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ERIN KEEFE, VIOLIN Winner of the 2006 Avery Fisher Career Grant, American violinist Erin Keefe is quickly establishing a reputation and earning praise as a compelling artist who combines exhilarating temperament and fierce integrity. A top prize winner of several International Competitions, she recently took the Grand Prizes in the 2007 Torun International Violin Competition (Poland), the 2006 Schadt Competition, and the Corpus Christi International String Competition, and was the Silver Medalist in the Carl Nielsen, Sendai (Japan), and Gyeongnam (Korea) International Violin Competitions, resulting in performances and immediate re-engagements in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Ms. Keefe has appeared in recent seasons with orchestras such as the New Mexico Symphony, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, the Allentown Symphony, the Sendai Philharmonic, the Suwon Philharmonic, the Torun Symphony Orchestra, and the Odense Symphony Orchestra, and has given recitals in the United States, Austria, Germany, Korea, Poland, Japan, and Denmark. During the 2008–09 season, she will make her concerto and recital debuts in cities throughout Poland, Germany, and Japan. Ms. Keefe has collaborated with many leading artists of today including the Emerson String Quartet, Roberto and Andres Diaz, Edgar Meyer, Gary Graffman, Richard Goode, David Soyer, Colin Carr, Menahem Pressler, Leon Fleisher, and William Preucil. She also performed on a program with Michael Tilson Thomas premiering his own chamber music at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. Her recording credits include Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet with Ida Kavafian, Paul Neubauer, Fred Sherry, and Jennifer Welch-Babidge for Robert Craft and the Naxos Label, recordings of the Dvorak Terzetto and the Dvorak Piano Quartet in E-flat with David Finckel and Wu Han for the CMS Studio Recording label as well as live performances of the Bartok Contrasts, Dvorak Piano Quintet, and Mozart E-flat Piano Quartet recorded for Deutsche Gramophone. Ms. Keefe’s festival appearances have included the Marlboro Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Music from Angel Fire, Ravinia, and the Seattle, OK Mozart, Mimir, Music in the Vineyards, and Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festivals. As a member of Lincoln Center’s prestigious Chamber Music Society Two program for the 2006–09 seasons, Ms. Keefe will appear in numerous programs at Lincoln Center as well as on tour throughout the U.S. In January of 2008, she and other artist members were featured on “Live from Lincoln Center” playing Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht. She has performed with the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society and appears regularly with the Boston Chamber Music Society. Ms. Keefe earned a Master of Music Degree from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Music Degree from The Curtis Institute. Her teachers included Ronald Copes, Ida Kavafian, Arnold Steinhardt, Philip Setzer, Philipp Naegele, and Teri Einfeldt.

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PAUL JACOBS, ORGAN The only organist ever to have won a GRAMMY Award (for Messiaen’s “Livre du Saint-Sacrement”), Paul Jacobs transfixes audiences, colleagues and critics alike with imaginative interpretations and charismatic stage presence. Hailed as “one of the major musicians of our time” by the New Yorker’s Alex Ross, Mr. Jacobs has been an important influence in the revival of symphonic works featuring the organ, drawing from his deep knowledge of western music to enlighten listeners, and is a true innovator in the advocacy of organ repertoire, performing and encouraging the composition of new works that feature the organ. Paul Jacobs made his mark from a young age with landmark performances of the complete works for solo organ by J.S. Bach and Messiaen, making musical history at the age of 23 when he played Bach’s complete organ works in an 18-hour marathon performance on the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. A fierce advocate of new music, Jacobs has premiered works by Christopher Rouse, Samuel Adler, Mason Bates, Michael Daugherty, Wayne Oquin, Stephen Paulus, and Christopher Theofanidis, among others. He is a vocal