PROGRAM: forthcoming

The post Eric Abramovitz- Clarinet – Sunday June 08, 2014, 3:30 PM appeared first on ProMusica.

PROGRAM: forthcoming

The post Étienne Dupuis & Quatuor Claudel – Vocal / Strings – Sunday April 06, 2014, 3:30 PM appeared first on ProMusica.

PROGRAM : Debussy, Ravel, Smetana, Tournier

The post Valérie Milot – Harp – Sunday March 09, 2014, 3:30 PM appeared first on ProMusica.

PROGRAM: forthcoming

The post Marika Bournaki – Piano – Sunday February 23, 2014, 3:30 PM appeared first on ProMusica.

American violinist Hilary Hahn’s probing interpretations, technical virtuosity, and commitment to new music have brought her love of classical music to a diverse audience. Her international fame and recognition, including two Grammies, multiple “Diapason d’Or of the Year” and “Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik” prizes, seven Echo Klassik awards, and the 2008 Classic FM/Gramophone “Artist of the Year,” are a testament to her considerable talent and incessant drive.

In the 16 years since she began recording, Hilarly Hahn has released 14 feature albums on the Deutsche Grammophon and Sony labels, in addition to three DVDs, an Oscar-nominated movie soundtrack, an award-winning recording for children, and various compilations. In repertoire as diverse as Bach, Stravinsky, Elgar, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, Mozart, Schoenberg, Paganini, Spohr, Barber, Bernstein, Ives, Higdon, Tchaikovsky, and others, her recordings have received every critical prize in the international press, and have met with equal popular success. All of her recordings have debuted in the top ten of the Billboard classical chart.

As a chamber musician, Hilary Hahn has presented in October 2011 Charles Ives: Four Sonatas, with pianist Valentina Lisitsa.

An engaging personality, and constantly seeking to engage with her public in novel ways using new technologies and social media, Hilary Hahn is an avid writer and interviewer, posting journal entries and information for young musicians and concertgoers on her website, hilaryhahn.com.  In video, she produces a YouTube channel, youtube.com/hilaryhahnvideos, and serves as guest host for the contemporary classical music blog “Sequenza21.” Elsewhere, her violin case comments on life as a traveling companion, on Twitter and Instagram at @violincase. In addition, she has participated in a number of other musical projects and collaborations.

PROGRAM: forthcoming

The post Hilary Hahn – Violin – Friday, April 25, 2014, 8 PM appeared first on ProMusica.

Highly acclaimed for his ensemble playing, Yo-Yo Ma regularly performs chamber music with a wide circle of colleagues. Over the past several seasons, he has joined Emanuel Ax, Isaac Stern and Jaime Laredo for performances and recordings of the piano quartet repertoire, including works of Brahms, Fauré, Schumann and Beethoven, which have been released by Sony Classical. His long-standing partnership with Emanuel Ax is one of the music world’s most successful collaborations.

With a repertoire that spans Western classical music, American roots music, and the many cultures of his ongoing Silk Road Project, and with more than 75 CDs released throughout his career, Yo-Yo Ma has won more than 15 Grammy Awards and has also garnered the Avery Fisher Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous other honors. Yo-Yo Ma is joined by his collaborator of a quarter-century, pianist Kathryn Stott, who embraces a similarly broad repertoire, including the complete solo piano music of Fauré and, with Ma, the tango music of Astor Piazzolla, as heard on the Grammy-winning Soul of the Tango. Like cello giants Pablo Casals and Mstislav Rostropovich before him, Yo-Yo Ma has enriched the cello repertory via numerous commissions, and has premiered works by, among others, Elliott Carter, Chen Yi, Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner, Tan Dun, and John Williams.

Yo-Yo Ma has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize (1978), the Glenn Gould Prize (1999), the National Medal of the Arts (2001), the Dan David Prize (2006), the Sonning Prize (2006), the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award (2008), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010). Heserves as a UN Messenger of Peace and has performed for eight American presidents, most recently at the invitation of President Obama on the occasion of the 56th Inaugural Ceremony (2013).

