Rubinstein Circle 2020/21 Season at Wigmore Hall – Biographies Autumn 2020 Sunday 20 September 2020, 7.30pm La Serenissima La Serenissima is the UK’s most dynamic voice of Italian baroque music. Born in 1994 out of one man's passion for Vivaldi, they bring well-known and neglected music to life through research, virtuosic performances and down-to-earth dialogue with audiences. La Serenissima has appeared at many of the UK’s leading festivals including the Bath Bach, Bath International, Beverley, Buxton, Cambridge Summer, Chelsea, Cheltenham, Lichfield, Ryedale, South Bank, Warwick and York Early Music, and at venues including Bridgewater Hall, St George’s Bristol, Snape Maltings, Cadogan Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall. They have given concerts for Music in the Round and leading cultural tours operator Martin Randall Travel; they have also received support from Arts Council England for UK touring projects Vivaldi: The Red Priest and The Four Seasons. They have performed abroad in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malta, Mexico and Spain to great acclaim. Wednesday 30 September 2020, 7.30pm Roderick Williams baritone; Sarah Connolly mezzo-soprano; Julius Drake piano Roderick Williams is one of the most sought-after baritones of his generation with a wide repertoire spanning baroque to contemporary. He enjoys relationships with all the major UK opera houses and has sung in the world premières of operas by David Sawer, Sally Beamish, Michel van der Aa, Robert Saxton and Alexander Knaifel as well as roles including Papageno and Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Così fan tutte, and the title roles in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Britten’s Billy Budd. He performs regularly with leading conductors and orchestras throughout the UK, Europe, North America and Australia, and his many festival appearances include the BBC Proms, and the Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Aldeburgh festivals. As a composer he has had works premièred at Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, Purcell Room and on national radio. In December 2016 he won the prize for Best Choral Composition at the British Composer Awards. Roderick Williams was awarded an OBE in June 2017 and was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Opera at both the 2018 and 2019 Olivier Awards. Dame Sarah Connolly was made a DBE in the 2017 Birthday Honours, having previously been awarded a CBE in the 2010 New Year Honours. She has sung at the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Lucerne, Salzburg and Tanglewood festivals and the BBC Proms where, in 2009, she was a soloist at the Last Night. Opera engagements have taken her around the world from the Metropolitan Opera to the Royal Opera House, the Paris Opera, La Scala Milan, the Bayerische Staatsoper, and the Bayreuth, Glyndebourne and Aix-en-Provence festivals. Highlights in her 2018/19 season included Fricka in Der Ring des Nibelungen at both the Royal Opera House and Teatro Real Madrid. Dame Sarah Connolly held a Residency at Wigmore Hall in the 2018/19 season and gave recitals for the Schubertíada a Vilabertran, Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Teatro de la Zarzuela Madrid and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Julius Drake enjoys a reputation as one of the finest instrumentalists in his field. He appears throughout the world and his many recordings include a widely acclaimed series with Gerald Finley for Hyperion, three of which won Gramophone awards, a series for EMI with Ian Bostridge, appearances on Wigmore Hall Live with Joyce DiDonato, Alice Coote and Matthew Polenzani, and Schubert’s Poetisches Tagebuch with Christoph Prégardien, which won the 2016 Jahrpreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. His recent recording of Janáček’s Diary of One who Disappeared with Nicky Spence has garnered widespread praise. Forthcoming performances include concert series at 92nd Street Y and Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and recitals at La Scala Milan with Aleksandra Kurzak, in Barcelona with Dame Sarah Connolly, in Berlin with Angelika Kirchschlager, at Schubertiade Schwarzenberg with Christoph Prégardien, Ian Bostridge and Gerald Finley, and on tour in Europe with Anna Prohaska and Eva-Maria Westbroek. 