2018Annual Report

2018 annual report “The Music@Menlo chamber music festival fills a major summer void in concerts with players from all over who are downright virtuosic.” —ArtsSF Institute activities including master classes and Café Conversa- Mission tions, and extended offerings including AudioNotes, forty-two The mission of Music@Menlo is to engage and sustain an professional musicians, four artist-faculty members, eleven pre- audience for chamber music that is programmed, presented, professional musicians, twenty-nine Young Performers, twenty and performed at the highest level of artistic excellence and -one interns, and thousands of audience members enjoyed ex- to provide deserving young musicians with comprehensive, ploring the flourishing of chamber music across centuries and festival-based educational opportunities. political borders. Overview 2018 Festival Activities Celebrating its sixteenth season in 2018, Music@Menlo is MAIN-STAGE EVENTS an internationally acclaimed summer festival and institute combining world-class chamber music performances, Thematically Organized Chamber Music Concert Programs — unparalleled audience engagement, intensive training for In 2018, Music@Menlo explored some of the most vitally preprofessional musicians, and a variety of activities which important cities in the development of western classical have broadened and enhanced the chamber music music. Beginning the musical voyage in London, audiences community of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. traveled across Europe and to St. Petersburg with a total of ten performances of seven different Concert Programs. As Music@Menlo was founded on the conviction that deep always with Music@Menlo festivals, an expansive variety engagement with great music opens doors to inspiration of chamber works were performed, ranging from Baroque and enlightenment. Such engagement generates connections masterpieces by Bach and Handel to an entirely twentieth- with cultures across ages and continents and cultivates fluency century program of works by Central and Eastern European in new and diverse creative languages. It enhances our under- composers, including the modernist master György Ligeti. standing of Western history, intensifies the enjoyment of well- Vocal works included Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Songs of known works, and increases the appetite for less-familiar music. Travel, performed by Metropolitan Opera tenor Kang Wang, and Dmitry Shostakovich’s From Jewish Folk Poetry. Romantic 2018 Festival Summary: woodwind pieces including Mily Balakirev’s Octet for Winds, Creative Capitals Strings, and Piano, and the Budapest Concert Program also featured the West Coast premiere of a viola impromptu by A city is the embodiment of a civilized society. Throughout Dmitry Shostakovich. The festival closed with Arnold history, cities have enticed our most brilliant, visionary, and Schoenberg’s seminal work of the Second Viennese School, restless souls seeking to pursue artistic destinies in stimu- Verklärte Nacht. lating environments. While the Grand Canyon and Niagara Carte Blanche Concerts — Music@Menlo’s signature recital Falls are indeed natural wonders, great cities are indisputably series, Carte Blanche Concerts are unique performances curated among the most significant achievements of humankind, and performed by some of classical music’s most renowned works of art in themselves. recitalists and chamber musicians. The 2018 Carte Blanche For the sixteenth season, Creative Capitals, seven iconic cities series began with the brilliant young violinist Paul Huang and served as musical stages: London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Leipzig, pianist Wu Han performing a sumptuous program of Romantic Berlin, Budapest,and Vienna. Through concerts, Chamber Music violin sonatas alongside Béla Bartók’s Hungarian Folk Tunes. 2018 Annual Report | 2 The Calidore String Quartet then paid homage to Vienna and to the string quartet tradition with a program including Beethoven’s famed Third Razumovsky Quartet, and works by the Expressionist genius Anton Webern. Husband-and-wife duo Dmitri Atapine and Hyeyeon Park performed the third Carte Blanche Concert, a far-reaching program in three parts telling the story of the classical cello’s development throughout Europe over nearly two hundred years. Preeminent violist Paul Neubauer and the outstanding young pianist Michael Brown closed the 2018 Carte Blanche Concerts with an ambitious twentieth-century viola and piano program including works by Penderecki, Bloch and Mana-Zucca. to hone their musical skills through daily ensemble coaching Encounter Series — Encounters, Music@Menlo’s series of and master classes. They attend festival concerts and lectures, multimedia symposia led by classical music’s most renowned interact with large festival