“Her gifts are at a level so removed from the rest of us that all we can do is feel the appropriate awe and then wonder on the mysteries of nature. The ancients would certainly have had Ms. Chang emerging fully formed from some Botticellian scallop shell.”

--The New York Times

Violinist Sarah Chang is recognized the world over as one of classical music's most captivating and gifted performers. One of the most remarkable violinists of any generation, she has matured into a young artist whose musical insight, technical virtuosity, and emotional range continue to astonish.

Appearing in the music capitals of Asia, Europe and the Americas, she has collaborated with most major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra amongst others. The esteemed conductors with whom she has worked include Sir Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Mariss Jansons, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, André Previn, Michael Tilson Thomas and David Zinman.

In 2007-08, Sarah Chang returned to the London Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony, the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Washington National Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra amongst others. Sarah Chang also for the first time played/directed Vivaldi's Four Seasons on tour in the US and in Asia with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, then in Europe and the UK with the English Chamber Orchestra. These tours coincided with her most recent release for EMI Classics - Vivaldi Four Seasons/Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

In 2008 - 2009, Sarah Chang performed the world premiere of a new work by composer Christopher Theofanidis with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She revisited the Philharmonia Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra amongst others.

In recital last season, Sarah Chang toured Europe and the US (culminating in a performance at Carnegie Hall) with pianist Ashley Wass and included in her programme a new sonata commissioned specially for her in memory of the late Isaac Stern by the American composer Richard Danielpour. In past seasons, her recitals have included performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Orchestra Hall in Chicago, Symphony Hall in Boston, the Barbican Centre in London, the Philharmonie in Berlin as well as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

As a chamber musician, Sarah Chang has collaborated with such artists as Pinchas Zukerman, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yefim Bronfman, Martha Argerich, Leif Ove Andsnes, Stephen Kovacevich, Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, Lars Vogt and the late Isaac Stern. In 2005/06 Sarah Chang toured with members of the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with a Sextet programme in summer festivals leading to a concert at the Berlin Philharmonie.

Sarah Chang records exclusively for EMI Classics. Her widely lauded recordings include “Fire and Ice,” an album of popular shorter works for violin and orchestra, with Placido Domingo conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, a disc of chamber music for strings (Dvorak's Sextet and Tchaikovsky's “Souvenir de Florence”) with current and former members of the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Dvorak's Violin Concerto with the London Symphony and Sir Colin Davis, along with the Dvorak's Piano Quintet (with Leif Ove Andsnes, Alex Kerr, Georg Faust and Wolfram Christ). She has also recorded a CD of French sonatas by Ravel, Saint-Saens and Franck, in collaboration with pianist Lars Vogt. Last season Sarah Chang recorded Prokofiev's and Shostakovich's first violin concertos live with the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle and this season recorded Vivaldi's Four Seasons with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which was released worldwide.

Born in Philadelphia to Korean parents, Sarah Chang began her violin studies at age 4 and promptly enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music, where she studied with the late Dorothy DeLay. Within a year she had already performed with several orchestras in the Philadelphia area. Her early auditions, at age 8, for Zubin Mehta and Riccardo Muti led to immediate engagements with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Sarah Chang has reached an even wider audience through numerous television and radio programs, concert broadcasts and best-selling records for EMI Classics throughout Europe, North America and the Far East. Along with Pete Sampras and Wynton Marsalis, she is a featured artist in Movado's global advertising campaign “The Art of Time.” In 2006, Sarah Chang was named by Newsweek as one of the Twenty Top Women on Leadership and in March this year, Sarah Chang was honoured to be named as a Young Global Leader for 2008 by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for her professional achievements, commitment to society and potential in shaping the future of the world.

In 2005, Yale University named a chair in Sprague Hall in honor of Sarah Chang. In June 2004,  she was given the honor of running with the Olympic Torch in New York, and became the  youngest person ever to receive the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame award. She is a past  recipient of Gramophone's “Young Artist of the Year” award, Germany's “Echo”  Schallplattenpreis, “Newcomer of the Year” honours at the International Classical Music Awards  in London, and Korea's “Nan Pa” award. In July 2005 she was awarded the Internazionale  Accademia Musicale Chigiana Prize, and in 1999 she received the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the  most prestigious awards given to instrumentalists.