proponent of the redeeming nature of traditional and contemporary classical music in his roles as Chair of the Organ Department at The Juilliard School and Director of the Organ Institute at the Oregon Bach Festival. Paul Jacobs begins his 2017/18 season with a concert at the Toledo Museum of Art performing Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Organ and Percussion with Third Coast Percussion in a centennial celebration of Lou Harrison, followed by Shanghai, China where he is President of the Jury of the first Shanghai International Organ Competition, an especially important milestone in the development of organ playing in Asia. He will also be presented in recital at the Oriental Arts Center. He returns twice to the Philadelphia Orchestra, first for Wayne Oquin’s “Resilience” which was written for Paul Jacobs and later for James MacMillan’s organ concerto, “A Scotch Bestiary”. He also appears twice with the Cleveland Orchestra, in the fall with Giancarlo Guerrero conducting Stephen Paulus’s Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra and returns in the spring for their week-long festival celebrating Tristan and Isolde. He is organ soloist in Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony with the Chicago Symphony and the Utah Symphony and presents solo recitals in San Francisco at Davies Symphony Hall, in Sacramento, Tampa, Houston, Baylor University and Pittsburgh among others. In the 2016/17 season Paul Jacobs played world premiere performances of Christopher Rouse’s Organ Concerto, dedicated to him in 2014, with three commissioning partners, the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin, the National Symphony conducted by Gustavo Gimeno and the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by David Robertson. He appears frequently in New York, and has been presented twice at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival, the first time at the inaugural 2010 Festival performing J.S. Bach’s monumental Clavier-Ubung III and the 2015 edition with world-renowned soprano Christine Brewer in a program of their Naxos release, “Divine Redeemer” He and Ms. Brewer also presented their duo program on tour to Disney Hall in Los Angeles, Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, the St. Louis Cathedral-Basilica and Spivey Hall in Atlanta. With the Nashville Symphony, Giancarlo Guerrero conducting, he performed and recorded Michael Daugherty’s Once Upon a Castle, included on the Naxos disc of works by Daugherty, Tales of Hemingway, awarded the 2016 GRAMMY for Best Classical Compendium. In addition to the above, Paul Jacobs is a frequent concerto and recital soloist featuring the concert organs of the San Francisco Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, the Edmonton Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Lexington Philharmonic, the Dallas Symphony, the Seattle Symphony and the Toledo Symphony. Prodigiously talented from his earliest years, at 15 young Jacobs was appointed head organist of a parish of 3,500 in his hometown, Washington, Pennsylvania. He has also performed the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen in marathon performances throughout North America, and recently reached the milestone of having performed in each of the fifty United States. In addition to his recordings of Messiaen and Daugherty on Naxos, Mr. Jacobs has recorded organ concerti by Lou Harrison and Aaron Copland with the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas on the orchestra’s own label, SFS Media. Mr. Jacobs studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, double-majoring with John Weaver for organ and Lionel Party for harpsichord, and at Yale University with Thomas Murray. He joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in 2003, and was named chairman of the organ department in 2004, one of the youngest faculty appointees in the school’s history. He received Juilliard’s prestigious William Schuman Scholar’s Chair in 2007 and an honorary Doctor of Music from Washington and Jefferson College in 2017. In addition to his concert and teaching appearances, Mr. Jacobs is a frequent performer at festivals across the world, and has appeared on American Public Media’s Performance Today, Pipedreams, and Saint Paul Sunday, as well as NPR’s Morning Edition, ABC-TV’s World News Tonight, and BBC Radio 3.

