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October 29, 2011 | December 10, 2011 | January 15, 2012 | March 10, 2012 | May 26, 2012 | Prior Seasons
Soloists | Notes
Saturday, October 29, 2011, 7:30 pm
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
1855 Main Street, Santa Monica
Allen Robert Gross, conductor
Tereza Stanislav, Violin
Cécilia Tsan, Cello
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Tereza Stanislav, Violin
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Violinist Tereza Stanislav was appointed Assistant Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in 2003 by music director Jeffrey Kahane. Dividing her time among orchestral, solo, chamber and recording projects, Tereza has been hailed for her “expressive beauty and wonderful intensity” (Robert Mann) and her “sure technique and musical intelligence” (Calgary Herald).
An active performer, Tereza has appeared in venues including Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, the Ravinia Music Festival, Bravo! Vail, the Chautauqua Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, La Jolla Summerfest, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, the Banff Center in Canada, St. Barth’s Music Festival and at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. She has performed in concert with artists including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Gilbert Kalish, Jon Kimura Parker, Jian Wang and Colin Currie. In 2004, Tereza released a CD in collaboration with pianist Hung-Kuan Chen. Tereza has joined the Miró Quartet on several extensive tours in 2009 and 2011, that have taken them to Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Kennedy Center, Maverick Concerts, Sprague Concert Hall at Yale University, as well as many others. In 2010, Tereza served as Concertmaster of the Los Angeles’ Opera production of The Marriage of Figaro, conducted by Placido Domingo. In 2009, Tereza was invited to be the Chamber Music Collaborator for Sonata Programs and a member of the jury for the Sixth Esther Honens International Piano Competition. As a founding member of the Grammy® nominated Enso String Quartet, Tereza was awarded the Second Prize of the 2004 Banff International String Quartet Competition, and led the quartet to win the Special Prize awarded for best performance of the “Pièce de Concert”, commissioned for the competition. The quartet was a winner of the 2003 Concert Artists Guild, Chamber Music Yellow Springs and Fischoff competitions. The Strad magazine cited the quartet for “…totally committed, imaginative interpretation that emphasized contrasts of mood, dynamics and articulation.” With the Enso, Tereza is featured on the Naxos recording of the complete Ignaz Pleyel quartets, Op.2. The quartet was highlighted on the Minnesota Public Radio’s St. Paul Sunday in 2004 and was appointed to a Lectureship in String Quartet at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in the 2004-2005 academic year. An advocate for new music, Tereza traveled to Israel to represent the United States as the violinist in the New Juilliard Ensemble at the World Composer’s Symposium, under the direction of Dr. Joel Sachs. She has worked with composers including Steve Reich, Joan Tower, Toshio Hosokawa, Gunther Schuller and Louis Andriessen. World premieres include Gunther Schuller’s Horn Quintet (2009) with Julie Landsman, Louis Andriessen’s The City of Dis (2007) as Concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, James Matheson’s Violin Sonata (2007), Bruce Adolphe’s Oceanophony (2003), Gernot Wolfgang’s Rolling Hills and Jagged Ridges (2009) and the West Coast premieres of Steve Reich’s Daniel Variations and Gernot Wolfgang’s Jazz and Cocktails. She is featured on a new recording of the Wolfgang on Albany Records and the Reich on Nonesuch label. Tereza holds a Bachelor of Music from Indiana University where she studied with Miriam Fried, and a Master of Music from the Juilliard School where her teachers were Robert Mann and Felix Galimir and where she served as Concertmaster of The Juilliard Orchestra. As Concertmaster of the Festival Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence in 1999, she received intensive orchestral and chamber music coaching from the late Isaac Stern. Tereza also completed quartet residencies at the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh, England, at Northern Illinois University under the tutelage of the Vermeer Quartet and at Rice University. Tereza enjoys participating in educational outreach and has collaborated with educator Robert Kapilow of NPR’s program, “What Makes It Great?” and musicologist Robert Winter of UCLA. With the Enso Quartet, she performed over 100 outreach concerts for schoolchildren in the greater Chicago area in 2001-2003. Tereza was invited to perform at the 2002 G-8 World Summit held in Kananaskis, Canada where she performed for Presidents Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush, and Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien. In 2000, Tereza was awarded the highest grant from the Canada Council for the Arts in the category for Professional Musicians (Individuals) in Classical Music. She is active in the film scoring industry in Los Angeles and in 2009, co-created the new music series, In Frequency.