Sarah Chang violin

Andrew von Oeyen piano

BRAHMS Sonatensatz

BRAHMS Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108

THEOFANIDIS Fantasy (based on sec0nd movement of his Violin Concerto, composed for Ms. Chang)

FRANCK Violin Sonata

Sarah Chang's website

A once-in-a-lifetime gathering of three musical stars who have never performed together before: Richard Stoltzman (the world's leading clarinetist), cellist Lynn Harrell (collaborator with Itzhak Perlman, Vladimir Ashenazy, etc.) and pianist Robert Levin (Harvard professor known for his brilliant Mozart playing). This remarkable trio, assembled specifically for our concerts, will perform a diverse program featuring Brahms' immortal Clarinet Trio. A sensational celebration of musical genius.

The program will also include a the World Premiere of a new work written especially for this ensemble by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Yehudi Wyner.  Mr. Wyner received a Grammy nomination for the 2009 recording of his piano concerto composed for Robert Levin.

RICHARD STOLTZMAN

Richard Stoltzman 's virtuosity, musicianship and sheer personal magnetism have made him one of today's most sought-after concert artists. As soloist with more than a hundred orchestras, as a captivating recitalist and chamber music performer, as an innovative jazz artist, and as a prolific recording artist, two-time Grammy Award winner Stoltzman defies categorization, dazzling critics and audiences alike throughout many musical genres.

LYNN HARRELL

Dwelling in the highest echelon of today's musical artists, this multiple Grammy Award-winning cellist performs regularly with the leading orchestras of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, Munich, and Berlin, with such conductors as James Levine, Sir Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Sir Simon Rattle, and Michael Tilson Thomas. He collaborates with such artists as Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman (with whom he performed live at the Grammy Awards), Vladimir Ashkenazy, Anne-Sophie Mutter, and André Previn.

ROBERT LEVIN

A recognized Mozart scholar and world-renowned pianist, Robert Levin's performances throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia have included work with the orchestras of Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Montreal and Vienna. On forte piano he has appeared with the Academy of Ancient Music, the London Classical Players and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, with Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, Sir Roger Norrington and Sir John Eliot Gardiner. He is presently Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.

BRAHMS Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano in A minor, Op. 114

BACH Suite for Unaccompanied Cello No. 3 in C Major

WYNER Trio [world premiere]

Other works to be announced

Concert Sponsored by the Kurz Family Foundation

With her performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 at the 11 th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2001, Olga Kern won the Gold Medal and became the first woman to achieve this distinction in over 30 years. Olga's second triumph came in New York City on May 4, 2004, with a highly acclaimed New York City recital debut at Carnegie's Zankel Hall. Eleven days later, on May 12, 2004, in an unprecedented turn of events Olga Kern gave a recital in Isaac Stern Auditorium at the invitation of Carnegie Hall.

With her vivid stage presence, passionately confident musicianship and extraordinary technique, the striking young Russian pianist Olga Kern has continued to captivate fans and critics alike. Across the United States, in each season, she is in demand for re-engagements and new appearances, and is quickly being recognized world-wide.

After a critically acclaimed 35 city tour of the US in spring 2007 with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Spivakov, Ms. Kern opened the 2007-2008 season as guest soloist with the Colorado Symphony, performed with the Nashville Symphony and made her debut with the Vancouver Symphony. In May of 2008 Olga Kern toured North America with Maestro Vladimir Spivakov and the world renowned Moscow Virtuosi, presenting concerts in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington DC, and Toronto. In the 2008-2009 Season, Olga will make her debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with Leonard Slatkin and present recitals including in Washington DC, Portland, OR, La Jolla, CA and Fort Worth, TX.

Olga Kern made her London debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in November 2006 playing Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 with Leonard Slatkin conducting. She returned to London in August of 2008 for her Proms Debut playing Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin conducting. Recent European appearances have included a tour of Austria and Switzerland with the Warsaw Philharmonic and Maestro Antoni Wit and a tour of Germany with the Czech Philharmonic and Maestro Zdenek Maçal. Upcoming engagements in Europe will include performances with the orchestras of Copenhagen and Lyon, and recitals in Milan, Hamburg and Luxemburg. Ms. Kern made her South American debut with the Orquestra de São Paulo in March 2008. She recently made her Canadian debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and conductor Pinchus Zukerman in summer 2007, and she made her debut with the Taipei Symphony in June of 2006. She will make her debut with the Seoul Philharmonic in October of 2008.