November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937) Preludes November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano On Saturday afternoon, December 4, 1926, at the Hotel Roosevelt, Gershwin performed five preludes for piano on the first of several recitals with contralto Marguerite d’Alvarez. (For more about Gershwin’s background as a composer of songs and shows, see “American Songbook below.”) Two of these preludes had been published as Short Story, two “novelettes” for violin and piano, after violinist Samuel Dushkin had seen them in one of Gershwin’s notebooks marked “Preludes” and been given permission to make them into violin and piano pieces for a 1925 recital. Neither the five piano preludes nor the violin-piano arrangements attracted much attention. The five preludes plus a sixth, which Gershwin performed when the recital was repeated in Boston the following month, formed part of a project he had had in mind for some time: a set of twenty-four piano preludes to be called The Melting Pot. (The sixth was never written down in final form.) Although he abandoned the larger project, he published three of the preludes as a set, which has since become an established part of the repertoire. He dedicated them to his friend composer-conductor-pianist-arranger Bill Daly. This afternoon we hear the first two of the set, both heavily influenced by jazz. A bluesy syncopated five-note motive opens the first Prelude and serves as the building material for the piece’s jazzy rhythmic dance. Gershwin once called the second Prelude “a sort of blue lullaby,” and indeed it unfolds as a kind of nocturne over a repeating pattern. Following a new middle section with the melody in the bass, the languid opening returns. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 9, 2025: Ravel’s 150th Birthday Concert, with Erika Baikoff, Soprano; Soohong Park, piano Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Manteau de fleurs for soprano and piano Ballade de la reine morte d’aimer for soprano and piano March 9, 2025: Ravel’s 150th Birthday Concert, with Erika Baikoff, Soprano; Soohong Park, piano Ravel is one of the most famous composers never to win the prestigious annual Prix de Rome administered by the Paris Conservatory, though he entered five times. Even though he was often a blatant frontrunner, corruption within the judging system, especially in their dismissal of his non-traditional harmonic style, eventually brought reform, but his third loss in 1903 brought with his dejection a need to take on some commissions purely for money. One of these, “Manteau des fleurs” (Cloak of flowers) meant he had to set a text by actor Paul Gravollet (pseudonym for Paul Barthélemy Jeulin), who somehow convinced twenty-two composers to set poems of his for a collection published in December 1905 under the title Les frissons . Ravel took pleasure in employing whole-tone chords and consecutive ninths that he had avoided for the Prix. Does the persistence of pink now resonate more with the 2024 Barbie revival craze? The “Ballade de la reine morte d’aimer” (Ballad of the queen who died of love) is one of Ravel’s earliest song settings, written in 1893 just around the time when composing came to the forefront of Ravel’s career path alongside piano. It also coincided with his acquaintance with non-establishment figure Erik Satie. The text by Belgian writer Roland de Mar allowed Ravel to delve not only into Satie’s aesthetic as seen in his Trois mélodies (1887), but to invoke archaic-sounding fifths and especially the “great bells of Bohemia and the little bells of Thule.” Bell imagery would take on great significance in Ravel=s later works. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Texts and Translations Manteau des fleurs Toutes les fleurs de mon jardin sont roses, Le rose sied à sa beauté. Les primevères sont les premières écloses, Puis viennent les tulipes et les jacinthes roses, Les jolis oeillets, les si belles roses, Toute la variété des fleurs si roses Du printemps et de l’été! Le rose sied à sa beauté! Toutes mes pivoines sont roses, Roses aussi sont mes glaïeuls, Roses mes géraniums; seuls, Dans tout ce rose un peu troublant, Les lys ont le droit d’être blancs. Et quand elle passe au milieu des fleurs Emperlées de rosée en pleurs, Dans le parfum grisant des roses, Et sous la caresse des choses Tout grâce, amour, pureté! Les fleurs lui font un manteau rose Dont elle pare sa beauté. —Paul Gravollet Ballade de la reine morte d=aimer En Bohême était une Reine, Douce soeur du Roi de Thulé, Belle entre toutes les Reines, Reine par sa toute Beauté. Le grand Trouvère de Bohême Un soir triste d’automne roux Lui murmura le vieux: je t’aime! Âmes folles et cœurs si fous! Et la Très Belle toute blanche Ballad of the Queen Who Died of Love In Bohemia there once was a queen, sweet sister to the king of Thule, beautiful among all other queens, queen