InterHarmony® International Music Festival presents a chamber music concert featuring pearls of the piano trio repertoire with Festival Founder Misha Quint (cello), and IIMF guest artists Andrzej Grabiec (violin) and Gerald Robbins (piano) on Sunday, March 13th at 5PM. The program is an illustration of the romantic tradition of the Piano Trio, performed by soloists, that brings to mind the famed Heifetz – Rubinstein – Piatigorky Trio. This is the final concert in the first season of the InterHarmony Palm Beach Series. For tickets call the box office at 561-362-0003 or order online with credit card at palmbeachestheatre.org.
About InterHarmony® International Music Festival
In existence for almost two decades, InterHarmony has become one of the important festivals worldwide, and the fastest growing. Anchored in Italy and Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Bavaria, Germany each summer, the festival boasts a new Outstanding Guest Artist Series that features stars such as Alfred Brendel and Vadim Repin. Now, fresh from a run at the InterHarmony Concert Series at Carnegie Hall in New York, IIMF's founder and cellist Misha Quint brings some of the best of these programs with him to Palm Beach. For more information about InterHarmony® International Music Festival, please visit www.interharmony.com.
The Music
Rachmaninoff's early Trio élégiaque No.1 in g minor, is a study in barely restrained yearning. The piano's rising four-note theme swims on a sea of thirty-second notes whipped up by the cello and violin. The mood shifts fluidly between melancholy desperation and wistful nostalgia, trapped in a cycle of longing, returning again and again to those four bittersweet notes, like a prayer.
Dvořák's "Dumky" trio (Piano Trio No.4 in e minor, Op.90) is a compact, but unforgettable musical odyssey. In this freely structured collection of six "dumky," Ukrainian ballads and laments, the cello, violin and piano sing the songs of a small people torn between great empires. This dark, Bohemian fantasy invites the listener deep into a forest of gnarled melodies, where sudden clearings open and mad dances whirl.
Shostakovich's Piano Trio, No.2 in e minor, Op.67 strikes a tragic tone. The year was 1944, the composer's good friend Ivan Sollertinsky had died and the country was nearing the end of hard war. Here, after the public bombast of his Leningrad symphony, was a private expression of doubt: anxiety for the future and sorrow for the past. Its premiere made a devastating impression – the audience wept openly and demanded encores. It was immediately banned.
PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES
Cellist MISHA QUINT made his orchestral debut at the age of 13 after winning first place in the Boccherini Competition in St. Petersburg. Some of the celebrated orchestras that Quint has performed with include: Orquestra Sinfônica do Teatro Nacional do Brasilia, The Metropolitan Symphony, New York Chamber Orchestra, The National Irish Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Hall, The Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Leningrad State Orchestra, Orchestra of Classical and Contemporary Music and the Symphony Orchestras of Latvia and Georgia. Quint has worked with an equally illustrious group of conductors, including Maxim Shostakovich, Paul Lustig Dunkel, Colman Pearce, Sidney Harth, Ravil Martinov, Camilla Kolchinsky, Yaacov Bergman, Franz Anton Krager and Ira Levin, and premiered works the most outstanding composers of today including Sophie Goubadalina, Robert Sirota, Steven Gerber, Thomas Fortmann, Nathan Davis, and Alfred Schnitke. Quint is an active chamber musician and has performed with such artists as Nikolai Znaider, Bela Davidovich, Bruno Canino, Sherban Lupu, Andrzej Grabiec, Boris Kushnir, and Mikhail Kopelman. Quint started founding music festivals in Europe in 1997 with the creation of The International Cello Festival in Blonay, Switzerland, followed by the Soesterberg International Music Festival in Holland in 1998. Quint established the InterHarmony Music Festival in Geneva, Switzerland in 2000, and has since moved iterations of the festival to San Francisco, The Berkshires in Massachusetts, Schwarzwald, Germany, Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Germany, and Tuscany, Italy, as well as the InterHarmony Concert Series at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Quint is currently on the faculty of the Preparatory Division at Mannes College The New School for Music, in Manhattan. Quint will release a new recording on the Blue Griffin Label called "Matryoshka Blues" in April 2016. www.mishaquintcello.com