Miss Kern's festival appearances are many. In June of 2008, she presented the Inaugural Concert of the Southeastern Piano Festival in Columbia, South Carolina. She is welcomed back annually to the Interlochen Festival and frequently to both the Bravo! Vail Festival and to the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and James Conlon, after having made her debut there in 2002 with Christoph Eschenbach. She made her Hollywood Bowl debut in 2005 and returned to the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico in 2007, where she performed to a sold out venue. She has been a recent guest artist at several international music festivals, including the Klavier Ruhr and Kissinger Sommer festivals in Germany, the Radio-France Montpellier and Casadesus festivals in France, the Ohrid Festival in Macedonia, and the Busoni Festival in Italy.

In June of 2002 Olga Kern made an extensive tour of South Africa where she returned to tour again in February of 2005, performing all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini , with her brother, Vladimir Kern, conducting, three times over a span of six days, an unprecedented feat undertaken especially for the South African audience. She is now Artistic Director of the Cape Town Festival in South Africa and will return there annually.

Ms. Kern has performed in many of the world's most important venues, including the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Symphony Hall in Osaka, Salzburger Festspielhaus, La Scala in Milan, Tonhalle in Zurich, and the Châtelet in Paris; she has appeared as soloist with the Bolshoi Theater, the Moscow Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Symphony, Russian National, China Symphony, Belgrade Philharmonic, La Scala Philharmonic, Torino Symphony, and Cape Town Symphony Orchestras. She has also performed with the Kirov Orchestra under the direction of Valery Gergiev at the Kennedy Center.

Ms. Kern was born into a family of musicians with direct links to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff and began studying piano at the age of five. Winner of the first Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition when she was seventeen, she is a laureate of eleven international competitions and has toured throughout her native Russia, Europe, and the United States, as well as in Japan, South Africa, and South Korea. The recipient of an honorary scholarship from the President of Russia in 1996, she is a member of Russia's International Academy of Arts. She began her formal training with acclaimed teacher Evgeny Timakin at the Moscow Central School and continued with Professor Sergei Dorensky at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she was also a postgraduate student. She also studied with Boris Petrushansky at the acclaimed Accademia Pianistica Incontri col Maestro in Imola, Italy.

Ms. Kern records exclusively for Harmonia Mundi. Her most recent recording of Brahms Variations was released in September of 2007. Her discography includes recordings of Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and Christopher Seaman (2003), a Rachmaninoff recording of Corelli Variations and other transcriptions (2004), a recital disk with works by Rachmaninoff and Balakirev (2005) and Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Warsaw Philharmonic and Antoni Wit (2006). She was also featured in the award-winning documentary about the 2001 Cliburn Competition, Playing on the Edge.

CHOPIN Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23

CHOPIN Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35

RACHMANINOV Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 36

BALAKIREV Islamey

"lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance"
- The New Yorker

"personality, verve, and thoughtfulness"
- The Washington Post

American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has fast been gaining international attention since making a triumphant New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in 2005, performing Bach's Goldberg Variations . Recent and upcoming performances include Ms. Dinnerstein's recital debuts at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen and Ravinia festivals, in Cologne, Paris, London, Copenhagen, Vilnius, Bremen, Rome, and Lisbon, and at the Stuttgart Bach Festival; as well as debut performances with the Dresden Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Kristjan Järvi's Absolute Ensemble, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, and the Minnesota Orchestra. Last year she performed on the People's Symphony series at Town Hall and on Lincoln Center's Great Performers series in New York, and this year she performed her third sold-out recital at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In July 2009, she will make her debut with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall.

In August 2007, Ms. Dinnerstein released her debut solo CD on Telarc, a recording of the Goldberg Variations which earned the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Classical Chart during its first week of sales. The disc appeared on "Best of 2007" lists including those of The New York Times , The Los Angeles Times , The New Yorker , Time Out New York , several radio stations, iTunes "Editor's Choice Best Classical," Amazon.com Best CDs of 2007, and Barnes & Noble's Top 5 Debut CDs of 2007. In September 2008, the recording received the prestigious Diapason d'Or Award in France.