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Cécilia Tsan, Cello
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Born in Versailles (France) of Chinese musician parents, Cécilia Tsan began playing the cello at the age of five with the same teacher as her childhood friend Yo-Yo Ma who was an inspiration for her. After being awarded her Baccalaureate Degree, she went on to study Philosophy and Chinese and was accepted in first position at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where she studied under the direction of André Navarra. In 1976, she was awarded the 1st Prize for Cello by unanimous vote and summa cum laude, and the 1st Prize for Chamber Music. After another competitive examination, she was accepted for higher musical studies (3ème Cycle); this gave her the opportunity to study more chamber music with Jean Hubeau and to prepare international competitions. Besides, she also attended master-classes at the Accademia Chigiana of Siena (Italy) where she received the Diploma di Merito.
She was a prizewinner at the Barcelona International Competition, the Florence International Competition and also the winner of the Debussy Prize at the Paris International Competition held by the Guilde Française des Artistes Solistes. She is also a winner of the Menuhin Foundation Award. Ms Tsan has given many concerts, not only as a soloist, but also as a chamber musician. In Paris, she has performed at the Palais des Congrès, the Salle Pleyel, the Théâtre National de l'Opéra, the Centre Georges-Pompidou, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Summer Festival, etc. She has toured extensively in France and in such countries as Italy, Switzerland, England, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, USA, Japan and Taiwan. Her numerous recitals concerts have led her to play with renowned musicians including pianists Michel Dalberto, Rudolf Firkusny, Jean Hubeau, Noel Lee, Alain Planès, Anne Queffélec, Bruno Rigutto, Pascal Rogé, Ann Schein, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Robert Thies, violonists Pierre Amoyal, Olivier Charlier, Augustin Dumay, Patrice Fontanarosa, Jo Genualdi, Régis Pasquier, Daniel Phillips, Martin Chalifour, Margaret Batjer, violists Hatto Beyerle, Gérard Caussé, Paul Neubauer, Heiichiro Ohyama, Bruno Pasquier, harpist Marielle Nordmann, guitarist Alexandre Lagoya, and specially Jean-Louis Haguenauer and Alexis Galpérine with whom she founded a piano trio in 1988, based in Paris. She often performed on the radio and television. Her portrait was aired on the French TV channel FR3, in a show entitled “Cécilia Tsan and Friends”. With Mr. Haguenauer, she recorded a compact-disc (“Eleven pieces for Cello and Piano”) under the Cybelia label (CY 8007, including previously unrecorded works by Offenbach, Liszt, and her father Tsan-Kuolin) and another CD of chamber music by Weber under the Timpani label (1C1007). The release of her recording of the Ropartz Piano Trio with Alexis Galperine and Jean-Louis Haguenauer received critical acclaim from various musical magazines such as the Strad, Le Monde de la Musique, Diapason, Compact, and BBC Magazine. Since 1991, she has been residing in Los Angeles. In the United States, her concerts have led her in such cities as Washington D.C. (Library of Congress, Coolidge Auditorium), Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Martha's Vineyard, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Mainly Mozart... Besides, she serves as Principal Cellist with the Long Beach Symphony and occasionally with the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra and the L.A. Master Chorale; she also served at that position for four years with the the New West Symphony. She played several concerts in Taiwan with the Dvorak Cello Concerto, various solo and chamber music concerts in the US and in France. After her performance of the Haydn D Major Cello Concerto, Daniel Cariaga from the L.A. Times wrote: "Cécilia Tsan, a young French woman of Chinese parentage, brought uncompromising musical character and a towering technique to Haydn's Second Concerto, highlighting both its climaxes and its inner workings". Her concertos performances include the Haydn C Major Cello in France and the US, Edgar Meyer Double Concerto (with Edgar Meyer at the Bass and Jeffrey Kahane conducting), the Tchaikovsky Roccoco Variations and the Elgar and Lalo Cello Concertos. For a few years she was the cellist of the Rossetti String Quartet. She recorded the Suite for Cello and String Orchestra written for her by Clare Fischer: the composer decided to write two extra movements for the piece after they recorded the Early Years together. In Paris, she recorded a Quintet written by Marc Marder and commissioned by Radio-France. She is an active musician with the motion picture industry and the recording studios in Los Angeles, having recorded hundreds of movie soundtracks with composers such as John Williams, James Horner, David Newman, James Newton-Howard, Jerry Goldsmith, to name a few. In March 2000, she was invited at the Academy Awards ceremony to perform a solo on stage with composer Randy Newman and singer Sarah McLachlan. For two years she served as Principal Cello with the American Idols Orchestra. With the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, she played the West Coast premiere of music director Enrique Diemecke "Camino Y Vision" for Cello and Orchestra. The piece includes a Cadenza written especially for her. More recently, she gave several performances of the Saint-Saëns 1st Cello Concerto, in Oregon and California. “From the beginning, her playing was filled with a relaxed energy, a sense of the richness and physical presence of Saint-Saëns' elegant, soulful imagination. The profoundly moving quiet theme of the second movement was ethereal, delicate and breezelike, and in the finale, Tsan managed the bravura figures and fast bowing with relaxed ease.” She also gave several recitals in France and the US with pianist Jean-Louis Haguenauer, Professor at University of Indiana (Bloomington) and internationally acclaimed pianist Pascal Rogé. She currently serves as Principal Cellist with the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra and occasionally the Pasadena Symphony. She served for five years as Principal Cello with New West Symphony. Several composers, including jazz-pianist Clare Fisher and Music Director Enrique Diemecke have written solo pieces for her. She also recorded "Jazz and Cocktails", a piano trio written by Gernot Wolfgang, with violonist Tereza Stanislav and pianist Robert Thies, with whom she founded the Pantoum Trio. The CD was released in July 2006, to critical acclaim. Next season her concerts will include the Suite from Memoirs of a Geisha by John Williams, Dvorak Cello Concerto (Orchestra Filarmonico de Bogotà and Long Beach Symphony Orchestra) as well as Brahms Double Concerto with violinist Tereza Stanislav and the Santa Monica Symphony conducted by Allen Gross. She will also perform the world premiere Eric Tanguy’s piano trio specially written for her and published by Salabert: this premiere will be recorded and broadcast by Radio-France in Paris. Cécilia also served as Principal Cello for the Academy Awards, the Emmys, American Idols and America’s Got Talent.