Violinist ANDRZEJ GRABIEC, prizewinner at the Fifth International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poland (1967) and the International Jacques Thibaud Violin Competition in Paris, France (1969), made his debut with Opole Philharmonic Orchestra in Poland at age 14. He studied at the Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland, where he was later appointed Professor of Violin. He went on to become a soloist and concertmaster of the Great Symphony Orchestra of the Polish National Radio and Television and the leader of Capella per Musica da Camera. Grabiec became concertmaster at the Rochester Philhamonic, the Wichita Symphony Orchestra in Kansas, as well as Music Director of the Mozart Festival Chamber Orchestra. Grabiec became Professor of Violin at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston in 1995. He performed with the Houston Symphony in 1999, and is a founder and Artistic Co-Director of the Virtuosi of Houston. Invited by Australia's government, Grabiec served as Artistic Director of an Olympic Arts Tour throughout Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific Islands, where he also performed as a violin soloist and conductor in 1999. In 2002 Grabiec performed the world premiere of Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, "Seren", by American composer Peter Lieuwen, and was its dedicee. Grabiec made his Chinese debut in 2008 in Guangzhou, China with master classes and a performance of Saint-Saens Violin Concerto with the Xinghai Conservatory Symphony Orchestra. He has performed under conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Erich Leinsdorf, Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutoslawski, Kazimierz Kord, Mark Elder, and Erich Bergel and continues to teach and perform at a litany of music festivals around the world.
Pianist GERALD ROBBINS has distinguished himself internationally as a soloist having performed throughout the world in virtually every major music center including New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Bonn, Munich, Athens, Frankfurt, St. Petersburg, Belgrade, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo. He has appeared with many major orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, and its affiliates, London Mozart Players, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Portland Chamber Orchestra, with such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Sir Neville Marriner, Edouard van Remoortel, Harry Blech, Okku Kamu, Jorge Mester, Lawrence Foster, Kenneth Klein, Kypros Markou, Yaacov Bergman, and Louis Fremaux. A champion of neglected romantic repertoire, Gerald Robbins has received critical acclaim for his solo recordings on the London-Decca, Genesis, Orion, MSR Classics, Bridge, and Black Box labels, among others. His world premiere Genesis recordings of Litolff and Reinecke concerti, performed in collaboration with the Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra conducted by Edouard van Remoortel, elicited such praise as "Gerald Robbins's technical prowess is phenomenal", "a keyboard voice of true eloquence", "a first class bravura performance." In addition to his solo activities, Mr. Robbins has distinguished himself as a chamber musician in collaboration with many eminent musicians such as violinists Nathan Milstein, Aaron Rosand, Pinchas Zukerman, Ruggiero Ricci, Mark Peskanov, Bronislaw Gimpel, Kyung-Wha Chung, Mayumi Fujikawa, Haroutune Bedelian, Glenn Dicterow, and cellists, Zara Nelsova, Joseph Schuster, Nathaniel Rosen, Stephen Kates, Frederick Zlotkin, James Kreger, and Richard Markson, among many others. A co-founder with Glenn Dicterow of the Lyric Piano Quartet, Mr. Robbins records and tours with this ensemble. He is also an accomplished conductor and co-founder with Kenneth Klein, of the Westside Symphony Orchestra of Los Angeles now known as the Beverly Hills Symphony. He was a co-founder of the London Concertante, an ensemble that specialized in 18th and 19th century concerto repertoire. He has appeared as guest artist, several times over the years in Bargemusic, a distinguished chamber music series in Brooklyn, and as a guest artist with members of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in their celebrated chamber music series. Mr. Robbins received many important awards throughout his career including a major prize at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. During his studies at the University of Southern California, where he received his Bachelors and Masters degrees, he assisted as pianist for the string master classes of Jascha Heifetz, William Primrose, and Gregor Piatigorsky. He is presently living in New York where he is an Artist-in-Residence with the Lyric Piano Quartet at Queens College CUNY, and is on the faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is affiliated with the Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale, NY, and is a member of the chamber music faculty at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City.
Program
Rachmaninoff: Trio élégiaque No.1 in g minor Dvořák: Piano Trio No.4, Op.90 Dumky Shostakovich: Piano Trio No.2
Andrzej Grabiec, violin
Misha Quint, cello
Gerald Robbins, piano
Tickets are $40 and can be purchased by calling the box office at 561-362-0003 of Palm Beaches Theatre or online at palmbeachestheatre.org. The Palm Beaches Theatre is located at 250 South Ocean Blvd. Manalapan, FL 33462-3312.