The New York Times reported, "An utterly distinctive voice in the forest of Bach interpretation, Ms. Dinnerstein brings her own pianistic expressivity to the Goldberg Variations, probing each variation as if it were something completely new." Slate.com raved, "Dinnerstein is a throwback to such high priestesses of music as Wanda Landowska and Myra Hess . . . [She] is touring. Go hear her, and get religion. And if you can't, there's always the record." In October 2007, Ms. Dinnerstein gave her sold-out debut recital at London's Wigmore Hall performing the Goldberg Variations , after which The Guardian proclaimed, "In Dinnerstein's accomplished hands, there was no doubt that [Bach's Goldberg Variations] are the province of the true musician rather than the mere pianist."

In November 2007, Ms. Dinnerstein made her recital debut at the Berlin Philharmonie, performing Bach's French Suite No. 5, Philip Lasser's Variations on a Bach Chorale, and Beethoven's Sonata No. 32, Op. 111. The concert was recorded live, and was released by Telarc in August 2008. Of the disc, which also ranked No. 1 on the Billboard Chart during its first week of sales, Gramophone reported, "this second CD of a Berlin recital provides ample evidence of gifts above and beyond the ordinary." The Washington Post wrote, "Lasser . . . uses his command of harmony to build moments of steely percussion and misty impressionism far removed from Bach's generally courtly sound. Dinnerstein makes this evolution feel natural as the sound fabric expands and grows more diffuse, culminating in moments of grandeur and poetry." And Diapason raved, "Beethoven's Sonata Op. 111 could have been a cause for concern. Simone Dinnerstein quickly sets our mind at rest with the Maestoso-both lively and clearly articulated. The Arietta captivates with its most welcome naked simplicity, whereas the variations proceed with implacable logic all the way to the closing trills."

Ms. Dinnerstein has performed regularly with her duo partner, cellist Zuill Bailey, for more than a decade. Together they received the Classical Recording Foundation Award for 2006 and 2007 for their recording of Beethoven's complete works for cello and piano, which will be released as a 2-disc set on Telarc in August 2009. Ms. Dinnerstein and Mr. Bailey have performed the Beethoven Sonatas for capacity audiences at The Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery in Washington, DC. This August, they will perform their Beethoven program at the Ravinia Festival.

Over the past two years, Ms. Dinnerstein has been featured in Gramophone , BBC Music Magazine , Classic FM Magazine , The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , "O" The Oprah Magazine , Time.com , Slate.com , The Sunday (London) Times Magazine , The Daily Telegraph , The Independent , The Guardian , and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , among others, and has appeared on radio programs including BBC Radio 3's In Tune, BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, NPR's Morning Edition, Public Radio International's Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, American Public Media's Performance Today, Minnesota Public Radio, XM Radio's Classical Confidential, as part of the news on SIRIUS Satellite Radio's The Howard Stern Show, and on national television in Germany.

As a winner of the Astral Artistic Services National Auditions, Ms. Dinnerstein appeared as both concerto soloist and in recital at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Since 1996 Ms. Dinnerstein has played concerts throughout the United States for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing classical music to non-traditional venues. Amongst the places she has played are nursing homes, schools and community centers. Most notably, Ms. Dinnerstein gave the first classical music performance in the Louisiana state prison system when she played at the Avoyelles Correctional Center.

Ms. Dinnerstein is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. She also studied with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and in London with Maria Curcio, the distinguished pupil of Artur Schnabel. For two summers, she was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center.

Ms. Dinnerstein lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and son. She is managed by Tanja Dorn at IMG Artists and records for Telarc International.

COPLAND Piano Variations

WEBERN Variations for Piano, Op. 27

SCHUBERT Four Impromptus, Op. 90

PHILIP LASSER Twelve Variations on the Chorale "Nimm von uns, Herr, du Treuer Gott" by J.S. Bach

BACH French Suite No. 5 in G Major

In this two-composers-for-the-price-of-one performance, the audience will be regaled by such classic P.D.Q. works as the recently-discovered Four Next-to-Last Songs (including “Gretchen am Spincycle” and “Es war ein dark und shtormy Night”) and the heart-rendering Shepherd on the Rocks, With a Twist , which features Prof. Schickele playing the tromboon (a cross between a trombone and a bassoon, combining all the disadvantages of both in one easy-to-schlep instrument) and the lasso d'amore.   Also included are delicacies such as excerpts from the Little Notebook for “Piggy” Bach .