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Minnesota-based Libby Larsen has a lifelong love of boogie-woogie, which she finds “enormously optimistic and vital.” Commissioned to write a piece for the American/Soviet Youth Orchestra in 1988, she determined to combine these American idioms with an American form, thus choosing collage over the European-derived symphonic or overture forms—collage being the musical equivalent of the patchwork quilts that represent a distinctive heritage of the United States. Although the resulting Collage: Boogie uses boogie-woogie bass-line figures, its driving rhythms, emphasized by percussion and amplified piano, have a broader dance background, somewhat redolent of up-tempo symphonic jazz from earlier in the century. Ironically, during rehearsals for the premiere at the Kennedy Center, conducted by Zubin Mehta, Soviet cellists had to correct the American trombonists, who didn’t seem to know how a Glenn Miller “doo-wop” lick using a plunger mute ought to sound.
Despite his lifelong love of the cello, Johannes Brahms never wrote a cello concerto, lamenting near the end of his life, after hearing the Dvorák Cello Concerto, that if he had known it could be done he would have written one himself. Nevertheless, he did give the cello a featured solo in the slow movement of his Second Piano Concerto (1882), where it intertwines, duet-like, with the piano, and followed that up with his final concerto, the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor. Brahms composed the concerto as a peace offering to violinist Joseph Joachim, in order to repair a long estrangement with his lifelong friend, with cellist Robert Hausmann of the Joachim String Quartet sharing soloist honors at the 1887 premiere, conducted by the composer. Although the soloists share much duet work in a roughly equal partnership, they unfold that partnership within the dramatic form of the concerto. Thus, an exciting and mood-shifting first movement punctuated by powerful orchestral passages is followed by a lyrical slow movement and a more relaxed, often dance-like finale. The personal connection to Joachim manifests itself often, especially in the use early on of a musical motto of Joachim’s youth, F-A-E (frei aber einsam, or, free but lonely), an allusion to a Viotti concerto that was a favorite of both composer and violinist, and the “Hungarian” flavor of the finale. But the work’s expressive power derives most of all from the inspired partnership of the cello with the violin, backed by Brahms’s dramatically forceful orchestral sonorities.
Of the five composers who made up the famous Kuchka, or “mighty little heap” of Russian nationalist composers, Alexander Borodin perhaps best exemplifies their purported ideal of the amateur composer, for he was professionally a chemist of international repute—and, unlike Musorgsky and Rimsky Korsakov, he kept his “day job.” That he would succeed so well on two such distinct fronts is itself remarkable, for he was the illegitimate son of a prince, bearing the name (and under normal circumstances, the professional and social opportunities) of a serf on his biological father’s estate. But Borodin was lucky, benefiting from both his mother’s favored status and her gifts as an educator. As a part-time composer, the adult Borodin worked slowly, struggling over many years to finish his opera Prince Igor, which, like his Third Symphony, remained incomplete at his death. The most important fruit from these years (apart from the completed parts of the opera) was the Second Symphony in B Minor, which borrows much of its material from discarded ideas for Prince Igor. The “Russian” sound of the opening epigrammatic material stems from its modal feel and its borrowing from the “Rimsky” (or octatonic) scale that so interested Liszt and later composers. Although the later movements continue to experiment with alternative scales (such as the whole-tone scale), it is their colorful orchestral style and rhythmic vivacity, especially in the scherzo and finale, that contribute most to the symphony’s distinctively Russian character. After a less than successful premiere in 1877, Borodin continued to work on the symphony’s orchestration with Rimsky Korsakov’s help, and the latter conducted the definitive version the following year, with great success.
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