Britten and Mendelssohn
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:50 |
| 2. | Britten: Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 6 | 00:19:55 |
| 3. | Mendelssohn: Quartet in B minor for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 3 | 00:37:44 |
| 4. | Closing | 00:00:30 |
This program features a concert of incredibly delightful music, by two of history’s most popular composers, though the works themselves are rarely heard. Both pieces were written while the composers were barely out of their adolescent years, at the dawn of stellar careers. The great English composer Benjamin Britten was only twenty-one when he began composing his Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 6 during a visit to Vienna in which he immersed himself in the Viennese culture and reflected that inspiration in the final movement using the infamous meter of the city, the waltz. Sixteen was a banner year for Mendelssohn, during which he emerged from student status into a full-blown artist composing such works as his famous String Octet as well as this Piano Quartet in B minor, his third and final of his early piano quartets.
PROGRAM
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Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) |
Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 6 (1934–35) Todd Phillips, violin; Gloria Chien, piano |
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Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) |
Quartet in B minor for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 3 (1825) Juho Pohjonen, piano; Erin Keefe, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola; Narek Hakhnazaryan, cello |
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Gloria Chien
Juho Pohjonen
Paul Neubauer
Pianist Gloria Chien has a diverse musical life as a performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at age 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard. In 2009 she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, and the following year was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as Co-Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became Artistic Directors at Chamber Music Northwest in 2020, and were named the recipients of the 2021 Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music from CMS. Ms. Chien received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from New England Conservatory, where she was named the Advisor for the prestigious Institute for Concert Artists in 2024. She is an artist-in-residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee; a Steinway Artist; and an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.
Pianist Juho Pohjonen is in demand internationally as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber performer. An ardent exponent of Scandinavian music, he has a growing discography offering music by Finnish compatriots such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kaija Saariaho, and Jean Sibelius. Recent engagements include the Taiwan, BBC, and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras; the Cleveland and Minnesota orchestras; and the symphonies of San Francisco, Atlanta, New Jersey, and Colorado. Pohjonen is an alum of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program and enjoys an ongoing relationship with the organization. Pohjonen earned a master’s degree from Meri Louhos and Hui-Ying Liu-Tawaststjerna at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He was selected by Sir András Schiff as the winner of the 2009 Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholarship. In 2019, Pohjonen launched MyPianist, an AI-based app that provides interactive piano accompaniment.
Last summer, violist Paul Neubauer premiered a new viola concerto by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich with conductor JoAnn Falletta at the Brevard Music Center. This season, he will record and perform the work with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2025, he released two albums on First Hand Records featuring the final works of two great composers: an all-Bartók album including the revised version of the Viola Concerto, and a Shostakovich recording that includes the monumental Viola Sonata. Appointed principal violist of the New York Philharmonic at the age of 21, Neubauer has appeared as soloist with the New York, Los Angeles, and Helsinki Philharmonics; the Chicago, National, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, and Bournemouth Symphonies; and the Santa Cecilia, English Chamber, and Beethovenhalle Orchestras. A two-time Grammy nominee, Neubauer is artistic director of the Mostly Music series in New Jersey and serves on the faculties of the Juilliard School and Mannes College.