BIOGRAPHY OF P.D.Q. BACH

In the 17th and 18th centuries the name Bach was synonymous with fine musicmaking:  Johann Sebastian, certainly the biggest twig on the family tree, was both preceded and followed by many accomplished and well known musicians, some of whom were in the service of royalty.  It is easy to understand, therefore, why the Bach clan was loath to admit the existence of a member who was called a “pimple on the face of music,” “the worst musician ever to have trod organ pedals,” “the most dangerous musician since Nero,” and other things not quite so complimentary.  They even started a rumor that P.D.Q. Bach, without a doubt Johann Sebastian's last and least offspring, was not really a member of the Bach family—the implication being that he was illegitimate, or, even better, an imposter.  Although P.D.Q. Bach was born on April 1, 1742 and died on May 5, 1807, the dates on his first tombstone (before he was moved to an unmarked pauper's grave) were inscribed “1807-1742” in a transparent attempt to make it appear that he could not have been the son of J.S., who died in 1750.  Nice try, Bach family—close, but no cigar:  some of us, or at least one of us, are not fooled, or at least, is not fooled.  

P.D.Q. Bach once said that his illustrious father gave him no training in music whatsoever, and it is one of the few things he said that we can believe without reservation.  His rebelliousness was such, in fact, that he avoided music as much as possible until he was well into his thirties (as a teenager he did assist in the construction of the loudest instrument ever created, the pandemonium, but he wisely skipped town before the instrument's completion, having sensed with uncanny accuracy, that the Pavilion of Glass was perhaps not the most felicitous location for the inaugural concert).  But by the mid 1770s he realized that, given his last name, writing music was the easiest thing he could do, and he began composing the works that were to catapult him into obscurity.

This most mini musical life has been divided into three creative periods:  the Initial Plunge, the Soused Period, and Contrition.  The middle period was by far the longest of the three, and was characterized by a multiplicity of contrapuntal lines and a greater richness of harmony due to almost constant double vision.  It was during this period that he emulated (i.e., stole from) the music of Haydn and Mozart, but his pathetic attempts to be au courant were no more successful than his pathetic attempts to be passé had been during the Initial Plunge;  having to cope with the problems that accompany immense popularity was something P.D.Q. Bach managed to avoid.  It has been said that the only original places in his music are those places where he forgot what he was stealing.  And, since his memory was even shorter than his sightedness, he was in point of fact one of the most original composers ever to stumble along the musical pike.

When you come right down to it, which is something we should all do every once in a while (As Plato said, —or was it Aristotle? —the unexamined life isn't worth a hill of beans.  Maybe it was Socrates.), P.D.Q. Bach was perhaps not as pitiful as we are often led to believe:  he was, by all accounts, intimately acquainted with all three components of the proverbial wine/women/song life style, he died a wealthy man (due to a little patent medicine thing he had going on the side), and he can now boast 17 record albums and annual concerts in New York City devoted almost exclusively to his own music.  How many of us can say that?  Well, can you ?

BIOGRAPHY OF PETER SCHICKELE

In 1954 Professor Peter Schickele, rummaging around a Bavarian castle in search of rare musical gems, happened instead upon a piece of manuscript being employed as a strainer in the caretaker's percolator. This turned out to be the “Sanka” Cantata by one P.D.Q. Bach .  A cursory examination of the music immediately revealed the reason for the atrocious taste of the coffee; and when the work was finally performed at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, the Professor realized too late that he had released a monster on the musical world. Unable to restrain himself, and with the misguided support of the U. of S.N.D. at H. and otherwise reputable recording and publishing companies, Prof. Schickele has since discovered more than four score of P.D.Q. Bach scores, each one more jaw-dropping than the last, each one another brick in the wall which will someday seal the doom of Musical Culture. 

