PRESS KIT CONTENTS 2014 Season Announcement • Overview • Chamber Music Institute • About the Artistic Directors • Facts & Figures • Institute Open House • Tickets & Information • Festival Artists • Music@Menlo LIVE • Press Images • Concert Programs • AudioNotes • Artist Roster • Carte Blanche Series • American Public Media Partnership • Festival Campus & Performance Venues • Encounters • Visual Arts at the Festival • Music@Menlo Calendar • Cafe Conversations • Arts Management Internship Program • Listening Room • About Music@Menlo www.musicatmenlo.org For Immediate Release: Contact: Milina Barry PR 212-420-0200 [email protected] MUSIC@MENLO 2014 Artistic Directors: David Finckel and Wu Han CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL AND INSTITUTE ON THE SAN FRANCISCO PENINSULA ANNOUNCES Around Dvořák July 18–August 9, 2014 (ATHERTON, CA) Music@Menlo, the San Francisco Bay Area’s premier chamber music festival and institute, is pleased to announce its twelfth season. Founded in 2003 by renowned musicians David Finckel and Wu Han, Music@Menlo has garnered a reputation for innovation and excellence and has emerged as one of the world’s leading music festivals. This twelfth season takes place July 18 through August 9, 2014, and is centered on the picturesque campus of Menlo School, located on the San Francisco Peninsula. Led by founders and esteemed performers David Finckel and Wu Han, Music@Menlo brings to Silicon Valley a lineup of the world’s most accomplished musicians and scholars. Adding to this mix is a roster of promising young artists, making for a unique, immersive three-week chamber music experience. Festival Announcement: Music@Menlo 2014 Page 2 All festival events, including symposia, master classes, and related activities, are to be presented at Music@Menlo’s three venues in Atherton, California. Music@Menlo’s 2014 chamber music festival, entitled Around Dvořák, focuses on the unfolding dynamic at the end of the Romantic era between the Viennese Classical tradition and the passionate nationalist expressions of a generation of Central European composers. At the center of this dialectic was Antonín Dvořák, the self-described simple Czech musikant who nonetheless garnered the respect of the paragon of Viennese musical society, Johannes Brahms. The festival will examine the world of Dvořák through its eight innovative, thematically programmed Concert Programs and four artist- curated Carte Blanche Concerts, which together feature forty-eight world-renowned artists and include performances of works by Bartók, Dohnányi, Enescu, Janáček, Kodály, Ligeti, Liszt, Zemlinsky, Suk, Chopin, Bach, and Brahms. Also featured are rarely performed works by the Czech master Erwin Schulhoff, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and modern-day American powerhouses Ives and Crumb, among many others. The Encounters, multimedia symposia led by foremost experts in the classical music field, will take listeners on an in-depth journey through the life and times of Dvořák. The first topic is an exploration of his emergence as a composer against the backdrop of the multinational and multiethnic environment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Other Encounters will examine Hungary’s highly idiosyncratic musical language and the noble Lobkowicz family and its remarkable collection of manuscripts, musical instruments, and historic archives. The concluding Encounter will delve into the profound impact the Second World War had on musical life in the West and beyond. In addition to the festival’s thematically inspired Concert Programs, the artist-curated Carte Blanche recital series, and the Encounter lecture series—Café Conversations, the Listening Room series, and the ever-popular AudioNotes are also a vital part of the season’s offerings. Training the next generation of outstanding chamber musicians is a significant component of Music@Menlo’s mission. The Chamber Music Institute, an intensive three-week program for outstanding young artists, runs concurrently with the festival. The Institute offers open master classes featuring Institute participants, Prelude Performances, Koret Young Performers Concerts, and a daylong Institute Open House, all of which are free and open to the public. The festival artists performing at Music@Menlo form a faculty for the Chamber Music Institute that rivals that of the nation’s top conservatories. Thanks to an ongoing partnership with American Public Media, live performances from Music@Menlo will be heard by radio and online listeners worldwide in the 2014–2015 season, presented as part of American Public Media’s broadcasts. Music@Menlo 2014 is made possible in part by a leadership grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Additional support is provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Koret Foundation Funds, U.S. Trust Private Wealth Management, Bank of America, and the many individuals and organizations that share the festival’s vision. Festival Announcement: Music@Menlo 2014 Page 3 MUSIC@MENLO: FACTS & FIGURES The past twelve years have seen remarkable growth for Music@Menlo: • Total annual attendance now exceeds 15,000 • The $2.1 million annual budget supports over 65 public events each year • 292 Chamber Music Institute participants have been immersed in a rigorous exploration of chamber music under the tutelage of the Institute’s esteemed artist-faculty • 179 artists have performed in the main-stage concerts and coached in the Chamber Music Institute • Performances from the festival air nationwide on American Public Media’s Performance Today®, the largest daily classical music program in the United States, which airs on 260 stations and reaches more than 1.3 million people each week • 70 recordings have been released on the Music@Menlo LIVE label • Music@Menlo LIVE’s entire music catalog is now digitized and offered on iTunes, Amazon.com, and Classical Archives • 187 interns from 79 colleges and universities have gained real-world experience from the industry-leading Arts Administration Internship Program • Thousands of Menlo School students have enjoyed an enhanced educational experience through the annual Winter Residency program • Approximately 25 videos are produced annually during the festival and offered online, with over 4,000 total plays annually • Live broadcasts of Café Conversations and master classes are streamed online for free on Music@Menlo’s website, with over 5,500 views annually Festival Announcement: Music@Menlo 2014 Page 4 2014 SEASON HIGHLIGHTS FESTIVAL ARTISTS Festival Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han have assembled a stellar roster of forty-eight guest artists for Music@Menlo’s 2014 season, seven of whom will be making their Music@Menlo debuts. Joining the festival lineup this summer will be pianists Gloria Chien, Arnaldo Cohen,* Gilbert Kalish, Anne-Marie McDermott, Hyeyeon Park, Juho Pohjonen, Dina Vainshtein,* Gilles Vonsattel, and Wu Han; violinists Benjamin Beilman, Sunmi Chang, Nicolas Dautricourt,* Jorja Fleezanis, Erin Keefe, Kristin Lee, Sean Lee, Yura Lee, Alexander Sitkovetsky,* and Arnaud Sussmann; violists Sunmi Chang, Yura Lee, and Paul Neubauer; cellists Dmitri Atapine, David Finckel, Narek Hakhnazaryan,* and Keith Robinson; bassist Scott Pingel; percussionists Florian Conzetti, Christopher Froh, Ayano Kataoka, and Ian Rosenbaum; flutist Sooyun Kim; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein* and Anthony McGill; oboist Stephen Taylor; bassoonist Peter Kolkay; hornist Kevin Rivard; and baritone Randall Scarlata. Two formidable ensembles, the Danish String Quartet and the Escher String Quartet, return to the festival this season. Four encounter leaders, consisting of the industry’s most expert lecturers, include David Beveridge,* Ara Guzelimian, William Lobkwoicz,* and Michael Parloff. * Music@Menlo debut CONCERT PROGRAMS The eight main-stage Concert Programs of Music@Menlo’s 2014 season serve as the core of the festivals theme, Around Dvořák. Concert Program I: DVOŘÁK IN CONTEXT The 2014 season begins on a festive note (July 19, 6:00 p.m.), as Mozart’s Serenata notturna leads to Dvořák’s pastoral Opus 51 Quartet. Dvořák’s powerful utilization of folk idioms is a tradition inherited by Martinů and Bartók, as evidenced by Martinů’s Three Madrigals and Bartók’s jubilant Divertimento for Strings. The rich traditions represented by these works—Viennese Classicism on the one hand and Central European nationalism on the other—come together in the world of Dvořák, whose flowing lyricism, rhythmic flair, and singular accent characterize the best of the two worlds. Festival Announcement: Music@Menlo 2014 Page 5 Concert Program II: VIENNESE ROOTS The foundation of Viennese Classicism that Dvořák drew on, including the traditions of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, is more deeply explored in this summer’s second Concert Program (July 20, 6:00 p.m., and July 22, 8:00 p.m.). “Viennese Roots” begins with Haydn’s Piano Trio in C Major and then unfolds with two works by Franz Schubert, his Impromptu in A-flat Major and Rondo brillant in b minor for Piano and Violin. Dvořák’s Bass Quintet rounds out the program. Concert Program III: LOBKOWICZ LEGACY The Lobkowicz family has ranked for generations among the Western world’s greatest arts patrons. The seventh Prince Lobkowicz, Joseph Franz Maximilian, was a benefactor to Haydn and Beethoven and was the dedicatee of Haydn’s Opus 77 string quartets, the first of which, in G major, is performed on this concert (July 25 and 26, 8:00 p.m.). Beethoven, too, dedicated numerous works to the prince, including his Opuses 18 and 74 quartets as well as the song