CDs of 2016 by the Guardian and hailed for its “sheer finesse” by Gramophone, whilst Volume III was nominated for a BBC Music Magazine Award. The quartet has also recorded the complete Zemlinsky String Quartets in two volumes, released on the Naxos label in 2013 and 2014 respectively, to accolades including five stars in the Guardian with “Classical CD of the Year”, a Recommendation in The Strad, “Recording of the Month” on MusicWeb International and a nomination for a BBC Music Magazine Award.

The Escher Quartet takes its name from Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, inspired by Escher’s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.

Sunday, February 23, 2020 at 4:00 pm

Program

György Ligeti: Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet
Igor Stravinsky: Suite No. 2
Dmitri Shostakovich: Theatre Suite
Jacques Ibert: Trois pièces brèves
Franz Liszt: Grandes études de Paganini No. 6

The prize-winning Danish-Latvian ensemble brings a truly unique and innovative chamber music experience to audiences. Carion fascinates with its carefully choreographed and dramatized performances of classical and modern works, making music on stage visible, thus adding a new dimension to traditional concert events.

Carion’s fresh approach to chamber music has brought acclaimed performances in Europe’s most prestigious festivals, like Rheingau Festival, Kissinger Sommer, Beethovenfest Bonn, Bergen Festival and Louisiana Festival, as well as in the Far East. Carion has released five highly critically acclaimed CDs – including stellar reviews from Gramophone and BBC Magazine, awards from Danish radio, and best classical album of 2015 on iTunes. But nothing compares to their trend-setting music videos on YouTube that continue generating views totaling close to a million. The Ligeti performance alone has over 300,000.

The near future will bring a new recording featuring works by Mozart and Hindemith as well as most notable performances such as at Zürich Tonhalle (Switzerland), and continued work on expanding the woodwind genre.

A major project in 2019 will be a commissioned work with the theme 30 years of Baltic Way by three Nordic composers (Britt Bystrom, Anders Nordentoft and Andris Dzenītis) in cooperation with German dramaturg Jochen Sandig. Together the artists will create a completely new type of concerto and unique performance for Carion with symphony orchestra.

Carion presents a varied and interesting repertoire. The ensemble is well versed in the established wind quintet works, but has received most favorable critical attention for their interpretations of Carl Nielsen, French composers like Jean Françaix, and especially the Six Bagatelles by György Ligeti. Carion has worked with several contemporary composers, most notably with Morten Skovgård Danielsen, and can also present a unique range of arrangements by their own horn player, David M.A.P. Palmquist.

Sunday, November 10, 2019 at 4:00 pm

Program

Beethoven: Sonata no. 3 in A Major for Cello and Piano, op. 69
Brahms: Sonata No. 2 in F Major for Cello and Piano, op. 99
Debussy: Nocturnes & Scherzo
Franck: Sonata for Cello and Piano

David Finckel and Wu Han are among the most esteemed and influential classical musicians in the world today. Recipients of Musical America’s Musicians of the Year award, the energy, imagination, and integrity they bring to their concert performances and artistic projects go unmatched.

Season highlights include performances with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS); a seven-city U.S. tour with violinist Daniel Hope and violist Paul Neubauer; trio performances with violinist Philip Setzer; and Far East appearances in Taipei, Hsinchu, and Shanghai. The duo will also be the subject of two television features to be broadcast on PBS stations across the country.

David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, are also the founders and Artistic Directors of Music@Menlo. The cofounders and Artistic Directors of South Korea’s Chamber Music Today festival from 2011 to 2018, this season the duo inaugurates an immersive, week-long festival in Palm Beach. Wu Han also currently serves as Artistic Advisor of Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns for two seasons.

Leaders of the classical recording industry, they created ArtistLed in 1997, the first musician-directed and internet-based classical recording company. David Finckel and Wu Han have also overseen the multiple media projects at CMS, and the Music@Menlo LIVE label, which has been praised as “the most ambitious recording project of any classical music festival in the world” (San Jose Mercury News).

Dedicated to the next generation of artists, under their leadership at CMS the Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two) identifies and inducts the finest young chamber artists into the entire spectrum of CMS activities. Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute has provided hundreds of students with incomparable, immersive musical experiences. David Finckel and Wu Han direct the LG Chamber Music School in South Korea, and from 2013 to 2018, led an intensive chamber music studio at the Aspen Music Festival and School. This season, David Finckel and Wu Han’s website introduces a new initiative which addresses the challenges and opportunities facing today’s classical music performers and presenters.

””Mr. Finckel and Wu Han gave eloquent and deeply committed performances. He played with a deep and burnished tone and she with a sparkling virtuosity. Best of all was how keenly they listened to each other.” The New York Times

Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 4:00 pm

Program

J.S. Bach/arr.Busoni: Chaconne (From The Partita No. 2 in D minor for Violin BWV 1004)
Ferrucio Busoni: Berceuse (1909) from Elegia
Frédéric Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35
Stephen Hough: Sonata No. 4 (Vida Breve)
Franz Liszt: Funérailles, Mephisto Waltz (Bagatelle without Tonality), Mephisto Waltz No.1

One of the most distinctive artists of his generation, Stephen Hough combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of composer and writer. Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Hough was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year’s Honours 2014.