The conspiracy of silence that has surrounded P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742)? for two centuries began with his own parents. He was the last and the least of the great Johann Sebastian Bach's twenty-odd children, and he was certainly the oddest. His father ignored him completely, setting an example for the rest of the family (and indeed for posterity), with the result that P.D.Q. was virtually unknown during his own lifetime;  in fact, the more he wrote, the more unknown he became.  He finally attained total obscurity at the time of his death, and his musical output would probably have followed him into oblivion had it not been for the zealous efforts of Prof. Schickele.  These efforts have even extended themselves to mastering some of the rather unusual instruments for which P.D.Q. liked to compose, such as the left-handed sewer flute, the windbreaker, and the bicycle.

Since 1965 the tireless Professor has kept audiences in stitches with his presentation of P.D.Q. Bach's uniquely typical music. In addition to his annual concerts in New York City, he has appeared with over fifty orchestras, ranging from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the New York Pick-Up Ensemble;  and his self-contained show The Intimate P.D.Q. Bach (featuring the Semi-Pro Musica Antiqua) has played in cities and on campuses from Maine to California. 

Vanguard has released 11 albums of the fabled genius's works;  Random House has published eleven editions of The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach (which has also been translated into German, and is available as an audio book from the HighBridge Company);   Theodore Presser Company has printed innumerable scores;  and P.D.Q. Bach's only full-length opera, The Abduction of Figaro , is now available on DVD ( Video Artists International ).  That all of this adds up to “the greatest comedy-in-music act before the public today” (Robert Marsh, Chicago Sun Times) is underscored by the four consecutive Grammy awards earned by his Telarc discs, P.D.Q. Bach: 1712 Overture and Other Musical Assaults , Oedipus Tex and Other Choral Calamities , WTWP—Classical Talkity-Talk Radio , and Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion , winners in the Best Comedy Album category each year from 1990 through 1993, respectively. His subsequent P.D.Q. Bach albums on Telarc are Two Pianos are Better Than One , with Jon Kimura Parker and the Professor playing the Concerto for Two Pianos vs. Orchestra , also featuring some chamber works by the minimeister;  The Short-Tempered Clavier and Other Dysfunctional Works for Keyboard , featuring works for piano, theatre organ and calliope.   A CD of P.D.Q. Bach and Peter Schickele: The Jekyll and Hyde Tour on the Telarc label was released in November 2007.

Aiding and abetting Mr. Schickele:

Michèle Eaton, soprano

David Düsing, tenor

Concert Sponsored by Fred Terman and Nan Borreson

With a singular artistic vision that transcends musical fashions and trends, Stephen Hough is widely regarded as one of the most important and distinctive pianists of his generation. In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2001, joining prominent scientists, writers and others who have made unique contributions to contemporary life.

Stephen Hough has appeared with most of the major European and American orchestras and plays recitals regularly in the major halls and concert series around the world. He is also a guest at festivals such as Salzburg, Mostly Mozart, Aspen, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Blossom, Hollywood Bowl, Edinburgh, Aldeburgh and the BBC Proms, where he has made over 15 concerto appearances. Recent engagements include performances with the New York, Los Angeles and London Philharmonics, Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, London Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic in a worldwide televised performance with Sir Simon Rattle, and a US tour with the Russian National Orchestra led by Vladimir Jurowski.

Over the next season, Hough returns to the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, symphonies among others, and plays recitals in the Royal Festival Hall as well as becoming the first British instrumentalist to give a solo recital on the main stage of Carnegie Hall in nearly 20 years. In May 2010, he begins recording all of the Tchaikovsky piano concertos in live concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra led by Osmo Vänskä for Hyperion. Other orchestral and recital appearances include visits to Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Frankfurt, Moscow, Hong Kong and Sydney. Over the summer of 2009 he plays all of the works for piano and orchestra of Tchaikovsky over four BBC Proms.

An exclusive Hyperion recording artist, many of Stephen Hough’s catalogue of over 40 CDs have garnered international prizes, including the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, Diapason d’or, Monde de la musique, several Grammy nominations, and 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-Saëns Piano Concertos as the best recording of the past 30 years. His 2005 live recording of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos became the fastest selling recording in Hyperion's history, while his 1987 recording of Hummel concertos is Chandos' best-selling disc to date. His most recent release is Stephen Hough in Recital, a programme juxtaposing variations by Mendelssohn and Beethoven against waltzes by Weber, Chopin, Saint-Saëns, Chabrier, Debussy, and Liszt.