Yo-Yo Ma plays two instruments, a 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice and the 1712 “Davidoff” Stradivarius. Playing a Montagnana cello and the “Davidov” Stradivarius previously used by Jacqueline du Pré, he produces a relatively lean and focused, though warm, tone, with a tight, fast vibrato. His performances are a unique blend of rhapsodic and seemingly spontaneous music-making; at the same time, his playing is tempered by intellectually rigorous analysis and forethought.  Always as if simply making music among friends, Yo-Yo Ma has taught the world how to love music across all cultural and national barriers. Through his sheer genius and his impossibly youthful passion for music, he has contributed immeasurably to the joys and peace of our lives.

PROGRAM: forthcoming

The post Yo-Yo Ma – Cello – Wednesday March 19, 2014, 8 PM appeared first on ProMusica.

Born in Lyons in 1965, Natalie Dessay grew up in Bordeaux. She first dreamed of becoming a dancer, but later studied acting and singing at the Bordeaux Conservatoire. She progressed with extraordinary rapidity, completing five years’ worth of study in just one year and graduating with First Prize at the age of twenty. After winning the International Mozart Competition of the Vienna State Opera in 1991, she received invitations for concert and recital appearances, most notably an all-Mozart recital on the stage of La Scala. She also made a recital recording with EMI Classics of Mozart arias that was an extraordinary success.

Quickly engaged by major opera houses around the world, she sang Blondchen in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Madame Herz in Der Schauspieldirektor, the title role in Zaïde, Adele in Die Fledermaus, and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos.

Natalie Dessay‘s dramatic gifts, together with a remarkably flexible voice crowned by a brilliant coloratura, have won her exceptional acclaim from critics and audience alike. She is perhaps the finest Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor since Joan Sutherland laid claim to the role in the 1950s. And she has revealed a winning gift for comedy in Donizetti’s La fille du régiment. Whether she is singing the early 19th-century bel canto repertoire, Offenbach or any of the heavier roles that she has also conquered, she brings the same intensity to every characterisation. The voice is always at the service of the character and the drama.

At her best, Natalie Dessay incorporates an element of risk within every performance, which keeps audiences on the edge of their seats and her collaborators on their mettle. ‘Playing on stage is like a game of ping-pong or of tennis,’ she has said. ‘If you send the ball your partner has to send it back! It’s really like a game. Sometimes it has to be soft and sometimes it will be hard.’

PROGRAMME : Clara Schumann, Brahms, Henri Duparc, Richard Strauss, Poulenc, Chabrier, Fauré, Chausson, Debussy

The post Natalie Dessay – Vocal – Saturday March 1st, 2014, 8 PM appeared first on ProMusica.

French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie studied in Montreal with Yvonne Hubert (a pupil of the legendary Alfred Cortot), in Vienna with Beethoven specialist Dieter Weber, and subsequently with Leon Fleisher, a disciple of Arthur Schnabel. He made his debut with the Montreal Symphony at the age of 13. Since then, he has attracted critical acclaim throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. He has extended his interpretative voice across a broad range of repertoire rather than choosing to specialize in one particular style. The London Times, describing his playing as “ever immaculate, ever imaginative”, has identified the artist’s “combination of total spontaneity and meditated ripeness that only great pianists have”.

Louis Lortie has performed complete Beethoven sonata cycles at London’s Wigmore Hall, Berlin’s Philharmonie, and the Sala Grande del Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. Die Welt described his Berlin performances as “possibly the finest Beethoven since the time of Wilhelm Kempff.” As both pianist and conductor with the Montreal Symphony, he has performed all five Beethoven concertos and all of the Mozart concertos. Louis Lortie has also won widespread acclaim for his interpretation of Ravel and Chopin. He performed the complete works of Ravel in London and Montreal for the BBC and CBC, and is renowned all over the world for his performances of the complete Chopin Études.

