Category: Chamber Music

Now entering their second decade, the United States-based Hermitage Piano Trio has solidified its place as one of the world’s leading piano trios, garnering multiple GRAMMY Award nominations and receiving both audience and press accolades for their performances that the Washington Post singled out for “such power and sweeping passion that it left you nearly out of breath.”  Hallmarks of the Hermitage Piano Trio is their impeccable musicianship, sumptuous sound, and polished skill, which have led to demand for many repeat performances.

Program: Amy Beach​: Piano Trio, in A minor, Op. 150; Georgy Sviridov: ​​Trio in A minor, Op. 6;  Sergei Rachmaninoff: Trio No. 1 in G minor “Elégiaque”​​ & Vocalise​, Op. 34​​; Gaspar Cassadó: ​​Trio in C Major

The Van Kuijk Quartet’s international accolades boast First, Best Beethoven, and Best Haydn Prizes at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet competition; First Prize, and an Audience Award at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition; as well as becoming laureates of the Aix-en-Provence Festival Academy. They join one of the most versatile guitarists performing today, Sean Shibe, to present a Spanish-inspired program, including two masterworks in the guitar quintet repertoire.

Program: Mendelssohn: String Quartet Op. 80; Boccherini Guitar Quintet No. 4, Fandango; Adès: Habanera from The Exterminating Angel;  De Falla: Homenaje: Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy for Guitar, Poulenc: Sarabande; Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Guitar Quintet Op. 143

Drawn from the principal players of the world-renowned chamber orchestra Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, this “luminous, often breathtaking” (Washington Post) ensemble was created in 1967 to perform larger-scale works from the chamber music repertoire, such as wind trios and string octets. Directed by academy director/leader Tomo Keller, the ensemble has released over 30 recordings—more than any other chamber ensemble—of classical, romantic, and modern music from the last century.

Program: Purcell (arr. Britten): Chacony in G Minor; Brahm: Sextet in B-flat Major, Op. 18; Enesco: Octet for Strings

Distinguished by its virtuosic playing and impassioned interpretations, the Ariel Quartet has earned its glowing international reputation. Formed in Israel nearly twenty years ago, the Quartet was recently awarded the prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award. The Ariel serves as the Faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where they direct the rigorous chamber music program and perform their own annual series of concerts in addition to their busy touring schedule.

In honor of Beethoven’s sestercentennial in 2020, the Ariel Quartet will perform the complete Beethoven Cycle. This ArtPower exclusive video release includes six of the 16 Beethoven string quartets. The presentation of the complete Beethoven cycle concludes in 2021–22 season with a live performance by Ariel Quartet.

Program

Beethoven: String Quartet in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4
String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 74, no.10
String Quartet Op. 132

Cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist-composer Michael Brown have been hailed as “a pair of adventurous young talents” (Time Out New York) who “play with their antennae tuned to each other” (The Washington Post). Performing together throughout the world for more than a decade, they combine their unique talents to create a duo that combines masterpieces from the standard literature with original compositions and arrangements.

Canellakis and Brown are both artists with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. They are guest curators for series around the country including the 2021 Music@Menlo Winter Focus Residency, and at Chamber Music Sedona, where Canellakis is the Artistic Director. Both maintain active solo careers, performing recitals and concertos each season. Canellakis, hailed as a “superb young soloist” (The New Yorker), made his Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium debut as soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra. Brown, called a “young piano visionary,” is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and was a 2018 Emerging Artist of Lincoln Center. Brown is also a critically acclaimed composer who has written many works for Canellakis, and for such organizations as the Maryland and New Haven symphonies, the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, and Poland’s NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra. Canellakis is also a filmmaker and actor. He and Brown produce and star in a comedy web series called “Conversations with Nick Canellakis,” in which they conduct satirical interviews with stars of the classical music world.

Program

Claude Debussy: Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Minor
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19
Alberto Ginastera: Pampeana No. 2, Op. 21 (Rhapsody for Cello and Piano)
Gabriel Fauré: Nocturne No. 3 in A-flat Major, arr. Canellakis for Cello and Piano
Michael Brown: Prelude and Dance (2017)
Maurice Ravel: Alborada del gracioso, for solo piano
Paganini: Variations on a theme by Rossini (Moses in Egypt)
Don Ellis arr. Canellakis: Bulgarian Bulge

“Modern,” “dramatic,” “superb,” “wickedly attentive,” “with a hint of rock ‘n roll energy” are just a few ways critics describe the musical phenomenon that is the St Lawrence String Quartet. The SLSQ is renowned for the intensity of its performances, its breadth of repertoire, and its commitment to concert experiences that are at once intellectually exciting and emotionally alive.

Recent highlights include performances with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic and Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony in John Adams’s Absolute Jest for string quartet and orchestra, and the European premieres of Adams’s second string quartet. Fiercely committed to collaboration with living composers, the SLSQ’s fruitful partnership with Adams, Jonathan Berger, Osvaldo Golijov and many others has yielded some of the finest additions to the quartet literature in recent years. The Quartet is also especially dedicated to the music of Haydn, and are recording his groundbreaking set of six Op. 20 quartets in high-definition video for a free, universal release online in 2018. According to the New Yorker, “…no other North American quartet plays the music of Haydn with more intelligence, expressivity, and force…”

Established in Toronto in 1989, the SLSQ quickly earned acclaim at top international chamber music competitions and was soon playing hundreds of concerts per year worldwide. It established an ongoing residency at Spoleto Festival USA, made prize-winning recordings for EMI of music by Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Golijov, earning two Grammy nominations and a host of other prizes before being appointed ensemble-in-residence at Stanford University in 1998.

At Stanford, the SLSQ is at the forefront of intellectual life on campus. The SLSQ directs the music department’s chamber music program, and frequently collaborates with other departments including the Schools of Law, Medicine, Business and Education. The Quartet frequently performs at Stanford Live, hosts an annual chamber music seminar, and runs the Emerging String Quartet Program through which it mentors the next generation of young quartets. In the words of Alex Ross of the New Yorker: “The St. Lawrence are remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making, exalted as it is, but for the joy they take in the act of connection.”

Program

A collection dance music for string quartet
Franck: String Quartet in D Major

Praised for their “huge range of dynamics, massive sound and spontaneity” (American Record Guide), the Viano String Quartet has received top prizes at several national and international competitions. Formed in 2015 at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, where they are Ensemble in Residence through the 2020-21 season, the quartet has performed in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, SOKA Performing Arts Center, the Cerritos Center for Performing Arts; and with artists such as Emanuel Ax, Elisso Virsaladze, Paul Coletti, Martin Beaver and vocalist Hila Plitman.

The name “Viano” was created to describe the four individual instruments in a string quartet interacting as one. Each of the four instruments begins with the letter “v”, and like a piano, all the strings working together as a string quartet, play both harmony and melody, creating a unified instrument, called the “Viano”.

Program

Schulhoff: Five Pieces for String Quartet
Pärt: Fratres
Ginastera: String Quartet No. 1
Grieg: String Quartet No. 1