DATE: November 12 2006, 3 PM
SITE: The Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts Map
PROGRAM
Ignat Solzhenitsyn joined the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia as assistant Conductor in 1994, was appointed Principal Conductor in 1997 and was named Music Director beginning with the 2004-2005 season.
Recognized as one of today's most gifted artists, and enjoying an active career as both conductor and pianist, Ignat Solzhenitsyn's lyrical and poignant interpretations have won him critical acclaim throughout the world. Ignat Solzhenitsyn is in his second season as Music Director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, having served as its Principal Conductor for the previous six years. His recent guest soloists have included Mstislav Rostropovich, Sylvia McNair, Cho-Liang Lin, Steven Isserlis, Gary Graffman, Sergei Leiferkus, and Leila Josefowicz. Mr. Solzhenitsyn has led the Orchestra in numerous special projects, including Bach's Saint John Passion and the complete Brandenburg Concerti, Haydn's The Creation and Seven Last Words and a rare complete performance of Gluck's Don Juan.
Mr. Solzhenitsyn has appeared as guest conductor with the symphonies of Dallas, Seattle, Indianapolis, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Nashville, Toledo, Lexington, Delaware, Anchorage, Charleston, Flagstaff, and Vermont, as well as many of the major orchestras in Russia including the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Moscow Symphony, the Urals Philharmonic, and the Kremlin Philharmonic. In recent seasons, his extensive touring schedule in the United States and Europe has included concerto performances with numerous major orchestras, including those of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, London, Paris, Naples, St. Petersburg, Israel, and Sydney, and collaborations with such distinguished conductors as André Previn, Herbert Blomstedt, Yuri Temirkanov, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gerard Schwarz, Charles Dutoit, James DePreist, Krzysztof Penderecki, David Zinman, Jerzy Semkov, James Conlon, Lawrence Foster and Maxim Shostakovich. In addition to his recital appearances in the United States at Philadelphia's Academy of Music, St. Paul's Ordway Theatre, UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall, and many others from coast to coast, Mr. Solzhenitsyn has also given numerous recitals in Europe and the Far East in such major musical centers as London, Milan, Zurich, Moscow, Tokyo, and Sydney.
An avid chamber musician, Mr. Solzhenitsyn has collaborated with the Emerson, Borodin, Brentano, St. Petersburg and Lydian String Quartets, and in four-hand recital with Mitsuko Uchida. He has frequently appeared at international festivals, including Salzburg, Evian, Ludwigsburg, Ojai, Marlboro, Nizhniy Novgorod and Moscow's famed December Evenings.
A winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ignat Solzhenitsyn was recently appointed to the piano faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music. He has been featured on many radio and television specials, most recently CBS Sunday Morning and ABC's Nightline.
Cellist Sophie Shao is rapidly gaining international acclaim for her brilliant, mature interpretations of repertoire ranging from Bach and Beethoven to Crumb and Wilson. Strad Magazine praised her "superior sense of style" and the World News described her "sensitive, stylistic playing, with great finesse, emotion, and gorgeous tone."
Winner of top prizes at the 2001 Rostropovich Competition and the XII Tchaikovsky Competition in 2002, Ms. Shao received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant at the age of nineteen. She made her first appearance with the Houston Symphony at the age of eleven, playing Boccherini's Cello Concerto, and has returned to perform with the orchestra on numerous occasions. Other orchestral appearances include the Orchestre de Paris with Christoph Eschenbach, the Russian State Academic Symphony Cappella with Valery Poliansky, Erie Symphony, Yale Symphony, Abilene Philharmonic, Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes, the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, among others. She has performed recitals throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has appeared in performances in such venues as the 92nd Street Y, Carnegie, Avery Fisher, Alice Tully, and Merkin Halls in New York, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, Ford Centre in Toronto, and Rice University in Houston.
In great demand as a chamber musician, she has collaborated with members of the Beaux Arts Trio, the Guarneri, Juilliard, Orion, Cleveland, Mendelssohn String Quartets, and has performed with such distinguished artists as Gary Graffman, David Shifrin, Jaime Laredo, Midori, Andre Previn, Eugene Istomin, Cho-Liang Lin, Andre-Michel Schub, Paquito D'Rivera, Andras Schiff, Claude Frank, and Christoph Eschenbach. Ms. Shao's many festival appearances include Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, Bard, Caramoor, Bridgehampton, Sarasota, Music from Angel Fire, Saratoga, and Ravinia. In the 1998-1999 and 1999-2000 seasons, Sophie Shao was a member of Chamber Music Society Two, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's program for emerging young artists, and continues to be a regular guest at the Chamber Music Society. In the 2003-2004 season, she performs frequently with Concertante, an ensemble devoted to playing chamber works of five people or more, and her chamber music collaborations this season takes her throughout the US and Taiwan.
Ms. Shao can be heard on EMI Classics, playing Andre Previn's Reflections with the Curtis Orchestra under the direction of the composer. Her 1995 performance of Mendelssohn's Quartet in a minor appears on Marlboro Music Festival's 50th Anniversary Album on Bridge Records.
A native of Houston, Texas, Ms. Shao began playing the cello at age six, and was a student of Shirley Trepel, then the principal cellist of the Houston Symphony and professor at Rice University. At age thirteen she enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, studying cello with David Soyer and chamber music with Felix Galimir. After graduating from the Curtis Institute, she continued her cello studies with Aldo Parisot at Yale University, receiving a B.A. in Religious Studies from Yale College and an M.M. from the Yale School of Music, where she was enrolled as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. She now resides in Manhattan, and teaches cello at Princeton University and Vassar College.
Soovin Kim has been warmly received throughout the world since capturing first prize at the Niccoló Paganini International Violin Competition in 1996. He was subsequently awarded the honor of performing a concert on "Il Cannone," Paganini's rarely played del Gesu violin. One year later, he received the prestigious Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award, leading to performance and recording engagements throughout Europe. He was again honored in 1998 with an Avery Fisher Career Grant and was a Bronze medalist at the 2002 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. He has been the recipient of the prestigious London-based Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award for 2005
Mr. Kim's musical activities encompass a wide range of repertoire from Bach to the works of living composers. His virtuosity is notable in programs as diverse as the complete 24 Paganini Caprices which he performed on an eleven-concert tour across Italy shortly after winning the Paganini prize to last season's challenge of performing Bach's 6 Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society where he performs regularly.
He has performed as concerto soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, and the Mozarteum Orchester in the famed Salzburg Festspielhaus. Two career highlights were Mr. Kim's appearances at the Salle Pleyel in Paris with the Orchestre Pasdeloup in a concert honoring the late Henryk Szeryng's 80th birthday and a performance at Carnegie Hall on Christmas Eve with Jaime Laredo conducting the New York String Seminar Orchestra.
As a recitalist, he has performed in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center, Herbst Theater in San Francisco, and Casals Hall in Tokyo, as well as at Ravinia. Last season he also made his Korean recital debut at the Seoul Arts Center.
Recent and upcoming concerto performances include engagements with the Baltimore Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Florida Philharmonic, a tour with the Syracuse Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Acadiana Symphony, North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Portland Symphony, Erie Philharmonic and multiple re-engagements with the KBS Symphony Orchestra.
His recently released CD on the Azica label of the Paganini 24 Caprices has been lauded by critics and peers, including the Best Instrumental Disk of the Month by Classic FM magazine.
Mr. Kim is in great demand as a chamber musician and devotes part of each year to touring with the Johannes Quartet, comprised of the concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and associate principals of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Together with violist Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet and cellist Margo Tatgenhorst of the American Quartet, he performs as a founding member of the string trio Divertimento. He frequently participates in the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and on tour, and as a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Born into a family of non-musicians, at his request, Soovin was given a violin at the age of four. Soovin has worked with some of the finest pedagogues and artist-teachers throughout the world, blending qualities from various violin traditions. At fifteen, he was invited to study with David Cerone and Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He continued studies with Victor Danchenko and Jaime Laredo at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree in 1999.
He plays on a 1709 Antonio Stradivarius violin, the "ex-Kempner.Soovin Kim has been warmly received throughout the world since capturing first prize at the Niccoló Paganini International Violin Competition in 1996. He was subsequently awarded the honor of performing a concert on "Il Cannone," Paganini's rarely played del Gesu violin. One year later, he received the prestigious Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award, leading to performance and recording engagements throughout Europe. He was again honored in 1998 with an Avery Fisher Career Grant and was a Bronze medalist at the 2002 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. He has been the recipient of the prestigious London-based Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award for 2005
Mr. Kim's musical activities encompass a wide range of repertoire from Bach to the works of living composers. His virtuosity is notable in programs as diverse as the complete 24 Paganini Caprices which he performed on an eleven-concert tour across Italy shortly after winning the Paganini prize to last season's challenge of performing Bach's 6 Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society where he performs regularly.
He has performed as concerto soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, and the Mozarteum Orchester in the famed Salzburg Festspielhaus. Two career highlights were Mr. Kim's appearances at the Salle Pleyel in Paris with the Orchestre Pasdeloup in a concert honoring the late Henryk Szeryng's 80th birthday and a performance at Carnegie Hall on Christmas Eve with Jaime Laredo conducting the New York String Seminar Orchestra.
As a recitalist, he has performed in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center, Herbst Theater in San Francisco, and Casals Hall in Tokyo, as well as at Ravinia. Last season he also made his Korean recital debut at the Seoul Arts Center.
Recent and upcoming concerto performances include engagements with the Baltimore Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Florida Philharmonic, a tour with the Syracuse Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Acadiana Symphony, North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Portland Symphony, Erie Philharmonic and multiple re-engagements with the KBS Symphony Orchestra.
His recently released CD on the Azica label of the Paganini 24 Caprices has been lauded by critics and peers, including the Best Instrumental Disk of the Month by Classic FM magazine.
Mr. Kim is in great demand as a chamber musician and devotes part of each year to touring with the Johannes Quartet, comprised of the concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and associate principals of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Together with violist Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet and cellist Margo Tatgenhorst of the American Quartet, he performs as a founding member of the string trio Divertimento. He frequently participates in the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and on tour, and as a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Born into a family of non-musicians, at his request, Soovin was given a violin at the age of four. Soovin has worked with some of the finest pedagogues and artist-teachers throughout the world, blending qualities from various violin traditions. At fifteen, he was invited to study with David Cerone and Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He continued studies with Victor Danchenko and Jaime Laredo at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree in 1999.
He plays on a 1709 Antonio Stradivarius violin, the "ex-Kempner."
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