Palm Beach, FL
Sun, Jan 19, 2025, 3:00 pm
Walter S. Gubelmann Auditorium, The Society of the Four Arts
2 hours, including intermission
Program
Felix Mendelssohn
(1809–1847)Quartet in F minor for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 2
(1823)Felix Mendelssohn
(1809–1847)Octet in E-flat major for Strings, Op. 20
(1825)
Anna Geniushene
Wu Han
Francisco Fullana
Lun Li
Richard Lin
Julian Rhee
Guillermo Figueroa
Dmitri Atapine
David Finckel
Anna Geniushene’s fresh, layered, and powerful interpretations defined her participation at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—and won her the coveted silver medal and the adoration of fans around the globe. Critics praised her “powerhouse sound, forceful musical personality, and sheer virtuosity” (Musical America) and likened her performance to “Cliburn at his best” (Gramophone). Born in Moscow on New Year’s Day in 1991, Anna made her recital debut just seven years later in the small hall of the Berlin Philharmonic. She has since developed a versatile career, with performances in major world venues such as the Town Hall in Leeds, National Concert Hall in Dublin, Museum of Arts in Tel Aviv, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genova, Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, and Sala Greppi in Bergamo. A dedicated chamber musician, she has performed piano duo repertoire with her husband, Lukas Geniušas, and has collaborated with the Quartetto di Cremona. The 2024 season features her debut in Washington, DC, and multiple engagement across the United States; an Asian tour including solo recitals in Singapore, China, and Taiwan; the season opening in Florence with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto under Gabor Takacs-Nagy; her debut at the Vienna Konzerthaus; and the beginning of her tenure in CMS’s Bowers Program.
Pianist Wu Han, recipient of Musical America’s Musician of the Year Award, enjoys a multi-faceted musical life that encompasses artistic direction, performing, and recording at the highest levels. Co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2004 as well as Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Silicon Valley’s innovative chamber music festival Music@Menlo since 2002, she also serves as Artistic Advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns series and Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts, and as Artistic Director for La Musica in Sarasota, Florida. Her recent concert activities have taken her from New York’s Lincoln Center stages to the most important concert halls in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In addition to countless performances of virtually the entire chamber repertoire, her concerto performances include appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, and the Aspen Festival Orchestra. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of ArtistLed, classical music’s first artist-directed, internet-based recording label, which has released her performances of the staples of the cello-piano duo repertoire with cellist David Finckel. Her more than 80 releases on ArtistLed, CMS Live, and Music@Menlo LIVE include masterworks of the chamber repertoire with numerous distinguished musicians. Wu Han’s educational activities include overseeing CMS’s Bowers Program and the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. A recipient of the prestigious Andrew Wolf Award, she was mentored by some of the greatest pianists of our time, including Lilian Kallir, Rudolf Serkin, and Menahem Pressler. Married to cellist David Finckel since 1985, Wu Han divides her time between concert touring and residences in New York City and Westchester County.
Spanish-born violinist Francisco Fullana, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2023 Khaledi Prize, has been hailed as “frighteningly awesome” (Buffalo News). His latest album on Orchid Classics, Bach’s Long Shadow, was named BBC Music Magazine’s Instrumental Choice of the Month. Its five-star review stated: "Fullana manages to combine Itzhak Perlman's warmth with the aristocratic poise of Henryk Szeryng." His thoughtful virtuosity has led to collaborations with conducting greats like Sir Colin Davis, Hans Graf, and Gustavo Dudamel. Besides his career as a soloist, which includes recent debuts with the Philadelphia and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras and a season-long artist residency with the Grammy-winning orchestra Apollo’s Fire, he is making an impact as an innovative educator. He created the Fortissimo Youth Initiative, a series of seminars and performances in partnership with youth and university orchestras, and co-founded San Antonio’s Classical Music Institute, an outreach-focused chamber music festival that serves hundreds of Title I underrepresented minority students every summer. He was a first-prize winner of the Johannes Brahms and Angel Munetsugu International Violin Competitions and is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. A graduate of the Juilliard School and the University of Southern California, Fullana performs on the 1735 Mary Portman ex-Kreisler Guarneri del Gesù violin, on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
Lun Li is a violinist committed to creating thought-provoking, boundary-pushing concert experiences for contemporary audiences around the world. A native of Shanghai who is currently based in New York, he won first prize in the 2021 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions. Additionally, he is also joint winner of the first prize at the Lillian and Maurice Barbash J.S. Bach Competition 2021. He has appeared on major musical stages around the world, including Helsinki Music Centre, Konzerthaus Berlin, Kulturpalast Dresden, Wiener Konzerthaus, and Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center. This season, he will make his solo recital debut in Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center in New York and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, as well as his concerto debut at Lincoln Center. An avid chamber musician, he has participated in the Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Verbier, and Angelfire music festivals. This season, he will go on tours with Marlboro Music Festival and Young Concert Artists, bringing him to Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, and others. In 2024, he begins his tenure as a member of CMS’s Bowers Program. He holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School; his mentors include Ida Kavafian, Catherine Cho, and Joseph Lin. Li plays on the Stradivarius “Samazeuilh” 1735 violin, on a generous loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.
Taiwanese-American violinist Richard Lin continues to gain international prominence since his Gold Medal prize at the 2018 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Following his June 2022 Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium recital debut, New York Concert Review asserted, “Richard Lin. Remember the name. For he has everything required to take the world by storm.” He has collaborated with numerous orchestras and performed at celebrated concert venues throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. He is a laureate of the Sendai, Joseph Joachim, Singapore, and Michael Hill International Violin competitions and has just joined the faculty of the National Taipei University of Education. He opened the 2022–23 season as soloist with the Chippewa Valley Symphony and Hong Kong Sinfonietta. He appeared in recitals in Indianapolis, Washington, DC, and Baton Rouge. Passionate about chamber music, he continues to perform with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, at many music festivals, and on tours of Asia. In the spring of 2023, he released a new album with pianist Thomas Hoppe on the Azica label featuring his Carnegie Hall program with works by Vitali, Richard Strauss, John Corigliano, and Frolov. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in Taiwan, Lin graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, where he studied with Aaron Rosand and Lewis Kaplan, respectively.