Stephen Hough is also an avid writer and composer. In addition to scholarly and critically-acclaimed CD liner notes and articles for music publications, he has written for The Guardian, The Times, and was invited by the Telegraph Media Group in December 2008 to start a cultural blog. Hough has also written extensively about theology for the print media and was recently interviewed on a special guest-edited episode of BBC Radio 4’s The Today Programme by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Hough’s book, The Bible as Prayer, was published by Continuum in 2007.

Earlier in 2007, Hough’s cello concerto 'The Loneliest Wilderness' was premiered by Steven Isserlis and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and two choral works - Mass of Innocence and Experience and Missa Mirabilis - were performed at London’s Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral respectively. In January 2009, Hough’s trio, Was mit den Tränen geschieht, commissioned by members of the Berlin Philharmonic, received its world premiere at the Berlin Philharmonie. He is currently writing a string sextet Requiem Aeternum: after Victoria for the National Gallery’s major autumn 2009 exhibition, The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700. Hough has also published numerous compositions with Josef Weinberger Ltd.

A resident of London, Stephen Hough is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London and holds the International Chair of Piano Studies at his alma mater, the Royal Northern College in Manchester.

BACH/CORTOT Toccata & Fugue in D minor
FAURE Barcarolle no. 5 op. 66
FAURE Impromptu no. 5 op. 102
FAURE Nocturne no. 6 op. 63
FRANCK Prelude Chorale and Fugue
CHOPIN Nocturne, Op. 62, No. 1
CHOPIN Sonata No. 3 in B minor

Stephen Hough's website

Few musical works are as beloved as the six "Brandenburg" Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach. These six works display a lighter side of Bach's imperishable genius. Yet they came into being as an unexpected gift. That's what happened in 1721 when Bach presented the Margrave of Brandenburg with a bound manuscript containing six lively concertos for chamber orchestra, works based on an Italian Concerto Grosso style. The Margrave never thanked Bach for his work--or paid him. There's no way he could have known that this gift--later named the Brandenburg Concertos--would become a benchmark of Baroque music and still have the power to move people almost three centuries later.

The Concertos are a highlight of one of the happiest and most productive periods in Bach's life. At the time he wrote them, Bach was the Kapellmeister--the music director--in the small town of Coethen, where he was composing music for the court. Since the Margrave of Brandenburg seems to have ignored Bach's gift of concertos, it's likely that Bach himself presided over the first performances at home in Coethen. They didn't have a name then; that didn't come until 150 years later, when Bach's biographer Philipp Spitta called them "Brandenburg" Concertos for the very first time, and the name stuck.

Each of the six concertos requires a different combination of instruments as well as some highly skilled soloists. The Margrave had his own small court orchestra in Berlin, but it was a group of mostly mediocre players. All the evidence suggests that these virtuosic Brandenburg concertos perfectly matched the talents of the musicians on hand in Coethen. So how did a provincial town get so many excellent musicians? Just before Johann Sebastian arrived in Coethen in 1717, a new king inherited the throne in Prussia. Friedrich Wilhelm I became known as the "Soldier King" because he was interested in the military strength of his kingdom, not in refined artistic pursuits. One of his first royal acts was to disband the prestigious Berlin court orchestra. That threw many musicians out of work, and as luck would have it, seven of the best ones were snatched up to work in Coethen by its music-loving Prince Leopold. That's why Bach found such a rich music scene when he started to work there. It gave him the luxury of writing for virtuosos and they let him push the boundraries of his creativity. Concerto No. 2, for example, has the trumpeter play high flourishes. No. 4 allows the solo violin to soar.

Even though he didn't call them the "Brandenburgs," Bach still thought of them as a set. What he did was compile them from short instrumental sinfonias and concerto movements he had already written. Then he re-worked the old music, often re-writing and elaborating where he saw fit.