Since taking first prize at the 1983 Naumburg Competition in New York, Hough has performed with many of the world’s major orchestras and has given recitals at the most prestigious concert halls. He is a regular guest at festivals such as Salzburg, La Roque- d’Anthéron, Mostly Mozart, Edinburgh, and BBC Proms, where he has made more than twenty concerto appearances.

In 2001 Mr. Hough was the first classical performing artist to win a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He was awarded Northwestern University’s 2008 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano, won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award in 2010 and in January 2014 was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth in the New Year’s Honors List. He has appeared with most of the major European and American orchestras and plays recitals regularly in major halls and concert series around the world. His recent engagements include recitals in Chicago, Hong Kong, London, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Paris, Boston, San Francisco, the Kennedy Center and Sydney; performances with the Czech, London and New York Philharmonics, the Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis, National, Detroit, Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto symphonies, and the Philadelphia, Minnesota, Budapest Festival and Russian National Orchestras; and a performance televised worldwide with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle. He is also a regular guest at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Aspen, Blossom, Edinburgh, Hollywood Bowl, Mostly Mozart, Salzburg, Tanglewood, Verbier, Chicago’s Grant Park, Blossom, and the BBC Proms, where he has made over 25 concerto appearances, including playing all of the works written by Tchaikovsky for piano and orchestra over the summer of 2009, a series he later repeated with the Chicago Symphony.

Many of Mr. Hough’s catalogue of over 50 albums have garnered international prizes including the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, Diapason d’Or, Monde de la Musique, several Grammy nominations, eight Gramophone Magazine Awards including ‘Record of the Year’ in 1996 and 2003, and the Gramophone ‘Gold Disc’ Award in 2008, which named his complete Saint-Saens Piano Concertos as the best recording of the past 30 years. His 2012 recording of the complete Chopin Waltzes received the Diapason d’Or de l’Année, France’s most prestigious recording award. His 2005 live recording of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos was the fastest selling recording in Hyperion’s history, while his 1987 recording of the Hummel concertos remains Chandos’s best-selling disc to date. His most recent releases, all for Hyperion, include Grieg Lyric Pieces; a recording of his mass, “Missa Mirabilis,” with the Colorado Symphony and Andrew Litton; a recital disc with Steven Isserlis including Mr. Hough’s Sonata for cello and piano (Les Adieux); a solo recital of Scriabin and Janacek; and the Dvořák and Schumann concertos with the CBSO and Andris Nelsons.

Mr. Hough is also the featured artist in an iPad app about the Liszt Piano Sonata, which includes a fully-filmed performance and was released by the cutting-edge, award-winning company Touch Press.

Published by Josef Weinberger, Mr. Hough has composed works for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble and solo piano. His “Mass of Innocence and Experience” and “Missa Mirabilis” were respectively commissioned by and performed at London’s Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral. In 2012, the Indianapolis Symphony commissioned and performed Mr. Hough’s own orchestration of “Missa Mirabilis,” which was subsequently performed by the BBC Symphony as part of Mr. Hough’s residency with the orchestra. Mr. Hough has also been commissioned by the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Gilmore Foundation, The Genesis Foundation, London’s National Gallery, Wigmore Hall, Le Musée de Louvre and Musica Viva Australia among others.

A noted writer, Mr. Hough regularly contributes articles for The Guardian, The Times, The Tablet, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine and wrote a blog for The Telegraph for seven years which became one of the most popular and influential forums for cultural discussion and for which he wrote over six hundred articles. His book, The Bible as Prayer, was published by Continuum and Paulist Press in 2007, and his first novel, The Final Retreat, was published in early 2018 by Sylph Editions. Mr. Hough resides in London where he is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music and holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College in Manchester. He is also a member of the faculty at The Juilliard School.

Program

Beethoven: Trio, Op. 11
Fauré: Trio in D minor, Op. 20
Brahms: Trio, Op. 114

One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award’s inception in 1974, David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber music collaborator.

Mr. Shifrin has appeared with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras and the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit and Denver symphonies among many others in the US, and internationally with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In addition, he has served as principal clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), the Honolulu and Dallas symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and New York Chamber Symphony. Mr. Shifrin has also received critical acclaim as a recitalist, appearing at such venues as Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York City as well as at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. A sought after a chamber musician, he has collaborated frequently with such distinguished ensembles and artists as the Tokyo and Emerson String Quartets, Wynton Marsalis, and pianists Emanuel Ax and André Watts.

An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, David Shifrin served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. He has toured extensively throughout the US with CMSLC and appeared in several national television broadcasts on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center. He has been the Artistic Director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon since 1981 and is also the Artistic Director of the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival.

David Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale’s annual concert series at Carnegie Hall in September 2008. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary professorship at China’s Central Conservatory in Beijing.
Mr. Shifrin continues to broaden the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra by commissioning and championing the works of 20th and 21st century American composers including, among others, John Adams, Joan Tower, Stephen Albert, Bruce Adolphe, Ezra Laderman, Lalo Schifrin, David Schiff, John Corigliano, Bright Sheng and Ellen Zwilich.

Celebrated for his “accurate intonation and warmth of tone” (New York Times), Grammy-nominated cellist Peter Wiley attended the Curtis Institute at just 13 years of age, under the tutelage of David Soyer. He continued his precocious accomplishments with his appointment as principal cellist of the Cincinnati Symphony at age 20, after one year in the Pittsburgh Symphony. He made his concerto debut at Carnegie Hall in 1986 with the New York String Orchestra conducted by Alexander Schneider. As a recitalist he has appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. A member of the Beaux Arts Trio from 1987 to 1998, Mr. Wiley succeeded his teacher, David Soyer, as cellist of the Guarneri String Quartet from 2001 to 2009. He is also a member of the piano quartet Opus One, with Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom and Anne-Marie McDermott. Mr. Wiley has enjoyed a long-term association with the Marlboro Music Festival and is currently on the faculties of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, the University of Maryland, and the Curtis Institute of Music.

Pianist Anna Polonsky is widely in demand as a soloist and chamber musician. She has appeared with the Moscow Virtuosi, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the Memphis Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, and many others. Ms. Polonsky has collaborated with the Guarneri, Orion, Daedalus, and Shanghai Quartets, and with such musicians as Mitsuko Uchida, Yo-Yo Ma, David Shifrin, Richard Goode, Emanuel Ax, Arnold Steinhardt, Peter Wiley, and Jaime Laredo. She has performed chamber music at festivals such as Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, Seattle, Music@Menlo, Cartagena, Bard, and Caramoor, as well as at Bargemusic in New York City. Ms. Polonsky has given concerts in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Alice Tully Hall, and Carnegie Hall’s Stern, Weill, and Zankel Halls, and has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. A frequent guest at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she was a member of the Chamber Music Society Two during 2002-2004. In 2006 she took a part in the European Broadcasting Union’s project to record and broadcast all of Mozart’s keyboard sonatas, and in the spring of 2007 she performed a solo recital at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium to inaugurate the Emerson Quartet’s Perspectives Series. She is a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award.

Anna Polonsky made her solo piano debut at the age of seven at the Special Central Music School in Moscow, Russia. She emigrated to the United States in 1990, and attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. She received her Bachelor of Music diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music under the tutelage of the renowned pianist Peter Serkin, and continued her studies with Jerome Lowenthal, earning her Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School. In addition to performing, she serves on the piano faculty of Vassar College, and in the summer at the Marlboro and Kneisel Hall chamber music festivals.

Program

Mozart in Paris — including works by Boccherini, Gluck, and other contemporary composers

Mozart in Paris is a program for oboe and string quartet (on period instruments). Readings from Mozart’s own letters animate his time in the City of Light.

Mozart had expected to take Paris by storm in the spring of 1778, but things very much did not go to plan. Despite a successful premiere of his Paris Symphony (K297) at the Concert Spirituel on June 18 and a few other small commissions (concertos for flute, some ballet music), letters flew back and forth between Paris and Salzburg that made it clear that Mozart was flailing. Mozart felt misunderstood and his bad attitude was ultimately his undoing: a patriotic German through and through, Mozart openly antagonized the French and impugned French taste. He offended patrons left and right and refused to heed social etiquette; he even clung to excuses that Paris was too large, too filthy, and too expensive to get around in order to do the networking necessary to get ahead. Moreover, he took regular opportunities to insult his colleagues, who could otherwise have been championing Mozart’s music at salons and on concert series that they oversaw.

In short, those six months in Paris represented a critical, if difficult moment for the brilliant young composer. Les Délices’s program seeks to create a context for Mozart’s time in the City of Light by setting his beloved Quartet for oboe and strings (K.370) alongside composers whose music was all the rage: Quintets by Luigi Boccherini and Christoph Willibald Gluck are featured along with more unusual fare such as a string quartet by Giuseppe Cambini and a solo by the celebrated French cellist Jean-Louis Duport.

Les Délices (pronounced Lay day-lease) is “an early music ensemble with an avant-garde appetite” (New York Times). The group’s debut CD was named one of the “Top Ten Early Music Discoveries of 2009” (NPR’s Harmonia), and their performances have been called “a beguiling experience” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), “astonishing” (ClevelandClassical.com), and “first class” (Early Music America Magazine). Founded in Cleveland in 2009, Les Délices’s performances on period instruments allows them to explore a rich tapestry of tone colors. Les Délices has been featured on WCPN, WCLV and WKSU in Ohio, WQXR in New York, NPR’s syndicated Harmonia and Sunday Baroque, and had their debut CD featured on the Audio-guide for a special exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (Watteau, Music, and Theater). Les Délices made its New York debut before a sold-out audience at the Frick Collection in May 2010, and has performed for Music Before 1800 (New York), Early Music in Columbus, and at Miller Theater at Columbia University in recent seasons.