Praised for his “sophisticated, assured tone, superb intonation, and the kind of poise and showmanship that thrills audiences,” (The Strad) Julian Rhee is the Silver Medalist of the 11th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, winner of Astral Artists’ National Auditions, and the first-prize winner of the 2020 Elmar Oliveira International Competition, where he was also awarded the special Community Award. He made his Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra debut at age 8, and has gone on to perform with orchestras such as the Indianapolis Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Philharmonic, Eugene Symphony, Madison Symphony, and San Diego Symphony, among others. A passionate chamber musician, he has performed at and attended festivals including the Ravinia Steans Institute, Marlboro Festival, Rockport Music and North Shore Chamber Music Festivals. He studied with Hye-Sun Lee and Almita Vamos at the Music Institute of Chicago Academy. He received his bachelor’s degree and is currently pursuing a master’s degree with Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory. A member of CMS’s Bowers Program beginning in 2024, Rhee is the recipient of the outstanding 1699 “Lady Tennant” Antonio Stradivari on extended loan through the generosity of the Mary B. Galvin Foundation and the efforts of the Stradivari Society, a division of Bein and Fushi, Inc.
Violinist, violist, conductor, and concertmaster Guillermo Figueroa is Principal Conductor of the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. He serves as Music Director of the Music in the Mountains Festival and the Lynn Philharmonia. He was Music Director of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and the Puerto Rico Symphony, Concertmaster of the New York City Ballet, and a Founding Member and Concertmaster of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Maestro Figueroa has given the world premieres of four violin concertos written for him: Mario Davidovsky’s Concertino at Carnegie Hall, Harold Farberman’s Double Concerto at Lincoln Center, Miguel del Águila’s Violin Concerto co-commissioned by Figueroa, and Ernesto Cordero’s lnsula: Suite Concertante in Zagreb. International and US appearances include the Buffalo and Toronto Symphony orchestras, Baltic Philharmonic, Xalapa, and Orquesta de Cordoba. He frequently performs viola as guest of the Emerson, Fine Arts, American, Amernet, and Orion string quartets. He has recorded Bartók’s Three Violin Sonatas with pianist Robert Koenig and an album of virtuoso violin music with pianist Ivonne Figueroa. His recording of Cordero’s violin concertos received a Latin Grammy nomination in 2012. An advocate for new music, Figueroa and the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra won an Award for Adventurous Programming from the League of American Orchestras in 2007. He studied with his father and uncle at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. At Juilliard, his teachers were Oscar Shumsky and Felix Galimir. His conducting studies were with Harold Farberman in New York.
Dmitri Atapine has been described as a cellist with “brilliant technical chops” (Gramophone), whose playing is “highly impressive throughout” (The Strad). He has appeared on some of the world's foremost stages. An avid chamber musician, he frequently performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is an alum of The Bowers Program. He is a frequent guest at leading festivals, including Music@Menlo, La Musica Sarasota, Pacific, Aldeburgh, Aix-en-Provence, and Nevada. His performances have been broadcast nationally in the US, Europe, and Asia. His many awards include first prize at the Carlos Prieto Cello Competition, as well as top honors at the Premio Vittorio Gui and Plowman chamber competitions. He has collaborated with such distinguished musicians as Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Wu Han, Bruno Giuranna, David Finckel, David Shifrin, and the Emerson Quartet. His many recordings include a critically acclaimed world premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s complete works for cello and piano. He holds a doctorate from the Yale School of Music, where he was a student of Aldo Parisot. Atapine is Professor of Cello at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is Artistic Co-Director of the Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City, Apex Concerts (Reno, Nevada), and the Ribadesella Chamber Music Festival (Spain), as well as the Co-Director of the Young Performers Program at Music@Menlo Chamber Music Institute (California).
Co-Artistic Director of CMS since 2004, cellist David Finckel’s dynamic musical career has included performances on the world’s stages in the roles of recitalist, chamber artist, and orchestral soloist. The first American student of Mstislav Rostropovich, he joined the Emerson String Quartet in 1979, and during 34 seasons garnered nine Grammy Awards and the Avery Fisher Prize. His quartet performances and recordings include quartet cycles of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorák, Brahms, Bartók, and Shostakovich, as well as collaborative masterpieces and commissioned works. In 1997, he and pianist Wu Han founded ArtistLed, the first internet-based, artist-controlled classical recording label. ArtistLed’s catalog of more than 20 releases includes the standard literature for cello and piano, plus works composed for the duo by George Tsontakis, Gabriela Lena Frank, Bruce Adolphe, Lera Auerbach, Edwin Finckel, Augusta Read Thomas, and Pierre Jalbert. In 2022, Music@Menlo, an innovative summer chamber music festival in Silicon Valley founded and directed by David and Wu Han, celebrated its 20th season. As a young student, David was winner of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s junior and senior divisions, resulting in two performances with the orchestra. Having taught extensively with the late Isaac Stern in America, Israel, and Japan, he is currently a professor at both the Juilliard School and Stony Brook University, and oversees both CMS’s Bowers Program and Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute. David’s 100 online Cello Talks, lessons on cello technique, are viewed by an international audience of musicians. Along with Wu Han, he was the recipient of Musical America’s 2012 Musicians of the Year Award.