Cellist Misha Quint Breaks Boundaries Between Instruments, Genres, and Cultures in Mirages et Passages at New InterHarmony® Series Opening at Palm Beaches Theatre on January 30 at 7PM
InterHarmony® International Music Festival opens a new concert series in the most exciting location of Palm Beach, Florida area. The inaugural concert will feature Founder and Music Director Misha Quint in a cello recital on January 30, 2016 at 7PM at Palm Beaches Theatre. The pianist for the evening will be Irina Nuzova. They will present a program of music that pushes the limits of the cello repertoire, questioning the boundaries between instruments, genres and cultures. The InterHarmony Palm Beach Series continues on March 13th, with a chamber music concert featuring pearls of the piano trio repertoire with Misha Quint (cello), with special guests Andrzej Grabiec (violin) and Gerald Robbins (piano). For tickets call the box office at 561-362-0003 or order online with credit card at palmbeachestheatre.org.
About InterHarmony® International Music Festival
In existence for almost 2 decades, InterHarmony has become one of the important festivals worldwide, and the fastest growing. Anchored in Tuscany, Italy and Bavaria, Germany each summer, the festival boasts a new Outstanding Guest Artist Series that features stars such as Alfred Brendel and Vadim Repin. Now, fresh from a run at the InterHarmony Concert Series at Carnegie Hall in New York, IIMF's founder and cellist Misha Quint brings some of the best of these programs with him to Palm Beach. For more information about InterHarmony® International Music Festival, please visit www.interharmony.com.
About the Program: Mirages et Passages
Classical music is anything but static. With time, technique and, above all, inspiration, what was once unimaginable becomes a reality on stage. Join Quint and Nuzova as they show how the possibilities of cello music have expanded by incorporating other repertoires and cultures in a search for beauty, wherever it might be. The January 30 concert features pieces originally written for other instruments (like Schnittke's Suite in an Old Style and the Franck Sonata), music from ballets and operas (Prokofiev's "Adagio" from Cinderella and Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee), and works of cultural cross-pollination (Shchedrin's Russian tango, "In the Style of Albéniz," and Bruch's Kol Nidrei, which enriched the Romantic idiom with Jewish melodies). On March 13th, he returns with Grabiec and Robbins to offer a stormy program of "Quintessential Trios" by Dvořák, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich in a Sunday matinee concert at 5pm.
The Music
One of the 19th century's most important cellists, Karl Davidov contributed much to the technical wizardry of the Russian school. But his Romance sans Paroles is a work of pure lyricism, an unabashedly romantic melody that stakes the cello's claim to the territory of the human voice itself.
It is unclear what instrument César Franck originally intended for his Sonata in A major; he decided only when he needed a wedding present for his friend, the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Still, this sonata, which secured Franck's reputation among audiences and critics, is an even greater success on the cello, due to the drama and contrasting colors of the cello's high and low registers.
Alfred Schnittke's Suite in the Old Style is an elegant collection of five pastoral dance movements, like the Baroque suites of Handel and Bach. It begins with winning naïveté, offering the audience only the slightest of glimpses behind its innocent mask before dissolving into unperturbed beauty again.
In Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei, the cello imitates the rhapsodic voice of a hazzan, chanting the liturgy in the synagogue, a penitential sigh. A German romantic composer from a Lutheran background, Bruch became friends with Abraham Jacob Lichtenstein, the head cantor of Berlin, whose artistry inspired him to incorporate Jewish themes into his own work.
Rodion Shchedrin's In the Style of Albéniz is a tribute to Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz, who, like Shchedrin, synthesized folk traditions with classical music. Without ever explicitly quoting Albéniz, Shchedrin creates "a kind of a 'tangissimo,'" cooking Albéniz's music down to its very essence and amplifying its inherent dramatic into something passionate, free and wild.
Prokofiev excerpted a duet from his popular ballet Cinderella and arranged it for the cellist Alexander Stogorsky. Moving throughout the instrument's range with a variety of textures, from stormy double stops to airy wisps of melody, the emotional intimacy of the duet is transferred to the musicians.