by her beauty alone. The great Bohemian trouvère one sad evening in red autumn murmured to her the old: “I love you!” Crazy souls and such mad hearts! And the all-white Pure Beauty the gentle poet loved so much that at that instant her white soul expired toward the stars. The great bells of Bohemia and the little bells of Thule pealed the supreme hosanna of the queen who died of love. Cloak of Flowers All the flowers in my garden are pink, pink suits her beauty. The primroses are the first to bloom, then come the tulips and the pink hyacinths, The pretty carnations, such beautiful roses, all the varieties of such pink flowers of spring and summer! Pink suits her beauty! All my peonies are pink, pink also are my gladioli, pink my geraniums; however, in all this disturbing pinkness, the lilies have the right to be white. And when she passes through the flowers pearly with teardrops of dew, among the heady perfume of roses, and under the caress of these things all is grace, love, purity! The flowers make her a pink cloak with which she adorns her beauty. Le doux Poète tant aima Que sur l’heure son âme blanche Vers les étoiles s’exhala. Les grosses cloches de Bohême Et les clochettes de Thulé Chantèrent l’hosana suprême De la Reine morte d’aimer. —Roland de Mar Return to Parlance Program Notes

March, 10 2024: Richard Goode, piano LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) The Diabelli Variations, Op. 120 March, 10 2024: Richard Goode, piano Before I became head program annotator at the Aspen Music Festival, I had the great privilege of working closely with my predecessor, the extremely knowledgeable music historian, philosopher, and writer Kurt Oppens. In addition to becoming acquainted with thousands of his program notes and essays, I had the honor of coediting a collection of favorites (see below) that included the following note, reprinted for his substantive and insightful perspective on this beloved masterwork. —Jane Vial Jaffe Anton Diabelli was a businessman, a music publisher, and a minor composer in his own right; some of his piano duets for beginners are still around and occasionally taught and practiced. In 1819 he committed a waltz theme to paper, intending to use it for a publicity stunt. This is the story as related by Thayer (1964): Anton Diabelli, a partner in the firm of Cappi and Diabelli, invited a number of composers to contribute a variation on a waltz theme of his own for a collection to be entitled Vaterländischer Kunstverein (Patriotic Art Society). The invitations were presumably made in 1819. According to Schindler,1 Beethoven at first refused the invitation. However, by early 1819 Beethoven had made sketches for four different variations, which come just before the preliminary sketches for the “Kyrie” of the Missa solemnis . Beethoven did his main work on the variations in 1822, and the full thirty-three variations were completed by March or April, 1823. To quote Thayer: “The Variations [Beethoven’s] were advertised as published on June 16, 1824 . . . were republished in June, 1824, as Part 1 of Diabelli’s Vaterländischer Künstlerverein ,2 subtitled “Variations for the Pianoforte on a theme composed by the most select composers and virtuosi of Vienna and the R. I. Austrian State.” Part 2 consisted of 50 variations by 50 different composers.” Among these fifty were Liszt, who was twelve years old in 1823; Schubert; and the Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven’s most highly placed patron and student. The story is interesting, because it illustrates the popularity of serious musical procedures, such as the variation. We also note a stunning incongruity of cause and effect: Diabelli’s enterprise, essentially a commercial gimmick, turning out to be the “breeding ground” for one of Beethoven’s greatest masterpieces. Beethoven’s attitude toward Diabelli’s proposal and Diabelli’s theme was curiously ambiguous. He refused at first to participate, and he derided the theme because of its rosalias, or sequences (repetition of motives on different pitches), for which he used the popular term “Schusterfleck” (cobbler’s patch). Moving on by the way of sequences was considered to be a cheap way out for composers—how would Beethoven have reacted to the scores of Wagner and Bruckner? As time moved on, though, the theme completely obsessed and engulfed him, and this development poses two questions for us: Why did Beethoven reject the theme? Why did he later on become so profoundly involved in it? Diabelli’s theme has been well-nigh buried under a shower of invectives since its inception. Yet it is neither banal nor vulgar nor overly simple; in fact, there is nothing at all the matter with it, which becomes quite evident whenever it is played as a waltz and not rattled off in the insane presto tempo that some pianists, influenced by the “vivace” designation, consider appropriate. But it is devoid of poetic and