1 Monday 19 October 2020, 7.30pm Julia Fischer violin One of the world’s leading violinists, Julia Fischer is a versatile musician also known for her abilities as a concert pianist, a chamber musician and a violin teacher. During the 2019/20 season, Julia Fischer appears in concert with the London Philharmonic and Berlin Radio Symphony with Vladimir Jurowski, Vienna Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic with Philippe Jordan, Chicago Symphony under Riccardo Muti, Orchestre National de France with Emmanuel Krivine and Bamberg Symphony under Jakub Hrůša. She gives recitals in major European concert halls with the pianist Aris Blettenberg as well as with the Julia Fischer Quartet. She recently completed two extensive tours of Asia, one with the Dresden Philharmonic and Michael Sanderling, and the other with the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski. Other highlights of the past season included a European tour with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, an orchestra she led from the violin in a program featuring Augustin Hadelich. Julia Fischer holds numerous awards including the Federal Cross of Merit, Gramophone Award and the German Culture Prize. She plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1742) as well as an instrument made by Phillip Augustin (2018). Wednesday 28 October 2020, 7.30pm Pavel Haas Quartet The Pavel Haas Quartet is revered across the globe for its richness of timbre and infectious passion. Performing at the world’s major concert halls, and having won five Gramophone Awards for its recordings, the Quartet is firmly established as one of the foremost chamber ensembles in the world. This season, the Quartet returns to major venues including Tonhalle Zurich, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Konserthuset Stockholm and Società del Quartetto di Milano, and to festivals such as the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg. The ensemble performed at the String Quartet Biennale at Muziekgebouw Amsterdam last month and embarked on its first tour to Israel with performances in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa earlier this season. Further tours to the USA and Asia will take place in the spring. The Quartet records exclusively for Supraphon and last autumn released its new recording of Shostakovich string quartets Nos. 2,7 and 8. The Pavel Haas Quartet takes its name from the Czech composer Pavel Haas (1899–1944). Tuesday 1 December 2020, 7.30pm Hagen Quartet; Jörg Widmann clarinet The three-decade career of the Hagen Quartet began in 1981. Collaborations with artists such as the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt and also György Kurtág are as important to the Quartet as its appearances with performers including Maurizio Pollini, Mitsuko Uchida, Sabine Meyer and Krystian Zimerman, Heinrich Schiff and Jörg Widmann. Its most recent recording, of Mozart’s String Quintets, has received Diapason d’Or, Choc de Classica and ECHO Klassik awards. Highlights this season include concerts at Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Salzburg Festival, and performances in Hamburg, Cologne, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Shanghai, Carnegie Hall in New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. As teachers and mentors at the Mozarteum University Salzburg and the Hochschule für Musik Basel, as well as in international masterclasses, the Quartet’s members pass on their great wealth of experience to younger colleagues. Clarinettist, composer and conductor Jörg Widmann is one of the most versatile and intriguing artists of his generation. As Carnegie Hall’s 2019/20 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer Chair his work will be focused throughout the season. Other performances see him appear as a clarinettist, composer and conductor, artist in residence at WDR Sinfonieorchester, at Palau de la Música Barcelona and at Bergen International Festival. Chamber music performances will see him in concerts with long-standing chamber music partners such as Andras Schiff, Daniel Barenboim, Mitsuko Uchida, Tabea Zimmermann, Antoine Tamestit and the Hagen Quartet at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, Salzburg Festival, Carnegie Hall New York and Wiener Konzerthaus amongst others. 2 Spring 2021 Saturday 20 February 2021, 7.30pm Sabine Devieilhe soprano; Mathieu Pordoy piano Sabine Devieilhe is in demand on French and international stages with a repertoire spanning from the renaissance to the contemporary. She received First Prize at the Paris Conservatoire in 2011 and has since been presented with the Opera Singer Discovery and Opera Singer of the Year awards by Victoires de la Musique Classique. She has performed at the Aix-en- Provence Festival, Lyon National Opera, Paris Opera, Opéra Comique, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Dutch National Opera, La Monnaie, Glyndebourne, La Scala Milan, Royal Opera House, Zurich Opera House and the Wiener Staatsoper. A fervent exponent of Lied and Mélodie, this season Sabine Devieilhe has performed in recital with Anne Le Bozec at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. French pianist and recitalist Mathieu Pordoy has emerged as one of the most promising coaches of his generation. Internationally acclaimed, he has coached at the most prominent opera houses, including the Vienna State Opera, Paris Opera, and Opernhaus Zürich. He has given masterclasses at the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers and—at the invitation of Joan Dornemann—held staff positions with the Canadian Vocal Arts Institute in Montreal and International Vocal Arts Institute in