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Jason Duckles The Amelia Trio AMERICAN CLASSICS Cellist Jason Duckles made his solo début at the age of seventeen with the Oregon Symphony. He received his B.A. from Northwestern University and his Master’s and Doctorate from the SUNY Stony Brook as a student of Timothy From left to right: Eddy. He has won prizes for his chamber collaborations including the grand prize in the Concert Artists Guild Competition and top prize in the Munich ARD International Competition. He was a member of the Aspen Rieko Aizawa John Contemporary Ensemble, the Caramoor Virtuosi, and has appeared frequently as the cellist for the Mark Morris Anthea Kreston Dance Group. Jason Duckles Rieko Aizawa HARBISON In 1988 Japanese pianist Rieko Aizawa was brought to the attention of violinist Alexander Schneider on the Piano Trio No. 2 recommendation of pianist Mitsuko Uchida. Schneider engaged her as a soloist with his Brandenburg Ensemble at the opening concerts of Tokyo’s Casals Hall; later that year, Schneider presented Rieko in her United States début concerts at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. The Washington Post says: “She played with a beautiful, limpid Gatsby Etudes • The Violist’s Notebooks tone and a sense of characterization and cohesiveness that is unusual.” She was the last pupil of Mieczysław Horszowski at the Curtis Institute and also studied with Seymour Lipkin and Peter Serkin at the Juilliard School. Amelia Piano Trio Ida Kavafian
Violinist/violist Ida Kavafian enjoys an international reputation as one of the most versatile musicians performing today. With a repertoire as diverse as her talents she has electrified recital stages throughout North America, the Far Also available by John Harbison on Naxos: East, and Europe. She has also appeared as soloist with leading orchestras both nationally and internationally. For twenty years, Ida Kavafian has been the artistic director of the highly successful festival, Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico. She also founded and guided Bravo! Colorado, in Vail, as music director for ten years, building it into one of the leading festivals in the country. As an educator, she is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute, and has served on numerous competition juries and boards, including Chamber Music America. Steven Tenenbom
Violist Steven Tenenbom has established a distinguished career as a chamber musician, soloist, recitalist and teacher. He has worked with composer Lukas Foss and jazz artist Chick Corea, and appeared as guest artist with such eminent ensembles as the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets, the Beaux Arts and Kalichstein-Laredo- Robinson Trios, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is currently a member of the renowned groups Orion Quartet, TASHI and the piano quartet OPUS ONE. He is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music and has recorded on RCA Records with TASHI and the Guarneri String Quartet, and can also be heard on the Arabesque, Delos, ECM, Marlboro Recording Society and Sony Classical labels. He plays a viola by Gasparo da Salò (1560).
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John Harbison (b. 1938) Met asked me to suggest a pianist to make a tape, with Ten Micro-Waltzes Trio (1968) Piano Trio No. 2 • Gatsby Etudes • The Violist’s Notebooks my participation, of the entire vocal score. My choice was Judith Gordon. Her splendid The Ten Micro-Waltzes make up the third of my Trio (1968) was composed in Portland, Oregon for inclusive, non-doctrinaire vocabulary, and contains John Harbison is among America’s most distinguished Composer’s Notes account of the piece, in addition to its practical value, “tapestry” pieces (joining Fourteen Fabled Folksongs performance by Bentley Layton, violin, Helen Harbison, some lively sonorities and shapes. artistic figures. He has received numerous awards and was a pianistic tour de force. As a measure of my and Songs America Loves to Sing) in which a series of cello, and Robert Levin, piano, in a concert at Harvard The combination of piano, violin, and cello was honors, including two of the most prestigious: the Piano Trio No. 2 (2003) gratitude, I made her a piece, the details of which she very short movements, in compact closed forms, is University. It is clearly of its time, in the short-breathing seldom visited by composers in the 1960s, much more MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” award, and the had already practiced. The three Gatsby Etudes do not woven into a fabric that is more than the sum of its parts. sections, angular melodies, and nervous contrasts. It is inhabited these decades later. Pulitzer Prize. Harbison has composed music for most of The most exploratory, diverse body of music for this follow the operatic chronology, but instead pursue some In 2003-2004 Emmanuel Music, Boston, presented also, from a 37-year perspective, moving toward an America’s leading musical institutions, including the combination – not its sonority and virtuosity but its of its motivic trains of