emotional content, and that makes it seem poor in comparison to the unbelievable metamorphoses it undergoes in Beethoven’s hands. Beethoven’s variations also reflect a curious imbalance in the theme in regard to its harmonic progressions. Four bars of the tonic (C major) are followed by four bars of the dominant (G major), after which come several tonic-dominant (1-V) progressions (passing modulations, the rosalias) in short succession. In view of the crowding of the I-Vs starting at the ninth bar, the extended I-V at the beginning becomes an acute embarrassment to the composer. He has to supply it with sufficient interest, intentionality, and dynamism, to lead us into the modulatory part without a break, which meant covering up its basically primitive nature by all possible means. This was the difficulty, this was the challenge—and, interestingly, it was generated by the compositional process itself. Diabelli’s initial I-V progression is completely innocuous and acceptable; it became a problem only when Beethoven began to make it meaningful. Out of this difficulty arose the most consistently maintained flow of high-intensity musical poetry ever to grace a cycle of variations. It is impossible to specify within a short space Beethoven’s unbelievable rhythmic, dramatic, lyrical, or contrapuntal exploits in this work; it is equally impossible to tell all he does with the original theme. All this would be the fit subject of a by no means small book.3 I can mention merely a few of the most obvious features of the cycle: There are no “ornamental” variations, in the old sense of the word, to be found (i.e., variations that merely embellish the theme without changing it). Beethoven includes, however, a small number of “reductive” variations which present the theme contracted to its very essentials (in Variations 13 and 20). Counterpoint is all-pervasive; imitation and canon techniques are applied to a considerable percentage of the variations. One variation refers to and quotes Mozart’s Don Giovanni (No. 24). Some of the variations display virtuosic or etude features, others recall one or the other of the Bagatelles, op. 119. Occasionally we find them paired (one variation continues the motion of the preceding one, or it repeats a dominant feature in a different manner). In devising the cycle, Beethoven does not seem to have followed a meticulously laid-out architectural ground plan. His scenario is dramatic in character: each variation continues where the last one left off; due to the generative power in each individual piece, we are kept breathless, in a state of permanent excitement as if we were exposed to a highly charged sequence of operatic scenes. There are, though, pauses or retardations; at these points we have to collect ourselves and make a new beginning. After the relentless piling-up of drama that precedes it, the Variation 20, an extremely slow piece consisting only of held-out chords, is a veritable test of nerves for the listener. The cycle has a distinctly marked-out finale area, which is characterized by a general easing of tensions and intensities. No. 24 is a fughetta, No. 32 a double fugue (one of Beethoven’s greatest, i.e., most natural-sounding); the traditional contrapuntal forms have a comparatively quiet character even when they appear at their liveliest, because of their tendency toward an even flow of notes and the absence of rhythmic shocks. The thirty-first variation, Largo molto espressivo, is an ornamented paraphrase of the theme, which proceeds with leisure; obviously the heat is over. At the very end, a completely relaxed minuet leads into a “calm of mind, all passion spent” coda. —©Kurt Oppens, Kurt Oppens on Music: Notes and Essays for the Aspen Music Festival, 1957–1955, edited by Nancy G. Thomas and Jane Vial Jaffe, 2009; first printed 1981; reprinted by permission. 1. Schindler was Beethoven’s student, famulus, and “whipping boy.” 2. Kunstverein (Society for the Arts) had changed into Künstlerverein (Society of Artists); the vaterländisch in both headings reflects the chauvinistic atmosphere in post-Napoleonic Germany and Austria. 3. Eds. William Kinderman’s 230-page nook, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations , appeared in 1987. Return to Parlance Program Notes