He has made more than 30 recordings for the Chandos label, covering repertoire from Mozart to Stravinsky, including a set of the complete Beethoven sonatas and the complete Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage. His recording of the Lutosławski Piano Concerto and Paganini Variations with Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony was released in 2012. Future recording projects include a disc of Liszt’s transcriptions. Louis Lortie‘s recording of Beethoven’s Eroica Variations earned him an Edison Award. His disc of works by Schumann and Brahms was named one of the best CDs of the year by BBC Music Magazine, which also named his disc of Chopin Études one of “50 Recordings by Superlative Pianists.” His interpretation of Liszt’s complete works for piano and orchestra with the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice. For the Canadian label ATMA Classique, he has recorded Mendelssohn concertos with the Orchestre symphonique de Quebec and, as conductor, Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony.

Louis Lortie has performed with the world’s leading conductors, including Riccardo Chailly, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Sanderling, Neeme Järvi, Sir Andrew Davis, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Sir Mark Elder, and Osmo Vänskä. He has also been involved in many chamber-music projects with such musicians as Frank Peter Zimmermann, Leonidas Kavakos, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Jan Vogler, Augustin Dumay, the Takács Quartet, and Gidon Kremer. His regular piano-duo partner is fellow Canadian Hélène Mercier.

PROGRAMME : Liszt, 1st  et 2nd  Years of Pilgrimage

The post Louis Lortie – Piano – Sunday February 2, 2014, 2:30 PM appeared first on ProMusica.

An artist known for his musical integrity, technical assurance and intelligent, compelling interpretations, Christian Tetzlaff is internationally recognized as one of the most important violinists of his generation. Tetzlaff’s discography for Virgin Classics and other labels includes the major concerto repertoire, Bartok Sonatas with Leif Ove Andsnes, and the three Brahms Violin Sonatas with Lars Vogt. He has received several awards for his recordings: the Diapason d’Or twice, the Edison prize, the Midem Classical Award as well as the ECHO Klassik prize and several nominations for the Grammy.

From the outset of his career, Christian. Tetzlaff has performed and recorded a broad spectrum of the repertoire, ranging from Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas and partitas to 19th century masterworks by Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Brahms; and from 20th century concertos by Bartok, Berg and Shostakovich to world premieres of contemporary works. Also a dedicated chamber musician, he frequently collaborates with distinguished artists including Leif Ove Andsnes, Lars Vogt and Alexander Lonquich and is the founder of the Tetzlaff Quartet, which he formed in 1994 with violinist Elisabeth Kufferath, violist Hanna Weinmeister and his sister, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff.

Christian Tetzlaff currently performs on a violin modeled after a Guarneri del Gesu made by the German violin maker, Peter Greiner. In honor of his artistic achievements, Musical America named Mr. Tetzlaff “Instrumentalist of the Year” in 2005.

Lars Vogt has rapidly established himself as one of the leading pianists of his generation. Born in the German town of Düren in 1970, he first came to public attention when he won second prize at the 1990 Leeds International Piano Competition and has enjoyed a varied career for over twenty years. His versatility as an artist ranges from the core classical repertoire of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms to the romantics Grieg, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov through to the dazzling Lutoslawski concerto.   A keen chamber musician, Lars Vogt is now increasingly working with orchestras both as conductor and directing from the keyboard.

Lars Vogt enjoys a high profile as a chamber musician and recent appearances have included London, Paris, Munich, Madrid, Rome and New York.  In June 1998 he founded his own festival in Heimbach, Germany.  Known as “Spannungen”, its huge success has been marked by the release of ten live recordings on EMI. He enjoys regular partnerships with colleagues such as Christian Tetzlaff and Thomas Quasthoff. Lars Vogt is also an accomplished and enthusiastic teacher and was recently appointed Professor of Piano at the Hannover Conservatory of Music, succeeding Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, his teacher and close friend who died in June 2012.

PROGRAMME : Mozart, Bartók, Beethoven

The post Lars Vogt & Christian Tetzlaff – Piano / Violin – Monday March 31, 2014, 8 PM appeared first on ProMusica.

PROGRAM : Brahms, Bartók, Schubert

The post Artemis Quatuor – Strings – Monday March 17, 2014, 8 PM appeared first on ProMusica.