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Presented by the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild
DATE: Sunday, 26 October, 2003 at 3:00 PM
SITE: The BTI Center for the Performing Arts Map
PROGRAM
About the Borromeo String Quartet
Audiences around the world respond with exhilaration to what the critics call the "razor sharp intensity" and "heart stopping" performances of the award-winning Borromeo String Quartet. Quickly establishing itself as one of the most important string quartets performing today, the Borromeo Quartet has been hailed by The New York Times as "outstanding" and the Boston Globe as "simply the best there is".
During the 2003-2004 season, the Borromeo Quartet will perform over 90 concerts in major venues across three continents. Highlights of the season include engagements in some of the foremost music centers in New York, Boston, and Baltimore, as well as extensive international tours of the Far and Middle East. Appearances of special interest for the season include concerts at New York's Lincoln Center and Weill Recital Hall, and the Quartet's first concerts in Turkey.
Internationally, the Quartet has recently appeared at such prestigious venues as the Philharmonie in Berlin, Suntory, Casals and the Dai-Ichi Semei Halls in Tokyo, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Dvorak Hall in Prague, the Opera Bastille in Paris, and Wigmore Hall in London. Its American engagements have included performances at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Boston's Jordan Hall, and the Library of Congress, the Freer Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery and the National Gallery.
The Quartet has participated in many of the most prestigious international chamber music festivals, including the Prague Spring Festival, the Spoleto Festival in Italy, the Orlando Festival in The Netherlands, and Norway's Stavanger Festival. In North America, the Quartet has appeared at the Tanglewood Festival, Ravinia, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Caramoor, the Cape & Islands Chamber Music Festival, Yale at Norfolk, Bravo! Colorado, Spoleto (Charleston), Chamber Music Northwest and the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival. Recent collaborators have included pianists Christopher Eschenbach, Gary Graffman, Leon Fleisher and Menahem Pressler, soprano Dawn Upshaw, clarinetist David Shifrin, as well as members of the Brentano, Guarneri, Juilliard and Cleveland Quartets.
The Borromeo String Quartet recently completed two seasons as a member of Chamber Music Society Two, the emerging artists program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The Quartet has also had a long-standing relationship with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where it has appeared multiple times each season, and, fittingly, completed its first Beethoven Cycle there in the spring of 2000.
Gramophone Magazine hailed the Quartet's most recent recording project, featuring two masterworks by Beethoven, Quartet Op. 95, "Serioso" and Quartet Op. 59, No. 3, as "an extraordinary experience." Their first recording project, including the String Quartet and String Duo of Maurice Ravel, was honored with the Chamber Music America/WQXR Award for Recording Excellence in 2001. Both discs are on the Image Recordings label. The Quartet, which was the Ensemble-in-Residence for National Public Radio's Performance Today, is heard frequently on NPR, and works extensively with WGBH in Boston and WNYC in New York.
The Quartet is committed to bringing chamber music to a broader audience through outreach activities, including master classes and special concerts for students. This interest is reflected in the Quartet's participation in the innovative "Learning Through Music" program at the New England Conservatory. The Quartet recently inaugurated the Chamber Music Workshop for Young Professional Musicians, a young artist program in Japan, and serves as an advisor to Community MusicWorks of Providence, Rhode Island, an organization dedicated to enriching the lives of inner city youths and families through classical music.
The Borromeo String Quartet maintains a strong connection to contemporary composers, having worked with John Cage, John Harbison, Steve Mackey, Thomas Ades, Leon Kirchner, Gunther Schuller and Gyorgy Ligeti, among many others. In 2002, the Quartet premiered works by Michael Ellison and Osvaldo Golijov.
Formed in 1989 by four young musicians from the Curtis Institute of Music, the Quartet immediately won international acclaim as the recipient of top prizes in the 1990 International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The following year, the Quartet won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and made its New York and Washington debuts on the YCA series at the 92nd Street Y and the Kennedy Center, respectively. The Borromeo Quartet has continued to win international recognition, with recent awards including Chamber Music America's prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award in 1998, and Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award for 2001, given annually to rising artists.
The Quartet takes its name from an area of northern Italy where it played its first concerts together. The City of Boston has become home to the group, where the Borromeo Quartet serves on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music as Quartet-in-Residence. Additional information about the Quartet may be found on its website at www.borromeoquartet.org.
The Quartet
Hailed as one of the great living classical pianists, Gary Graffman has enjoyed a career as one of the most popular performers on the international concert circuit for more than three decades. He has circled the globe almost non-stop, playing the most demanding works in the piano literature.
In 1979, however, Graffman suffered an injury to his right hand. Ironically, the misfortune which curtailed his performing career provided him with opportunities to expand his horizons. Graffman pursues a life of exceptionally varied interests, embracing such diverse interests as exploring archeological sites in China to his current directorship of Philadelphia's renowned Curtis Institute of Music.
Graffman assumed the post of director of Curtis in 1986, succeeding such illustrious predecessors as Josef Hofmann, Efrem Zimbalist Sr., and Rudolf Serkin. Although born in New York, Graffman became a part of Philadelphia when he was accepted to Curtis at age seven. After graduation, he studied intensely for several years. In 1949, he won the prestigious Leventritt Award and made his debut with the leading American orchestras.
Despite his injury, Graffman's performing and academic careers converged in 1993, when he joined conductor André Previn and the Curtis Institute's Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Ned Rorem's Piano Concerto No. 4 (for left hand).