PETER WASHINGTON, JAZZ BASS Perhaps the most recorded bassist of his generation, Peter Washington has also played an integral part in two of the most important and highly praised jazz trios of the last 20 years, in addition to a “who’s who” roster of jazz artists. Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1964, Washington attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in English Literature and played in both the UC Symphony and the San Francisco Youth Symphony. In 1986, while performing in San Francisco with alto saxophonist John Handy, he was asked by Art Blakey to move to New York and join the seminal Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Washington remained with the Jazz Messengers from 1986 to 1989, and during this time was able to establish himself as a ubiquitous, first- call freelance bassist; a position he has occupied to this day. In the early 1990’s Washington joined the Tommy Flanagan Trio , called by many “the greatest trio in jazz”, and remained until Flanagan’s death, in 2002. For the past ten years he has been a member of the very highly acclaimed Bill Charlap Trio. In addition to these long- term commitments Washington has worked and recorded with an extremely large number of top- tier artists, of all generations. A partial list of those he has recorded and performed “live” with would include Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Golson. Freddie Hubbard, Donald Byrd, Benny Carter, Hank Jones, Milt Jackson, Bobby Hutcherson, Kenny Burrell, Phil Woods, Cedar Walton, Joe Henderson, Ray Bryant, Frank Wess, Clark Terry, Lionel Hampton, Charles McPherson, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath, Jimmy Cobb, Louis Hayes, the Newport All Stars, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, Gerald Wilson,Lou Donaldson, Barry Harris, Lew Tabakin, Sweets Edison, Johnny Griffin, Jackie McLean, Sir Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony, Richard Wyands, Teddy Edwards, Johnny Coles, Frank Morgan, and more… Of the younger generations, Washington has recorded and performed with Mulgrew Miller, Tom Harrell, the Brecker Brothers, Don Grolnick, David Sanchez, Eric Alexander, Benny Green, Javon Jackson, Brian Lynch, David Hazeltine, One For All, Steve Nelson, James Carter, Renee Rosnes, Steve Turre, Regina Carter, Kenny Washington, Grant Stewart, Robin Eubanks, Joe Magnarelli, Geoff Keezer, Billy Drummond, Jeremy Pelt, Ryan Kisor, Walt Weisokopf, and many, many others. Peter Washington has also enjoyed associtions with vocalists as diverse as Andy Bey, Freddie Cole, Karrin Allyson, Chris Conner, Mark Murphy, Georgie Fame, Ernie Andrews, Paula West, Eric Comstock, Anne Hampton Calloway, Marlena Shaw, and Ernestine Anderson. A complete discography would list, as of this writing, over 350 recordings, and is expanded on a weekly and monthly basis. In the scope and breadth of his career thus far, his adaptability, and in his emphasis on creative, supportive, swiging time- playing as well as inventive and intelligent soloing, Washington has been compared to the likes of George Duvivier, Milt Hinton, and Ron Carter.

NATHAN GUNN, BARITONE Nathan Gunn has made a reputation as one of the most exciting and in-demand baritones of the day. He has appeared in internationally renowned opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Seattle Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Paris Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Bilboa, and the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. His many roles include the title roles in Billy Budd, Eugene Onegin, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and Hamlet, Guglielmo in Cosí fan tutte, the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro, Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucetia, Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Belcore in L’Elisir d’Amore, and Ottone in L’incoronazione di Poppea. A frequent interpreter of new works, Mr. Gunn created the role of Paul in the world premiere of Daron Hagen’s Amelia at the Seattle Opera. He also created the roles of Alec Harvey in André Previn’s Brief Encounter at the Houston Grand Opera, Father Delura in Peter Eötvös’ Love and Other Demons at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, and Clyde Griffiths in Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedyat the Metropolitan Opera. Also a distinguished concert performer, Mr. Gunn has appeared the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Münchner Rundfunkorchster, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. The many conductors with whom he has worked with include, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Daniel Harding, James Levine, Kurt Masur, Kent Nagano, Antonio Pappano, Donald Runnicles, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Mark Wigglesworth.

A frequent recitalist, Mr. Gunn has been presented in recital at Alice Tully Hall by both Lincoln Center’s Art of the Song Series and the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society; and by Carnegie Hall in Zankel Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, Cal Performances, the Schubert Club, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Vocal Arts Society in Washington, DC, the University of Chicago, the Krannert Center, the Wigmore Hall, and the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. As a student, he performed in series of recitals with his teacher and mentor John Wustman that celebrated the 200th anniversary of Franz Schubert’s birth.