thought. They are pianistically eight chamber concerts built around my music. The John Harbison Metropolitan Opera (for whom he wrote The Great ability to adjust to an infinity of formal designs and challenging and fun to play. They connect without concerts were underwritten by friends of Emmanuel Gatsby, 1999), the Chicago Symphony, the Boston strange notions – is by Joseph Haydn. At our Token pause. They are dedicated, in gratitude and friendship, Music, dedicatees of the first eight waltzes. The last two Symphony, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Creek Chamber Music Festival, while presenting only to Judy Gordon. are dedicated to the architects of the series. Center. Born in New Jersey in 1938, he received an seven of the twenty or so masterpieces he made for undergraduate degree from Harvard and the MFA from piano, violin and cello, we noticed how much more The Violist’s Notebooks, Books I & II (2002) Cucaraccia and Fugue Princeton before joining the Massachusetts Institute of unpredictable, experimental, and speculative they are Amelia Piano Trio Technology, where he currently occupies an Institute than his more presentational, public quartets and The name Bartolomeo Campagnoli* is lost in the mists The convivial Cucaraccia and Fugue originated as a Professorship, the highest academic distinction MIT symphonies. Intimate news-filled letters from Haydn to of history. I confess that I know nothing about him pendant to my Violist’s Notebooks. It begins with a Anthea Kreston, Violin • Jason Duckles, Cello • Rieko Aizawa, Piano offers to resident faculty. He also serves as President of the performers, who then pass on their secrets, except that he wrote inventive, musical, satisfying viola species of viola joke, and continues with a fugue that the Copland Fund. His works include four string intimations of immortality and jokes to whatever etudes. In general, no pedagogical etudes need have any tends to take itself rather seriously, unlike the violists I The Amelia Piano Trio is among the premier young chamber ensembles to appear in the last decade. The quartets, four symphonies, a ballet, three operas, a listeners are ready, his trios suspend expectation, live in place in the education of a musician (I remember know. Washington Post says of the trio: “The Amelias make chamber music the way I like to hear it made – big, bold, cantata, and numerous chamber and choral works, more the moment. As long or as short as they need to be, they especially the miserable pedantry of the famous direct and un-self-conscious.” Strad Magazine said, “ …Its careful attention to balance, tonal beauty, and teamwork than fifty of which have been recorded on leading labels encourage us to listen without assumptions. Kreutzer violin studies). But Campagnoli is recalled by Cello Suite was exemplary.” Isaac Stern was one of the trio’s early mentors, presenting them in their Carnegie Hall début. In such as Harmonia Mundi, New World, Deutsche It was not until I heard my Trio No. 2 in a few violists as a good composer (probably a violist 2003, members of the Trio were honored to tour Central Asia with Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble. Winners Grammophon, Decca, Naxos and Koch. He has been performance that I realized how marked I had been by himself), a congenial spirit, a musician who encouraged My Suite for Cello was composed at Nervi, near Genoa, of the prestigious ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the trio is making its mark by commissioning new composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, very regular contact with Haydn’s trios. My trio makes us to expand our technique by dangling an elegantly Italy in 1993 shortly after completing my Concerto for works, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbinson’s new piano trio, as well as by performing vivid the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Academy little contact with the Mozart-to-Shostakovich central musical carrot on a stick. Cello and Orchestra. I wanted to do a short piece of a interpretations of traditional chamber fare. The Amelia’s 2006-07 season features a complete Beethoven Cycle in Rome, and numerous festivals, including Tanglewood, trio repertoire, and a great deal with the transparency, As I began keeping my violist’s notebooks I thought very different character for the instrument that had held performed across the US as well as aired live on the WFMT radio network. In 2003 the Trio was asked by National Marlboro, and Aspen, and is currently principal guest ambiguity, and shiftiness of Papa Joseph Haydn. He had of Campagnoli, his subversively challenging my attention over many months. The concerto is in Public Radio to be its Young Ensemble in Residence, and they have also been heard on American Public Media’s conductor of Emmanuel Music in Boston. He has just the Joker in his pack, also the Ace of Spades: he could communications with his violist colleagues, then as now many ways a discovered form, improvised to fit the “St. Paul Sunday”. The Amelia Trio has performed extensively in North America and abroad, including France, had