Rimsky-Korsakov's fairy-tale opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan may now be largely forgotten, but The Flight of the Bumblebee from its third act is instantly recognizable. Its frantic flights of fancy, vividly realistic and stunningly difficult, have become practically synonymous with virtuosity.
PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES
Cellist MISHA QUINT made his orchestral debut at the age of 13 after winning first place in the Boccherini Competition in St. Petersburg. Some of the celebrated orchestras that Quint has performed with include: Orquestra Sinfônica do Teatro Nacional do Brasilia, The Metropolitan Symphony, New York Chamber Orchestra, The National Irish Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Hall, The Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Leningrad State Orchestra, Orchestra of Classical and Contemporary Music and the Symphony Orchestras of Latvia and Georgia. Quint has worked with an equally illustrious group of conductors, including Maxim Shostakovich, Paul Lustig Dunkel, Colman Pearce, Sidney Harth, Ravil Martinov, Camilla Kolchinsky, Yaacov Bergman, Franz Anton Krager and Ira Levin, and premiered works the most outstanding composers of today including Sophie Goubadalina, Robert Sirota, Steven Gerber, Thomas Fortmann, Nathan Davis, and Alfred Schnitke. Quint is an active chamber musician and has performed with such artists as Nikolai Znaider, Bela Davidovich, Bruno Canino, Sherban Lupu, Andrzej Grabiec, Yuri Gandelsman, Boris Kushnir, and Mikhail Kopelman. Quint started founding music festivals in Europe in 1997 with the creation of The International Cello Festival in Blonay, Switzerland, followed by the Soesterberg International Music Festival in Holland in 1998. Quint established the InterHarmony Music Festival in Geneva, Switzerland in 2000, and has since moved iterations of the festival to San Francisco, the Berkshires in Massachusettes, Schwarzwald, Germany, Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Germany, and Tuscany, Italy, as well as the InterHarmony Concert Series at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Quint is currently on the faculty of the Preparatory Division at Mannes College The New School for Music, in Manhattan. Quint will release a new recording on the Blue Griffin Label called "Matryoshka Blues" in January 2016. www.mishaquintcello.com
Winner of numerous international prizes and awards, IRINA NUZOVA has appeared in recital as a soloist and as a chamber musician in the United States, Europe, and South America. In Europe she performed at the Amici della Musica concert series in Florence, at the Hermitage State Museum in St. Petersburg, the Moscow Conservatory, Germany, Romania, and in the Netherlands, and In the USA at the Phillips Collection and National Gallery in Washington D.C., Weill Recital Hall in New York, Gardner Museum in Boston, Music in the Parks Series in St.Paul. Ms. Nuzova has appeared in live radio interviews and live broadcasts on Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC radio stations. A native of Moscow, Russia, Ms. Nuzova studied at the Gnessin Academy of Music under the guidance of Alexander Satz before moving to the United States. Ms. Nuzova holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School. She earned her Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the Hartt School of Music. A devoted teacher, Ms. Nuzova was invited to join the Piano Faculty at the Special School of America in 2013, where she teaches individual students and chamber music. Ms. Nuzova was part of a Duo-in –Residence at the Music Institute of Chicago with the cellist Wendy Warner. Ms. Nuzova gave Master Classes at the Schwob School of Music in Columbus, GA and at the Music Institute of Chicago and serves regularly as a jury panelist at piano competitions around the USA. During the summer, Ms. Nuzova teaches at the InterHarmony International Music Festival in Italy. She is a member of the Camerata Phillips, the chamber ensemble in residence of the Phillips Collection Gallery in Washington DC.
Program
Davidov (1838 – 1889): Romance sans paroles, Op.23
Franck (1822 – 1890): Sonata for Cello and Piano
Schnittke (1934 – 1998): Suite in the Old Style
Bruch (1838 – 1920): Kol Nidrei, Op.47
Rodion Shchedrin (b 1932): In the Style of Albeniz for cello and piano
Prokofiev (1891 – 1953): Adagio, Op.97bis
Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 – 1908): Flight of the Bumblebee
Tickets are $40 and can be purchased by calling the box office at 561-362-0003 of Palm Beaches Theatre or online at palmbeachestheatre.org. The Palm Beaches Theatre is located at 250 South Ocean Blvd. Manalapan, FL 33462-3312.