Mr. Gunn has recently ventured outside the standard opera repertoire with appearances in performances of Camelotwith the New York Philharmonic (broadcast live on PBS’s Great Performances) and Showboat at Carnegie Hall. He was also a featured soloist in the New York Philharmonic’s 80th birthday gala celebration for Stephen Sondheim and appeared with Sting and Trudie Styler in the Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center in Twin Spirits, a work that explores the relationship between Clara and Robert Schumann. Mr. Gunn’s solo album, Just Before Sunrise, was released on Sony/BMG Masterworks. Other recordings include the title role in Billy Budd with Daniel Harding and the London Symphony Orchestra (Virgin Classics), which won the 2010 Grammy Award; the first complete recording of Rogers & Hammerstein’s Allegro (Sony’s Masterworks Broadway), Peter Grimes with Sir Colin Davis and London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live!) which was nominated for a 2005 Grammy Award, Il Barbiere di Siviglia (SONY Classics),Kullervo with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (Telarc), and American Anthem (EMI). He also starred as Buzz Aldrin in Man on the Moon, an opera written specifically for television and broadcast on the BBC in the UK. The program was awarded the Golden Rose Award for Opera at the Montreux Festival in Lucerne. This season, Mr. Gunn returned to the Metropolitan Opera for Cosí fan tutte and The Magic Flute, and made his debut at the Theater an der Wien in The Rape of Lucretia. Upcoming engagements include cabaret shows at the famous Café Carlyle in New York City and at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, andevening of song with Kelli O’Hara and the New York Philharmonic, a concert with Mandy Patinkin at the Ravinia Festival, and his debuts at the Teatro Real in Madrid in Le Nozze di Figaro and the Cincinnati Opera in Eugene Onegin,. Next season he returns to the Metropolitan Opera for Billy Budd, the Lyric Opera of Chicago for Showboat, the Houston Grand Opera for Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and the San Francisco Opera for Die Zauberflöte. Mr. Gunn was the recipient of the first annual Beverly Sills Artist Award, and was awarded the Pittsburgh Opera Renaissance Award. He is an alumnus of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artists Program and was the winner of the 1994 Metropolitan Opera National Council Competition. Mr. Gunn is also an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana where he is currently a professor of voice.

GLORIA CHIEN, PIANO Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. She was subsequently selected by the The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Phillips Collection, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo by Artistic Directors, David Finckel and Wu Han, a position she held for the next decade. In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became artistic directors at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, OR in 2020. They were named recipients of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Award for Extraordinary Service in 2021 for their efforts during the pandemic. Chien received her bachelor, masters and doctoral degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She is Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and she is a Steinway Artist.

SEAN LEE, VIOLIN Violinist Sean Lee has attracted audiences around the world with his lively performances of the classics. A recipient of the 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Lee enjoys a multifaceted career as both performer and educator. Embracing the legacy of his late teacher, Ruggiero Ricci, Lee is one of the few violinists who perform Niccolò Paganini’s 24 Caprices in concert, and his YouTube series, Paganini POV, continues to draw attention for its new perspective and insight for aspiring young violinists. As an artist at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Lee continues to perform regularly in New York City at Lincoln Center, as well as on tour in the 2016-17 season across the United States and Asia. Lee has called New York City home since moving at the age of seventeen to study at the Juilliard School with his longtime mentor, violinist Itzhak Perlman. He currently teaches at the Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division, as well as the Perlman Music Program, where he was a student. Lee performs on a violin originally made for violinist Ruggiero Ricci in 1999, by David Bague.