the premières of Milosz Songs (for the New York entertain, reassure, and frighten, all in one piece, and his some of the best people in the world. My brief etudes material, and of a very demonstrative, public type. The Italy, Panama, and the Caribbean, and has released CDs on the Cedille Records label, as well as on the world music Philharmonic and Dawn Upshaw), But Mary Stood (for aesthetic, at least, is still available. are more compositional than technical studies. Each is solo piece is baroque in origins, more private, and very label Traditional Crossroads. The Trio members are professors at the Hartt School of Music and Connecticut the Cantata Singers, Boston), and Concerto for Bass Viol Trio No. 2 was composed for the Amelia Trio, dedicated to a violist, mostly hard-core, but a few compact. The cello was the instrument my sister played. College. (for fifteen orchestras). Other recent works include commissioned through funds from Joan and Irving doublers are included. Book I was assembled in the I heard most of its standard literature, repeatedly, while Darkbloom (for the Boston Symphony), Songs America Harris, the Caramoor International Music Festival, the margins, over two years. Book II was written one a day, still in high school, and always think of the Anthea Kreston Loves to Sing (for the Atlanta and DaCapo Chamber Simonds Foundation, Tom and Vivian Waldeck, and a self-assigned experiment. The pieces can be sound of the cello as her sound. Players), Symphony No. 4 (for the Seattle Symphony), Judy Evnin. performed in any sequence or grouping. Violinist Anthea Kreston has received numerous awards for her chamber collaborations including honours at the Piano Trio No. 2 (for the Amelia Trio), the motet Melbourne and Banff International Competitions, the Grand Prize at the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and Abraham (commissioned for the Papal Concert of Gatsby Etudes *[ed: Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751-1827), Italian Top Prize in the Munich ARD International Chamber Music Competition. She studied at the Curtis Institute of Reconciliation in Rome), the complete version of his violinist and composer. His compositions include 41 Music with Felix Galimir. The San Diego Reader said of her: “...Anthea is a soloist of the Heifetz-Shaham- ballet Ulysses, Requiem (for the Boston Symphony The opera The Great Gatsby was commissioned by the Caprices for Viola.] Vengerov caliber, whose musical instincts could make even a mere bagatelle thrill the soul and stir the senses to a Orchestra), Piano Sonata No. 2 (for Robert Levin), and Metropolitan Opera to honor the 25th anniversary of frenzy.” String Quartet No. 4 (for the Orion Quartet). James Levine’s début. To assist in its preparation, the
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John Harbison (b. 1938) Met asked me to suggest a pianist to make a tape, with Ten Micro-Waltzes Trio (1968) Piano Trio No. 2 • Gatsby Etudes • The Violist’s Notebooks my participation, of the entire vocal score. My choice was Judith Gordon. Her splendid The Ten Micro-Waltzes make up the third of my Trio (1968) was composed in Portland, Oregon for inclusive, non-doctrinaire vocabulary, and contains John Harbison is among America’s most distinguished Composer’s Notes account of the piece, in addition to its practical value, “tapestry” pieces (joining Fourteen Fabled Folksongs performance by Bentley Layton, violin, Helen Harbison, some lively sonorities and shapes. artistic figures. He has received numerous awards and was a pianistic tour de force. As a measure of my and Songs America Loves to Sing) in which a series of cello, and Robert Levin, piano, in a concert at Harvard The combination of piano, violin, and cello was honors, including two of the most prestigious: the Piano Trio No. 2 (2003) gratitude, I made her a piece, the details of which she very short movements, in compact closed forms, is University. It is clearly of its time, in the short-breathing seldom visited by composers in the 1960s, much more MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” award, and the had already practiced. The three Gatsby Etudes do not woven into a fabric that is more than the sum of its parts. sections, angular melodies, and nervous contrasts. It is inhabited these decades later. Pulitzer Prize. Harbison has composed music for most of The most exploratory, diverse body of music for this follow the operatic chronology, but instead pursue some In 2003-2004 Emmanuel Music, Boston, presented also, from a 37-year perspective, moving toward an America’s leading musical institutions, including the combination – not its sonority and virtuosity but its of its motivic trains of thought. They are pianistically eight chamber concerts built around my music. The John Harbison Metropolitan Opera (for whom he wrote The Great ability to adjust to an infinity of formal designs and challenging and fun to play. They connect without concerts were underwritten by friends of Emmanuel Gatsby, 1999), the Chicago Symphony, the Boston strange notions – is by Joseph Haydn. At our Token pause. They are dedicated, in gratitude and friendship, Music, dedicatees of the first eight waltzes. The last two Symphony, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Creek Chamber Music Festival, while presenting only to Judy Gordon. are dedicated to the architects of the series. Center. Born in New Jersey in 1938, he received an seven of the twenty or so masterpieces he made for undergraduate degree from Harvard and the MFA from piano, violin and cello, we noticed how much more The Violist’s Notebooks, Books I & II (2002) Cucaraccia and Fugue Princeton before joining the Massachusetts Institute of unpredictable, experimental, and speculative they are Amelia Piano Trio Technology, where he currently occupies an Institute than his more presentational, public quartets and The name Bartolomeo Campagnoli* is lost in the mists The convivial Cucaraccia and Fugue originated as a Professorship, the highest academic distinction MIT symphonies. Intimate news-filled letters from Haydn to of history. I confess that I know nothing about him pendant to my Violist’s Notebooks. It begins with a Anthea Kreston, Violin • Jason Duckles, Cello • Rieko Aizawa, Piano offers to resident faculty. He also serves as President of the performers, who then pass on their secrets, except that he wrote inventive, musical, satisfying viola species of viola joke, and continues with a fugue that the Copland Fund. His works include four string intimations of immortality and jokes to whatever etudes. In general, no pedagogical etudes need have any tends to take itself rather seriously, unlike the violists I The Amelia Piano Trio is among the premier young chamber ensembles to appear in the last decade. The quartets, four symphonies, a ballet, three operas, a listeners are ready, his trios suspend expectation, live in place in the education of a musician (I remember know. Washington Post says of the trio: “The Amelias make chamber music the way I like to hear it made – big, bold, cantata, and numerous chamber and choral works, more the moment. As long or as short as they need to be, they especially the miserable pedantry of the famous direct and un-self-conscious.” Strad Magazine said, “ …Its careful attention to balance, tonal beauty, and teamwork than fifty of which have been recorded on leading labels encourage us to listen without assumptions. Kreutzer violin studies). But Campagnoli is recalled by Cello Suite was exemplary.” Isaac Stern was one of the trio’s early mentors, presenting them in their Carnegie Hall début. In such as Harmonia Mundi, New World, Deutsche It was not until I heard my Trio No. 2 in a few violists as a good composer (probably a violist 2003, members of the Trio were honored to tour Central Asia with Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble. Winners Grammophon, Decca, Naxos and Koch. He has been performance that I realized how marked I had been by himself), a congenial spirit, a musician who encouraged My Suite for Cello was composed at Nervi, near Genoa, of the prestigious ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the trio is making its mark by commissioning new composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, very regular contact with Haydn’s trios. My trio makes us to expand our technique by dangling an elegantly Italy in 1993 shortly after completing my Concerto for works, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbinson’s new piano trio, as well as by performing vivid the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Academy little contact with the Mozart-to-Shostakovich central musical carrot on a stick. Cello and Orchestra. I wanted to do a short piece of a interpretations of traditional chamber fare. The Amelia’s 2006-07 season features a complete Beethoven Cycle in Rome, and numerous festivals, including Tanglewood, trio repertoire, and a great deal with the transparency, As I began keeping my violist’s notebooks I thought very different character for the instrument that had held performed across the US as well as aired live on the WFMT radio network. In 2003 the Trio was asked by National Marlboro, and Aspen, and is currently principal guest ambiguity, and shiftiness of Papa Joseph Haydn. He had of Campagnoli, his subversively challenging my attention over many months. The concerto is in Public Radio to be its Young Ensemble in Residence, and they have also been heard on American Public Media’s conductor of Emmanuel Music in Boston. He has just the Joker in his pack, also the Ace of Spades: he could communications with his violist colleagues, then as now many ways a discovered form, improvised to fit the “St. Paul Sunday”. The Amelia Trio has performed extensively in North America and abroad, including France, had the premières of Milosz Songs (for the New York entertain, reassure, and frighten, all in one piece, and his some of the best people in the world. My brief etudes material, and of a very demonstrative, public type. The Italy, Panama, and the Caribbean, and has released CDs on the Cedille Records label, as well as on the world music Philharmonic and Dawn Upshaw), But Mary Stood (for aesthetic, at least, is still available. are more compositional than technical studies. Each is solo piece is baroque in origins, more private, and very label Traditional Crossroads. The Trio members are professors at the Hartt School of Music and Connecticut the Cantata Singers, Boston), and Concerto for Bass Viol Trio No. 2 was composed for the Amelia Trio, dedicated to a violist, mostly hard-core, but a few compact. The cello was the instrument my sister played. College. (for fifteen orchestras). Other recent works include commissioned through funds from Joan and Irving doublers are included. Book I was assembled in the I heard most of its standard literature, repeatedly, while Darkbloom (for the Boston Symphony), Songs America Harris, the Caramoor International Music Festival, the margins, over two years. Book II was written one a day, still in high school, and always think of the Anthea Kreston Loves to Sing (for the Atlanta and DaCapo Chamber Simonds Foundation, Tom and Vivian Waldeck, and a self-assigned experiment. The pieces can be sound of the cello as her sound. Players), Symphony No. 4 (for the Seattle Symphony), Judy Evnin. performed in any sequence or grouping. Violinist Anthea Kreston has received numerous awards for her chamber collaborations including honours at the Piano Trio No. 2 (for the Amelia Trio), the motet Melbourne and Banff International Competitions, the Grand Prize at the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and Abraham (commissioned for the Papal Concert of Gatsby Etudes *[ed: Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751-1827), Italian Top Prize in the Munich ARD International Chamber Music Competition. She studied at the Curtis Institute of Reconciliation in Rome), the complete version of his violinist and composer. His compositions include 41 Music with Felix Galimir. The San Diego Reader said of her: “...Anthea is a soloist of the Heifetz-Shaham- ballet Ulysses, Requiem (for the Boston Symphony The opera The Great Gatsby was commissioned by the Caprices for Viola.] Vengerov caliber, whose musical instincts could make even a mere bagatelle thrill the soul and stir the senses to a Orchestra), Piano Sonata No. 2 (for Robert Levin), and Metropolitan Opera to honor the 25th anniversary of frenzy.” String Quartet No. 4 (for the Orion Quartet). James Levine’s début. To assist in its preparation, the
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John Harbison (b. 1938) Met asked me to suggest a pianist to make a tape, with Ten Micro-Waltzes Trio (1968) Piano Trio No. 2 • Gatsby Etudes • The Violist’s Notebooks my participation, of the entire vocal score. My choice was Judith Gordon. Her splendid The Ten Micro-Waltzes make up the third of my Trio (1968) was composed in Portland, Oregon for inclusive, non-doctrinaire vocabulary, and contains John Harbison is among America’s most distinguished Composer’s Notes account of the piece, in addition to its practical value, “tapestry” pieces (joining Fourteen Fabled Folksongs performance by Bentley Layton, violin, Helen Harbison, some lively sonorities and shapes. artistic figures. He has received numerous awards and was a pianistic tour de force. As a measure of my and Songs America Loves to Sing) in which a series of cello, and Robert Levin, piano, in a concert at Harvard The combination of piano, violin, and cello was honors, including two of the most prestigious: the Piano Trio No. 2 (2003) gratitude, I made her a piece, the details of which she very short movements, in compact closed forms, is University. It is clearly of its time, in the short-breathing seldom visited by composers in the 1960s, much more MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” award, and the had already practiced. The three Gatsby Etudes do not woven into a fabric that is more than the sum of its parts. sections, angular melodies, and nervous contrasts. It is inhabited these decades later. Pulitzer Prize. Harbison has composed music for most of The most exploratory, diverse body of music for this follow the operatic chronology, but instead pursue some In 2003-2004 Emmanuel Music, Boston, presented also, from a 37-year perspective, moving toward an America’s leading musical institutions, including the combination – not its sonority and virtuosity but its of its motivic trains of thought. They are pianistically eight chamber concerts built around my music. The John Harbison Metropolitan Opera (for whom he wrote The Great ability to adjust to an infinity of formal designs and challenging and fun to play. They connect without concerts were underwritten by friends of Emmanuel Gatsby, 1999), the Chicago Symphony, the Boston strange notions – is by Joseph Haydn. At our Token pause. They are dedicated, in gratitude and friendship, Music, dedicatees of the first eight waltzes. The last two Symphony, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Creek Chamber Music Festival, while presenting only to Judy Gordon. are dedicated to the architects of the series. Center. Born in New Jersey in 1938, he received an seven of the twenty or so masterpieces he made for undergraduate degree from Harvard and the MFA from piano, violin and cello, we noticed how much more The Violist’s Notebooks, Books I & II (2002) Cucaraccia and Fugue Princeton before joining the Massachusetts Institute of unpredictable, experimental, and speculative they are Amelia Piano Trio Technology, where he currently occupies an Institute than his more presentational, public quartets and The name Bartolomeo Campagnoli* is lost in the mists The convivial Cucaraccia and Fugue originated as a Professorship, the highest academic distinction MIT symphonies. Intimate news-filled letters from Haydn to of history. I confess that I know nothing about him pendant to my Violist’s Notebooks. It begins with a Anthea Kreston, Violin • Jason Duckles, Cello • Rieko Aizawa, Piano offers to resident faculty. He also serves as President of the performers, who then pass on their secrets, except that he wrote inventive, musical, satisfying viola species of viola joke, and continues with a fugue that the Copland Fund. His works include four string intimations of immortality and jokes to whatever etudes. In general, no pedagogical etudes need have any tends to take itself rather seriously, unlike the violists I The Amelia Piano Trio is among the premier young chamber ensembles to appear in the last decade. The quartets, four symphonies, a ballet, three operas, a listeners are ready, his trios suspend expectation, live in place in the education of a musician (I remember know. Washington Post says of the trio: “The Amelias make chamber music the way I like to hear it made – big, bold, cantata, and numerous chamber and choral works, more the moment. As long or as short as they need to be, they especially the miserable pedantry of the famous direct and un-self-conscious.” Strad Magazine said, “ …Its careful attention to balance, tonal beauty, and teamwork than fifty of which have been recorded on leading labels encourage us to listen without assumptions. Kreutzer violin studies). But Campagnoli is recalled by Cello Suite was exemplary.” Isaac Stern was one of the trio’s early mentors, presenting them in their Carnegie Hall début. In such as Harmonia Mundi, New World, Deutsche It was not until I heard my Trio No. 2 in a few violists as a good composer (probably a violist 2003, members of the Trio were honored to tour Central Asia with Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble. Winners Grammophon, Decca, Naxos and Koch. He has been performance that I realized how marked I had been by himself), a congenial spirit, a musician who encouraged My Suite for Cello was composed at Nervi, near Genoa, of the prestigious ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the trio is making its mark by commissioning new composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, very regular contact with Haydn’s trios. My trio makes us to expand our technique by dangling an elegantly Italy in 1993 shortly after completing my Concerto for works, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbinson’s new piano trio, as well as by performing vivid the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Academy little contact with the Mozart-to-Shostakovich central musical carrot on a stick. Cello and Orchestra. I wanted to do a short piece of a interpretations of traditional chamber fare. The Amelia’s 2006-07 season features a complete Beethoven Cycle in Rome, and numerous festivals, including Tanglewood, trio repertoire, and a great deal with the transparency, As I began keeping my violist’s notebooks I thought very different character for the instrument that had held performed across the US as well as aired live on the WFMT radio network. In 2003 the Trio was asked by National Marlboro, and Aspen, and is currently principal guest ambiguity, and shiftiness of Papa Joseph Haydn. He had of Campagnoli, his subversively challenging my attention over many months. The concerto is in Public Radio to be its Young Ensemble in Residence, and they have also been heard on American Public Media’s conductor of Emmanuel Music in Boston. He has just the Joker in his pack, also the Ace of Spades: he could communications with his violist colleagues, then as now many ways a discovered form, improvised to fit the “St. Paul Sunday”. The Amelia Trio has performed extensively in North America and abroad, including France, had the premières of Milosz Songs (for the New York entertain, reassure, and frighten, all in one piece, and his some of the best people in the world. My brief etudes material, and of a very demonstrative, public type. The Italy, Panama, and the Caribbean, and has released CDs on the Cedille Records label, as well as on the world music Philharmonic and Dawn Upshaw), But Mary Stood (for aesthetic, at least, is still available. are more compositional than technical studies. Each is solo piece is baroque in origins, more private, and very label Traditional Crossroads. The Trio members are professors at the Hartt School of Music and Connecticut the Cantata Singers, Boston), and Concerto for Bass Viol Trio No. 2 was composed for the Amelia Trio, dedicated to a violist, mostly hard-core, but a few compact. The cello was the instrument my sister played. College. (for fifteen orchestras). Other recent works include commissioned through funds from Joan and Irving doublers are included. Book I was assembled in the I heard most of its standard literature, repeatedly, while Darkbloom (for the Boston Symphony), Songs America Harris, the Caramoor International Music Festival, the margins, over two years. Book II was written one a day, still in high school, and always think of the Anthea Kreston Loves to Sing (for the Atlanta and DaCapo Chamber Simonds Foundation, Tom and Vivian Waldeck, and a self-assigned experiment. The pieces can be sound of the cello as her sound. Players), Symphony No. 4 (for the Seattle Symphony), Judy Evnin. performed in any sequence or grouping. Violinist Anthea Kreston has received numerous awards for her chamber collaborations including honours at the Piano Trio No. 2 (for the Amelia Trio), the motet Melbourne and Banff International Competitions, the Grand Prize at the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and Abraham (commissioned for the Papal Concert of Gatsby Etudes *[ed: Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751-1827), Italian Top Prize in the Munich ARD International Chamber Music Competition. She studied at the Curtis Institute of Reconciliation in Rome), the complete version of his violinist and composer. His compositions include 41 Music with Felix Galimir. The San Diego Reader said of her: “...Anthea is a soloist of the Heifetz-Shaham- ballet Ulysses, Requiem (for the Boston Symphony The opera The Great Gatsby was commissioned by the Caprices for Viola.] Vengerov caliber, whose musical instincts could make even a mere bagatelle thrill the soul and stir the senses to a Orchestra), Piano Sonata No. 2 (for Robert Levin), and Metropolitan Opera to honor the 25th anniversary of frenzy.” String Quartet No. 4 (for the Orion Quartet). James Levine’s début. To assist in its preparation, the
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Jason Duckles The Amelia Trio AMERICAN CLASSICS Cellist Jason Duckles made his solo début at the age of seventeen with the Oregon Symphony. He received his B.A. from Northwestern University and his Master’s and Doctorate from the SUNY Stony Brook as a student of Timothy From left to right: Eddy. He has won prizes for his chamber collaborations including the grand prize in the Concert Artists Guild Competition and top prize in the Munich ARD International Competition. He was a member of the Aspen Rieko Aizawa John Contemporary Ensemble, the Caramoor Virtuosi, and has appeared frequently as the cellist for the Mark Morris Anthea Kreston Dance Group. Jason Duckles Rieko Aizawa HARBISON In 1988 Japanese pianist Rieko Aizawa was brought to the attention of violinist Alexander Schneider on the Piano Trio No. 2 recommendation of pianist Mitsuko Uchida. Schneider engaged her as a soloist with his Brandenburg Ensemble at the opening concerts of Tokyo’s Casals Hall; later that year, Schneider presented Rieko in her United States début concerts at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. The Washington Post says: “She played with a beautiful, limpid Gatsby Etudes • The Violist’s Notebooks tone and a sense of characterization and cohesiveness that is unusual.” She was the last pupil of Mieczysław Horszowski at the Curtis Institute and also studied with Seymour Lipkin and Peter Serkin at the Juilliard School. Amelia Piano Trio Ida Kavafian
Violinist/violist Ida Kavafian enjoys an international reputation as one of the most versatile musicians performing today. With a repertoire as diverse as her talents she has electrified recital stages throughout North America, the Far Also available by John Harbison on Naxos: East, and Europe. She has also appeared as soloist with leading orchestras both nationally and internationally. For twenty years, Ida Kavafian has been the artistic director of the highly successful festival, Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico. She also founded and guided Bravo! Colorado, in Vail, as music director for ten years, building it into one of the leading festivals in the country. As an educator, she is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute, and has served on numerous competition juries and boards, including Chamber Music America. Steven Tenenbom
Violist Steven Tenenbom has established a distinguished career as a chamber musician, soloist, recitalist and teacher. He has worked with composer Lukas Foss and jazz artist Chick Corea, and appeared as guest artist with such eminent ensembles as the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets, the Beaux Arts and Kalichstein-Laredo- Robinson Trios, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is currently a member of the renowned groups Orion Quartet, TASHI and the piano quartet OPUS ONE. He is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music and has recorded on RCA Records with TASHI and the Guarneri String Quartet, and can also be heard on the Arabesque, Delos, ECM, Marlboro Recording Society and Sony Classical labels. He plays a viola by Gasparo da Salò (1560).
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Jason Duckles The Amelia Trio AMERICAN CLASSICS Cellist Jason Duckles made his solo début at the age of seventeen with the Oregon Symphony. He received his B.A. from Northwestern University and his Master’s and Doctorate from the SUNY Stony Brook as a student of Timothy From left to right: Eddy. He has won prizes for his chamber collaborations including the grand prize in the Concert Artists Guild Competition and top prize in the Munich ARD International Competition. He was a member of the Aspen Rieko Aizawa John Contemporary Ensemble, the Caramoor Virtuosi, and has appeared frequently as the cellist for the Mark Morris Anthea Kreston Dance Group. Jason Duckles Rieko Aizawa HARBISON In 1988 Japanese pianist Rieko Aizawa was brought to the attention of violinist Alexander Schneider on the Piano Trio No. 2 recommendation of pianist Mitsuko Uchida. Schneider engaged her as a soloist with his Brandenburg Ensemble at the opening concerts of Tokyo’s Casals Hall; later that year, Schneider presented Rieko in her United States début concerts at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. The Washington Post says: “She played with a beautiful, limpid Gatsby Etudes • The Violist’s Notebooks tone and a sense of characterization and cohesiveness that is unusual.” She was the last pupil of Mieczysław Horszowski at the Curtis Institute and also studied with Seymour Lipkin and Peter Serkin at the Juilliard School. Amelia Piano Trio Ida Kavafian
Violinist/violist Ida Kavafian enjoys an international reputation as one of the most versatile musicians performing today. With a repertoire as diverse as her talents she has electrified recital stages throughout North America, the Far Also available by John Harbison on Naxos: East, and Europe. She has also appeared as soloist with leading orchestras both nationally and internationally. For twenty years, Ida Kavafian has been the artistic director of the highly successful festival, Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico. She also founded and guided Bravo! Colorado, in Vail, as music director for ten years, building it into one of the leading festivals in the country. As an educator, she is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute, and has served on numerous competition juries and boards, including Chamber Music America. Steven Tenenbom
Violist Steven Tenenbom has established a distinguished career as a chamber musician, soloist, recitalist and teacher. He has worked with composer Lukas Foss and jazz artist Chick Corea, and appeared as guest artist with such eminent ensembles as the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets, the Beaux Arts and Kalichstein-Laredo- Robinson Trios, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is currently a member of the renowned groups Orion Quartet, TASHI and the piano quartet OPUS ONE. He is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music and has recorded on RCA Records with TASHI and the Guarneri String Quartet, and can also be heard on the Arabesque, Delos, ECM, Marlboro Recording Society and Sony Classical labels. He plays a viola by Gasparo da Salò (1560).
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broadcasting and copying of this compact disc prohibited. translations reserved. Unauthorised public performance, All rights in this sound recording, artwork, texts and 1 8.559243 Piano Trio No. 2 (2003) 17:42 & 1 I. Tale 5:58 AMERICAN CLASSICS 2 II. Ballad 3:32 2007 Naxos Rights International Ltd. • Made in Canada 3 III. Rumors and Reports 4:20 Born in 1938 into a musical family, John 4 IV. Enigma 3:51 Harbison studied at Harvard, and with Gatsby Etudes (1999) 2 8:30 Roger Sessions at Princeton. He is one of 5 I. Parlors 1:57 America’s most accomplished musicians, HARBISON: 6 II. Parties 2:47 with four symphonies, three operas and a 7 III. The Green Light 3:46 Pulitzer Prize-winning cantata to his credit. The Violist’s Notebooks (2002) 3 15:31 8-# Book I 7:47 Of his Piano Trio No. 2, Harbison writes: $-( Book II 7:44 ‘[It] makes little contact with the Mozart- ) Ten Micro-Waltzes (2004) 4 8:20 to-Shostakovich central trio repertoire, and Cucaraccia and Fugue (2003) 5 4:21 a great deal with the transparency, ¡ Cucaraccia 1:18 ambiguity, and shiftiness of Papa Joseph Piano Trio No. 2 ™ Fugue 3:03 Haydn’. The Gatsby Etudes, ‘pianistically Cello Suite (1993) 6 8:46 challenging and fun to play’, were written Piano Trio No. 2 Trio Piano £ Preludio 2:09 while Harbison was preparing the opera ¢ Fuga - Burletta 2:41 ∞ Sarabanda 2:21 The Great Gatsby for production by the § Giga 1:35 Metropolitan Opera. The Violist’s ¶ Trio (1968) 7 7:24 Notebooks were inspired by Bartolomeo Amelia Piano Trio Campagnoli’s (1751-1827) Caprices for viola, Harbison’s own instrument. Other Anthea Kreston, Violin 1, 7 and Viola 3 works on this disc include an earlier piano HARBISON: Jason Duckles, Cello 1, 6, 7 • Rieko Aizawa, Piano 1, 2, 4, 7 trio and a cello suite, which the composer DDD Steven Tenenbom, Viola I 5 • Ida Kavafian, Viola II 5 describes as ‘baroque in origins, more Anthea Kreston, Viola III 5 • John Harbison, Viola IV 5 private, and very compact’. Special thanks to Rosemary Schnell and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. for making this recording possible, to Phil Setzer for the loan of his www.naxos.com 8.559243 8.559243 beautiful viola, and to Ida, Steve and John for appearing on this recording. Recorded at Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut, from 5th to 10th May, 2005. Producer and engineer: Steven Bellamy • Publisher: G. Schirmer, Inc. Cover photograph: Silvia Jansen (Dreamstime.com) NAXOS