*

The program will be performed by the newly-formed string ensemble Archetti, whose members also play in such ensembles as American Bach Soloists and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

J.S. BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
J.S. BACH Brandenburg Concerto No. 6
Other works to be announced

The Tokyo String Quartet has captivated audiences and critics alike since it was founded almost 40 years ago. Regarded as one of the supreme chamber ensembles of the world, the Tokyo Quartet--Martin Beaver and Kikuei Ikeda (violins), Kazuhide Isomura (viola) and Clive Greensmith (cello)--has collaborated with a remarkable array of artists and composers, built a comprehensive catalogue of critically acclaimed recordings and established a distinguished teaching record. Performing over a hundred concerts worldwide each season, the Tokyo String Quartet has a devoted international following that includes the major capitals of the world and extends to all four corners, from Australia to Estonia to Scandinavia and the Far East.

Officially formed in 1969 at the Juilliard School of Music, the quartet traces its origins to the Toho School of Music in Tokyo, where the founding members were profoundly influenced by Professor Hideo Saito. Soon after its formation, the quartet won First Prize at the Coleman Competition, the Munich Competition and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. An exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon firmly established it as one of the world's leading quartets, and it has since released more than 40 landmark recordings. The ensemble now records on the Harmonia Mundi label.

The members of the Tokyo String Quartet have served on the faculty of the Yale School of Music as quartet-in-residence since 1976. Deeply committed to coaching young string quartets, they devote much of the summer to teaching and performing at the prestigious Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. They also conduct master classes in North America, Europe and the Far East throughout the year.

The ensemble performs on the "Paganini Quartet", a group of renowned Stradivarius instruments named for legendary virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, who acquired and played them during the 19th century. The instruments have been on loan to the ensemble from the Nippon Music Foundation since 1995, when they were purchased from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

HAYDN Quartet in B-flat Major Op. 76, No. 4 ("Sunrise)
MOZART Quartet in F Major , K. 590
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 74 (“Harp”)

the Tokyo Quartet website

Geraldine Walther

Before joining the Takács Quartet, Geraldine Walther was Principal Violist of the San Francisco Symphony for 29 years. Early in her career she served as assistant principal of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Miami Philharmonic, and the Baltimore Symphony. She studied at the Curtis Institute with Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet and at the Manhattan School of Music with Lillian Fuchs, and in 1979 she won first prize at the William Primrose International Competition.  She had been on the music faculty of The San Francisco Conservatory, Notre Dame de Namur University, and Mills College and conducted master classes at numerous universities and festivals.

She has performed as soloist on numerous occasions with the San Francisco Symphony and given the US premieres of Michael Tippett's Triple Concerto in 1981, Tôru Takemitsu's A String Around Autumn in 1990, Peter Lieberson's Viola Concerto in 1999, George Benjamin's Viola, Viola (together with SFS Associate Principal Violist Yun Jie Liu), also in 1999, and the Viola Concerto by Robin Holloway. 

In 1995 Ms. Walther was selected by Sir Georg Solti as a member of his Musicians of the World, which performed in Geneva to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in July 1995.   She has also served as principal violist with the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego.  An avid chamber musician, Ms. Walther regularly participates in leading chamber music festivals, including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Bridgehampton, and, most recently, the Telluride, Seattle, and Ruby Mountain festivals, Music at Kohl Mansion, Green Music Festival in Sonoma, and the inaugural season of Music@Menlo. She has collaborated with such artists as Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, and Jaime Laredo, and appeared as a guest artist with the Vermeer, Guarneri, Lindsay, Cypress, Tokyo and St. Lawrence quartets.  

Geraldine Walther's recordings include Hindemith's Trauermusik and Der Schwanendreher with the San Francisco Symphony (both on London/Decca), Paul Chihara's Golden Slumbers with the San Francisco Chamber Singers (Albany), and Lou Harrison's Threnody (New Albion). Together with SFS Assistant Concertmaster Mark Volkert and cellist Jan Volkert, she has just released a new disc of Mr. Volkert's transcriptions for string trio entitled Delectable Pieces (Con Brio).

*

Melissa Kleinbart violin

Geraldine Walther viola

Tanya Tomkins cello

Eric Zivian piano

other musicians to be announced

SCHUBERT "Trout" Quintet

BACH Suite for Unaccompanied Cello in C minor (arranged for viola)

Other works to be announced