audiences, and receive ongoing authorities, add an integral dimension to the Music@Menlo professional mentoring. experience. The 2018 festival’s three Encounters traversed Coaches and Artist-Faculty — The Institute provides Europe, beginning with a talk on London, Paris, and St. students with sustained contact with leading musicians and Petersburg by renowned musicologist and former Metropolitan musicologists. Most artists on the festival’s roster of main-stage Opera Principal Flutist Michael Parloff. Dean of the Juilliard performers instruct and collaborate with students in coaching School Ara Guzelimian then guided audiences around the sessions, master classes, and other activities. music of Leipzig and Berlin, exploring J. S. Bach’s musical legacy as town kapellmeister and Berlin’s rise to cultural significance International Program — Eleven students, with an average age with the arrival of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. Following of twenty-four, participated in the 2018 International Program. this exploration of Germany’s twin musical epicenters, They came to the Institute from prestigious educational archaeologist and scholar John R. Hale gave the final Encounter institutions including the Yale School of Music, the Juilliard lecture: Budapest and Vienna examined the nationalist wave School, New England Conservatory, Northwestern University, fueled by Kodály and others, as well as the separate traditions Peabody Conservatory, and the Curtis Institute of Music. Hailing and aesthetic of the Austrian capital. from South Korea, China, Uzbekistan, and the United States, this year’s young artists have performed with such renowned ensembles as the Brussels Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, and San Francisco Symphony. All International Program participants at- tended the Institute at no cost, through generous support provided by contributions to the Ann S. Bowers Young Artist Fund. Young Performers Program — Twenty-eight students, with an average age of fifteen (twelve of whom were from the San Fran- cisco Bay Area), participated in the Young Performers Program. Through special funding from the Tenth-Anniversary Campaign, thirteen students were provided with partially subsidized housing at the nearby Crowne Plaza Palo Alto Hotel. Thirteen Young Performer families were also awarded full CHAMBER MUSIC INSTITUTE or partial need-based financial support and/or merit-based scholarships from the Ann S. Bowers Young Artist Fund. Thirty-nine conservatory-level performers and promising young musicians, ages eleven to thirty, participated in the 2018 International Program and Young Performers Program of the Chamber Music Institute. The Institute offers an intensive program where gifted students have unparalleled opportunities 2018 Annual Report | 3 ARTS MANAGEMENT INTERNSHIP PROGRAM selection of works during the festival and showcases the artist’s work in the festival’s publications. In 2018, works by Uruguayan- Twenty-one college students and recent college graduates born sculptor Gonzalo Fonseca were displayed in Stent Family participated in the 2018 Arts Management Internship Program. Hall and featured in the season’s promotional materials, Interns were trained in all aspects of arts administration including the brochure, program book, and season poster, as including development, event planning and catering, marketing well as on note cards and the Music@Menlo website. Fonseca’s and merchandising, operations, patron services, production, works in quarried and found stone and on paper often reflect the and student services. The interns work side by side with the microcosmic nature of cities and urban landscapes, connecting festival’s staff as highly visible members of the Music@Menlo to the festival’s Creative Capitals theme. team. The internship program is supported in part by the David B. and Edward C. Goodstein Foundation. Volunteer Team — Ninety-two Music@Menlo volunteers assisted with housing festival artists, students, and administrators, ushering COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT at festival programs, and hosting events, as well as customer Chamber Music Institute Concerts: Koret Young Performers relations and other festival operations. Concerts and Prelude Performances (FREE) — Sixteen free Travel Programs — Travel programs offer patrons incomparable afternoon and early evening concerts (three Koret Young insider access to some of the most significant historical and Performers Concerts and thirteen Prelude Performances), cultural landmarks around the world while they enjoy a musical performed by the Chamber Music Institute participants, listening experience like no other. In 2018, Music@Menlo provided ideal points of access to chamber music for families, journeyed to two more extraordinary

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