PETER SERKIN, PIANO Recognized as an artist of passion and integrity, the distinguished American pianist Peter Serkin has successfully conveyed the essence of five centuries of repertoire. His inspired performances with symphony orchestras, in recital appearances, chamber music collaborations and on recordings have been lauded worldwide for decades. Peter Serkin’s rich musical heritage extends back several generations: his grandfather was violinist and composer Adolf Busch and his father pianist Rudolf Serkin. He has performed with the world’s major symphony orchestras, led by such eminent conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez, Alexander Schneider, Daniel Barenboim, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, James Levine, Herbert Blomstedt, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and George Cleve. A dedicated chamber musician, Mr. Serkin has collaborated with Alexander Schneider, Pamela Frank, Yo-Yo Ma, the Budapest, Guarneri, Orion, Shanghai, and Dover String Quartets and TASHI, of which he was a founding member. An avid exponent of the music of many of the 20th and 21st century’s most important composers, Mr. Serkin has been instrumental in bringing to life the music of Schoenberg, Reger, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Wolpe, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Wuorinen, Goehr, and Knussen for audiences around the world. He has performed many important world premieres of works written specifically for him, in particular by Toru Takemitsu, Hans Werner Henze, Luciano Berio, Leon Kirchner, Alexander Goehr, Oliver Knussen and Charles Wuorinen. Mr. Serkin has recently made several arrangements of four-hand music by Mozart, Schumann and his grandfather, Adolf Busch, for various chamber ensembles and for full orchestra. He has also arranged all of Brahms’s organ Chorale-Preludes, transcribed for one piano, four-hands. Mr. Serkin’s 2017-2018 season began with concerts in Japan, and he continues with solo recitals in Ashland OR, Sonoma, Fresno, and Santa Barbara CA, Ridgewood, NJ, and St. Paul, MN, performing Mozart Sonatas paired with Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Orchestral engagements include the Bartók Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra with Anna Polansky, Orchestra Now, and Leon Botstein at Carnegie Hall. The pianist also performs with the Rogue Valley and Duluth-Superior Symphonies, and he joins the Dover Quartet for the Brahms Piano Quintet at South Mountain Concerts. Last season, Mr. Serkin performed solo recitals in New York City, Beacon, NY, and Mount Kisco, NY, and orchestral programs with the Sacramento Philharmonic and Berkshire and Longwood Symphonies. In April, he joined members of the New York Philharmonic in a performance of the Busch Piano Quintet at New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Music Center. Following engagements with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in Philadelphia, Mr. Serkin embarked on a European tour with the orchestra, performing Brahms Piano Concert No. 1 in London, Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg, Dresden, Bremen and Wroclaw. Recent summer seasons have featured engagements at the Ravinia, Tanglewood, La Jolla, Chautauqua, and Music Mountain Music Festivals, BBC Proms, Oxford Philharmonic and Bellingham Music Festivals performing concertos, chamber music, and duo piano programs. Mr. Serkin traveled to Havana, Cuba with the Bard Conservatory Orchestra in June 2016 and has been Artist-in-Residence at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Orchestral highlights of recent seasons have included the Boston, Chicago, American, Sydney and Saint Louis Symphonies, New York Philharmonic and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, while recital tours have taken Mr. Serkin to Hong Kong, Cologne, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Santa Monica, Princeton and New York’s 92nd Street Y. Mr. Serkin currently teaches at Bard College Conservatory of Music.

September 24, 2017: Paul Neubauer, viola; Arnaud Sussman, violin; Rafael Figueroa, cello; Michael Brown, piano HERMANN SCHULENBURG (1886-1959) Gypsy Romance and Csardas September 24, 2017: Paul Neubauer, viola; Arnaud Sussman, violin; Rafael Figueroa, cello; Michael Brown, piano Hermann Schulenburg is known for contributing music to a number of German films in the 1930s and ’40s, and he was equally at home as a lyricist, though his work has languished in relative obscurity. It comes as something of a surprise then, that in 2015 his Gypsy Romance and Csárdás, which stems from his song “Puszta-Märchen: Es spielen heut’ nacht für mich die Zigeuner” (Fairy Tale of the Hungarian Plains: The Gypsies play for me tonight) reappeared in the 2015 docufiction The Dark Side about the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. The connecting link is violist Paul Neubauer, for whom Schulenburg’s piece had recently become of a signature encore piece. He recorded the piece for Music@Menlo, performed it in the film, and treats us to it here. The Gypsy Romance and Csárdás begins in the poignant improvisatory style related to the slow (lassù) section of many Hungarian dances before breaking into an exuberant fast (friss) section—a csárdás—for the blazing close. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes