"If there were more Cynthia Phelpses around, there might be more viola recitals…she is a master of her instrument -- remarkable technique and warm, full sound." – THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

"Not only does CYNTHIA PHELPS produce one of the richest, deepest viola timbres in the world, she is a superb musician" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). Principal Violist of the New York Philharmonic, Ms. Phelps has distinguished herself both here and abroad as one of the leading instrumentalists of our time. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Pro Musicis International Award and first prize at both the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and the Washington International String Competition, she has captivated audiences with her compelling solo and chamber music performances. She is "a performer of top rank...the sounds she drew were not only completely unproblematical --technically faultless, generously nuanced-- but sensuously breathtaking" (The Boston Globe).

Ms. Phelps performs throughout the world as soloist with orchestras, including the Minnesota Orchestra, Shanghai, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Eastern Music Festival and Vermont Symphonies, Orquesta Sinfonica de Bilbao, and Rochester and Hong Kong Philharmonic among others. World-wide, her electrifying solo appearances with the New York Philharmonic garner raves; they have included Berlioz's Harold in Italy, the Bartok Viola Concerto, Strauss's Don Quixote, the Benjamin Lees Concerto for String Quartet, the premiere of a concerto written for her by Sofia Gubaidulina and most recently, the premiere of a new concerto by the young composer Julia Adolphe written for her. She has appeared as soloist with the orchestra across the globe, including Vienna’s Musikverein, London’s Royal Festival Hall, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam among others.

She has become a familiar and much-admired figure at the world's foremost concert venues, appearing in recital in Paris, Rome, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, at New York's Alice Tully Hall, London's Wigmore Hall, St. David's Hall in Cardiff, Wales, as well as in jails, hospitals, and drug rehab centers worldwide. A compelling performer of traditional works, she’s also an advocate of the music of our time, including premieres by Larry Lipkis, for piano quintet and solo viola, and two works by Stephen Paulus, one solo and one commissioned for her by the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival for viola and the American String Quartet and for piano quintet.

She has collaborated with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, and Yefim Bronfman, among others. A much sought-after chamber musician, she performs regularly with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and collaborates with the American, Brentano, St. Lawrence and Prague String Quartets, and the Kalichstein-Robinson-Laredo Trio. She has appeared at the Mostly Mozart, Marlboro, Ravinia, La Jolla, Bravo! Colorado, Santa Fe, Moab, and Seattle Festivals, as well as in Europe at the Naples, Cremona, and Schleswig-Holstein Festivals. She is a founding member of the chamber group Les Amies, a flute-harp-viola trio formed with harpist Nancy Allen and flutist Carol Wincenc, and a member of the newly-formed New York Philharmonic String Quartet. She has also been heard on National Public Radio's St. Paul Sunday Morning, Radio France, and RAI in Italy, and has been featured on The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Live from Lincoln Center, and CBS Sunday Morning.

A devoted educator, Ms. Phelps is on the faculty of The Juilliard School, Shanghai Academy, and the Music Academy of the West. Her most recent album, for flute, viola, and harp, on Telarc, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Her debut solo recording is on Cala Records, and she can also be heard on the Marlboro Recording Society, Polyvideo, Nuova Era, Virgin Classics, and Koch, and New York Philharmonic labels.

Photo: Richard Bowditch PRESS

THE NEW YORK TIMES "Her sound was everywhere lush and lovely -- the lullaby [of Schumann's ["Märchenbilder"] has never sounded more meltingly beautiful than it did here."

THE BOSTON GLOBE "A performer of the top rank ... the sounds she drew were technically faultless, generously nuanced, and sensuously breathtaking."

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES "Phelps is one of the more persuasive violists on the solo circuit. She tossed off all technical challenges with ease, and her richness of tone radiated an almost palpable warmth….she exhibited spellbinding pianissimos and unshakable accuracy"

THE TIMES (London) "Her warmth of tone as well as flexibility of phrase comprised an affecting performance. Beneath the unassuming platform manner was a skill and sensitivity that should ensure her continuing success."

THE CLASSICAL SOURCE “Cynthia Phelps's brief but extraordinarily heartfelt viola solos invariably got to the heart of the matter and pointed up what was lacking elsewhere.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES "She shapes the viola line as though it were written for voice, not for an instrument ...with a lush tone, and phrasing that was carefully nuanced."

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE “Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy,” with viola soloist Cynthia Phelps, was a tour de force.”

MUSICAL AMERICA WORLDWIDE “Adolphe has crafted a poetically haunting meditation that leaves a lasting impression [unearth, release]. Phelps was a deeply involved protagonist, giving eloquent voice to the concerto’s rhetorical spectrum, from the theatrical declamation of the opening movement to the kinetic accents of the energetic second and the liberating lyrical serenity of the finale.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES “The soloist [Unearth, Release]” was Cynthia Phelps, the Philharmonic’s impressive principal violist. Ms. Phelps conveyed the emotional nuances and mood shifts of the music in a commanding and plush-toned performance.”

NEW YORK MAGAZINE “Adolphe has written a concerto [Unearth, Release] that captures the fragile clarity of twilight…the viola must achieve prominence through charm and negotiation…That’s a job for Cynthia Phelps, the New York Philharmonic’s stupendous section leader, and Adolphe helps her by threading the dark, velvety viola through a shadowed orchestral landscape. The soloist flaps like a bat against a window in the first movement and skips lightly over the waves in the second. But it’s the final movement that lingers longest in the mind, the viola curling softly on a vaporous pillow of strings.”

FINANCIAL TIMES “Cynthia Phelps, the splendid first viola player of the local band, performed Unearth, Release, a new, almost hummable concerto by Julia Adolphe. Adolphe’s 20-minute contribution…bright and breezy at first, then meditative, it made fine use of Phelps’s lush tone and virtuosic technique.”

On the cover of …

Cynthia Phelps, the principal violist of the Philharmonic, premières a new concerto by Julia Adolphe. Illustration by Wesley Allsbrook

When New York Philharmonic audiences hear the first performances of Julia Adolphe’s viola concerto “Unearth, Release” (Nov. 17-19), they may not realize the amount of labor that goes into creating an orchestral piece from scratch: the concerto lasts approximately nineteen minutes and took about a year to compose. Adolphe, who is twenty-eight years old and is completing a doctorate at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, received the commission in late 2014, after winning a competition at the American Composers Orchestra. She met with Cynthia Phelps, the Philharmonic’s principal violist, who will be the soloist in the première, and studied her sound. Adolphe began sketching, on paper and on the computer; she went through various drafts, tried out the piece in a viola-and-piano version, and, this past summer, had run-throughs with orchestras at U.S.C. and in North Carolina.

“This was going to be my first piece out of school,” Adolphe told me, at her home, in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. “In fact, I’m still in school, technically. It’s an intimidating place to start—the New York Philharmonic!—but everyone has been incredibly helpful all the way through the process.” She consulted with Alan Gilbert, the orchestra’s current music director, and with Jaap van Zweden, Gilbert’s successor, who will conduct the première. “I’m grateful I had the opportunity to basically workshop the piece in different stages. The piece is at its full potential, I think.”

She began not with notes but words: a page of adjectives and images, indicating moods that she wanted to capture. They range from “claustrophobic, contagious, cyclical, vivid, fiery,” at the beginning, to “deep breaths, peace and calm,” at the end. “It might be my theatre background,” she told me, “but I tend to think of orchestra players as characters with intentions, and plot a narrative arc for them. It’s not about the audience needing to have these exact same emotions—they might feel something very different. It’s that my music will communicate more effectively if I’m as specific with myself as possible.” The narrative proceeds from relative darkness to relative light—from “drowning in uncertainty,” Adolphe writes in a program note, to “embracing ambiguity.”

She made some extensive changes in the process. Originally, the piece ended with a fast, bustling movement; later, she moved that music to the middle, to create a more meditative close. At first, she gave the viola some lengthy solos with little or no accompaniment, but Gilbert advised her to add more activity to the supporting parts. In the final stages, she thinned out textures so that the viola would always be audible. The challenge of writing a viola concerto is that the instrument can easily be overpowered.

“I learned so much along the way,” she said. “In a way, the story I wrote—of the viola starting enmeshed in the orchestra and then asserting her expressive identity—is my own story, too. I found my own voice in the course of the year.” ♦

Classical Music | Entertainment Seattle Chamber Music Society marks its 35th Summer Festival

Cynthia Phelps is a regular participant in the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival.

Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 2016 Summer Festival reunites longtime favorite musicians with newcomers including mandolin star Chris Thile and the concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic in a month of classics and surprises, from July 5 to 30.

By Thomas May

“Chamber music is about being able to trust your colleagues,” says violist Cynthia Phelps. That’s what enables the risk-taking that’s essential for this intimate musical medium, she explains. “And the chance to live and work together during the Summer Festival is a wonderful model for building that trust.” She’s referring to the spirit of relaxed camaraderie that makes the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival so appealing to like-minded musicians. It somehow manages to blossom without fail, despite the frenzied schedule of classics to polish and new pieces to learn. For Phelps — who spends the regular season as principal violist of the New York Philharmonic — the Emerald City has long been a home away from home during the four-week festival SCMS presents each summer.

The 2016 edition launches Tuesday, July 5, and runs through July 30. Offering 12 different concerts and related events (including a free performance in Volunteer Park on July 27), this 35th-anniversary festival convenes 49 musicians from around North America and Europe.

In 1987, during the early years, Phelps got her first taste of the collegial atmosphere she admires. It was enough to make her decide to keep coming back — one of a loyal core of musicians who have become longtime regulars at the festival.

Along with those familiar faces, the 2016 festival will feature 13 newcomers, including such prominent musicians as violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley, concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic; pianist George Li, silver medalist in last year’s Tchaikovsky Competition; and Stephen Williamson, principal clarinetist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

James Ehnes, who took over from festival founder Toby Saks as artistic director of SCMS, has been a festival regular since 1995, when he was 19. An internationally acclaimed violin soloist, Ehnes points out that the programming he devised for this month aims for a balance between pieces for smaller and larger forces.

“I really enjoy the intimacy in that hall [the upstairs recital hall at Benaroya, the festival’s home]. You can play very softly and draw the audience in. There’s an unusual number of sonatas on the concerts this summer that explore the more intimate nature of duos, but we also have larger-scale pieces, including Octets by Mendelssohn and Shostakovich, and even a piece that includes a narrator.”

Ehnes spoke by phone the day before he flew to Seoul, South Korea, to play the complete string quartets of Beethoven with the James Ehnes Quartet, an ensemble comprising fellow SCMS regulars (with violinist Amy Schwartz Moretti, violist Richard O’Neill, and cellist Rober t deMaine).

Within days of returning from their Korean Beethoven cycle, the Ehnes Quartet will inaugurate the Summer Festival (July 5) with two of the composer’s quartets: an early quartet during the free prelude recital and the matchless Op. 132 A minor Quartet in the concert’s second half.

“The A minor Quartet is the most profoundly moving piece I know,” Ehnes says.

If tickets for that not-to-be-missed event are no longer available, you might want to catch Ehnes on July 25 with a group of colleagues playing Beethoven’s Op. 29 String Quintet. “In a way, I think of this as closing a certain chapter for me personally, for the time being, in this summer of Beethoven.”

If you’re convinced you’ve encountered all the Beethoven there is to hear, the program July 8 may hold a surprise: a couple of early pieces the composer wrote for a patroness who played the mandolin. The performer will be Nickel Creek mandolin virtuoso and Grammy winner Chris Thile.

“Chris is one of the most multifaceted musicians I know,” Ehnes says. “Whether he plays Bach or bluegrass, he’s totally captivating.”

Thile will play two concerts (July 8 and 11) and a special late-night concert at the Triple Door on July 8.

On July 11 he’ll join with Ehnes to unveil the annual SCMS new work commission. This year it’s by cellist and composer Jeremy Turner (Ehnes’ former roommate at Juilliard), a duo for mandolin and violin titled “The Inland Seas” that was inspired by Turner’s experience of the Great Lakes. Cynthia Phelps also appears on that program, playing Schumann’s gorgeous “Märchenbilder.”

After the positive reactions to a narrated performance of Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” two years ago, Ehnes wanted to explore that theatrical vein again by presenting William Walton’s “Façade,” a scandalous “entertainment” from the early 1920s that made the young British composer famous (also on the July 8 program).

“Talk about contemporary relevance: It’s basically a rap, where the poetry is as much about the rhythm of the words as their meaning,” Ehnes explains. “It’s written for an unusual combination of instruments with a fun, youthful energy.”

OFFSTAGE WITH: Cynthia Phelps; Playing the Tune and Calling It, Too By JAMES R. OESTREICH

CYNTHIA PHELPS does not exactly blend into the background: not at the New York Philharmonic, where, as principal violist, she sits up front, just to the maestro's right, in Kurt Masur's preferred seating, her alert bearing and model posture enhancing the effect of her striking looks. And certainly not in a little restaurant on Broadway, opposite Lincoln Center, with a photographer hovering to catch her every changing expression.

But being the center of attention suits her well, however odd that may seem for someone who plays an often overlooked instrument, which generally finds itself in the middle of the orchestra and the middle of the harmony.

"I even like to sit high when I'm driving," Ms. Phelps said recently, explaining her choice of a Nissan Pathfinder with four-wheel drive to travel the heavily paved terrain between work and her home in Leonia, N.J. "I have a real complex. I like being in charge of my own section in the orchestra. I like to tell people what to do."

In part, the complex may be a reaction to her place in the family pecking order, as the fourth of five sisters, all musicians. (Together they form a piano quintet, and they occasionally perform as such.) Or perhaps it comes from the fact that her instrument gets no respect. At a time when excellent young violists seem to be everywhere, viola jokes (What's the difference between a viola and a coffin? The coffin has the corpse on the inside.) have made their way from orchestral circles to a broader musical public.

In any case, Ms. Phelps's visibility, along with her superb musicianship and her leadership qualities, makes her as apt a symbol of Mr. Masur's "new" Philharmonic as any. Ms. Phelps, 33, who was raised in Los Angeles and went to the Philharmonic from the Minnesota Orchestra in September 1992, was the first principal player hired by Mr. Masur in his tenure as music director. She narrowly beat out a candidate for the position from within the orchestra, Rebecca Young, who around the same time was offered the position of principal violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Masur, in a conversation a while back about the state of the orchestra, said he was gratified that other members of the orchestra had welcomed Ms. Phelps immediately and wholeheartedly. He continued, "As they heard her they said, 'O.K., that's a first chair, without doubt.' "Ms. Young, in fact, became one of Ms. Phelps's closest friends in the orchestra in their season together, and although Ms. Young is playing with the Boston Symphony this season, she will return to the Philharmonic in the fall as associate principal violist.

"A lot of musicians told me not to take the job, that I'd hate the orchestra," Ms. Phelps said. "But Becky Young called me the week before the first rehearsal. It was so warm right away, and people were so nice."

The time and place for the move were right, she explained, because she has a 3-year-old daughter, Christina. In Minneapolis, she said, she had "the best principal viola contract in the country." It allowed her to travel to play solos and chamber music, but she found that the travel disrupted the continuity of her orchestral work and kept her away from Christina.

"Deborah Borda made it very clear to me that she could in no way match that contract in terms of time off and flexibility," Ms. Phelps said of the Philharmonic's managing director, who had herself come to New York from the Minnesota Orchestra. "But in New York it isn't necessary. There's so much going on that it allows me to play here."

She does still travel. Her rosy color at the end of a long, bleak winter, she said, came from Tucson, Ariz., where she had just played in the Winter Chamber Music Festival. And of course, she travels with the orchestra, most recently to Europe and imminently to Asia, with Christina and nanny in tow.

"This poor child has been dragged to all ends of the earth," Ms. Phelps said. "So she really hangs on to the things she can control, like potty training. I guess she takes after me, because I like to be able to control things. She's very willful, so it's that much more of a challenge.

"Still, I can't believe how great it is to be a mother. To find something that means more than making music has been rich and rewarding. Every day she teaches me something. And 3 is so much better than 2."

But Christina has proved a sore disappointment in one area. Although she loves ballet, she has revealed no musical gifts.

"She'll start singing in tune and it goes haywire," Ms. Phelps said. "I'll call my mother and say, 'Mom, do something!' Isn't it terrible to admit that I want to send her back if she doesn't have perfect pitch?"

She might well turn for counsel to her mother, Dawn Neal, who still lives in Los Angeles. Ms. Neal does not have perfect pitch herself but is a violinist and taught music to all five of her children. Although Ms. Phelps, who does have perfect pitch, started on the violin, she grew to dislike the sound and still speaks with some horror of the E string, the highest.

‘All-star’ Trio Les Amies delivers spirited, stellar concert

Saturday, April 12, 2014 ______The Mar-a-Lago Club was the scene of an outstanding concert by Trio Les Amies — flutist Carol Wincenc, violist Cynthia Phelps and harpist Nancy Allen. They performed works by Jacques Ibert, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, François Devienne and Maurice Ravel.

Trio Les Amies is what you might call an “allstar trio.” Wincenc has to be one of the busiest flutists performing. She is a soloist with orchestras, a performer of new works, a chamber musician, the flutist with the New York Woodwind Quintet, and a faculty member at the Juilliard School of Music. Phelps, the principal violist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, has introduced new music and performed with many chamber groups. She is also a faculty member at Juilliard. Nancy Allen is principal harpist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, plays with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and heads the harp department at Juilliard.

The Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach concert opened with Ibert’s Three Interludes. The first piece floated on air, it was so delicate. The instruments blended, but each kept its own personality. The second movement was spirited and included lovely viola and flute solos; the harp kept the rhythm going. The viola had a Spanish sound during part of this movement. The final movement featured the flute; it was very fast and called for various sounds from the flute. Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp was the source of the instrumentation of Trio Les Amies. The first movement was atmospheric — the flute and harp were featured in a series of short sections.

The players had complete control of the dynamics, which are surprisingly wide, considering the instruments. The second movement was soaring, all the instruments playing hard. The flute was impressive in the low and high registers. The third movement introduced new sounds on the flute, though not always lovely sounds. Fauré’s Impromptu for Solo Harp, Op. 86, explores all the techniques of the harp — full chords, accompanied melody, wide dynamics, melody under an ostinato and melody on the tops of chords, to mention but a few. Devienne’s Duo for Flute and Viola in C Minor, Op. 5, No. 3, is so fast that one can barely see the flutist’s fingers move. The viola part is also very fast, though Phelps never fell behind the flutist. Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro (1905) brought the concert to a close. Trio Les Amies was joined by violinists Doori Na and Foster Wang, cellist Joseph Lee and clarinetist Brad Whitfield. The work started slowly, the primary melody in the flute and clarinet. Soon the entire hall was filled with sound. The harp presence was always felt, particularly in the cadenza. This is a very impassioned work, remarkably performed.

Trio Les Amies and friends is an amazing group, making music at the highest level. Each is extremely busy musically, but one hopes that they will come together again as Trio Les Amies.

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