Ravinia 2019, Issue 2, Week 4

MIRIAM FRIED, violin Born in Romania, Miriam Fried emigrated to Israel with her family at age 2, where she be- gan taking violin lessons as a child with Alice Fenyves in Tel Aviv. While there she had the opportunity to meet and play for many of the world’s great violinists, such as Isaac Stern, Na- than Milstein, and Yehudi Menuhin. Stern en- couraged her to study abroad and, after briefly attending the Geneva Conservatory under Fenyves’s brother, she became a student of Jo- sef Gingold at Indiana University and later Ivan Galamian at The Juilliard School. While under Galamian’s tutelage, Fried won her first com- petition, the 1968 Paganini Contest in Genoa. Three years later she claimed the grand prize in the Queen Elisabeth International Competi- tion in Brussels, becoming the first woman to win the award. Fried has been a regular guest of nearly every major orchestra in the world, including the Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Vi- enna, and London Symphony Orchestras; the Cleveland, Paris, and Philadelphia Orchestras; and the Israel, (London) Royal, New York, Los Angeles, Czech, Berlin, and Saint Petersburg Philharmonics. She has recently appeared on recordings by the Grand Rapids Symphony, performing a violin concerto written for her by Donald Erb that she premiered with the same ensemble, and the Helsinki Philharmonic, play- ing Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. For much of 2015, Fried focused intensive study on Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, creating a series of online lectures and master classes for iClassical Academy. She toured the monumental works from Ravinia to Boston, Israel, Canada, and Europe, and made a new recording of them this past December. She played first violin for the Mendelssohn String Quartet until it disbanded in 2009 and is currently on the faculty of New England Conservatory. The director of Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute Program for Piano and Strings since 1994 and the recipient of Ravin- ia’s inaugural Edward Gordon Award in 2013, Miriam Fried made her first appearance at the festival in 1974. Tonight marks her 29th season performing at Ravinia. PAMELA FRANK, violin Winner of the Avery Fisher Prize in 1999, Pamela Frank began studying the violin at age 5, and af- ter 11 years as a pupil of Shirley Givens continued her studies at the Curtis Institute with Szymon Goldberg and Jaime Laredo. Since launching her performing career in 1985 at Carnegie Hall, Frank has been a soloist with top ensembles around the world, including the New York, Los Angeles, Saint Petersburg, and Berlin Philhar- monics; Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, (US) National, and Vienna Sympho- ny Orchestras; Cleveland, Minnesota, and Paris Orchestras; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; San Francisco Symphony; French National Or- chestra; and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. She has also performed extensively with David Zinman and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, re- cording Mozart’s complete violin concertos with the ensemble, and in 1998 she performed the world premiere of a new concerto by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, commissioned for her by Carnegie Hall with Hugh Wolff and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Frank has also premiered two works by Aaron Jay Kernis, his Lament and Prayer for violin and or- chestra and his piano quartet Still Movement with Hymn . Her chamber music partners have includ- ed pianists Peter Serkin and Emanuel Ax, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and clarinetist Richard Stolzman, as well as her father, pianist Claude Frank, with whom she recorded Beethoven’s complete violin sonatas and an all-Schubert disc. She has also recorded Chopin’s Piano Trio and Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with Ax and Ma for Sony Clas- sical, and Brahms’s complete violin sonatas with Serkin for Decca. Frank regularly appears with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Musicians fromMarlboro ensembles, as well as at such festivals as Aldeburgh, Verbier, Edin- burgh, Salzburg, Tanglewood, Marlboro, and Ra- vinia. She has been on the Curtis Institute faculty since 1996, and since 2008 she has been artistic director of Caramoors’s Evnin Rising Stars. Pa- mela Frank joined the faculty of Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute in 2003, and tonight marks her ninth season performing at the festival, where she debuted in 1991. KIM KASHKASHIAN, viola Born in Michigan, Kim Kashkashian studied viola at the Peabody Conservatory under Kar- en Tuttle and Walter Trampler, later earning a master’s degree at the New School of Music in Philadelphia. Since 2000, she has taught viola and chamber music at the New England Con- servatory, and in 2016 she was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Scienc- es. She was a prizewinner of the 1980 ARD In- ternational Music Competition in Munich and the inaugural Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition the same year. Kashkashian is also an award-winning recording artist, receiving the Edison Prize in 1999 for an album of sona- tas by Brahms; the 2001 Cannes Classical Award for her recording of concertos by Bartók, Eöt- vös, and Kurtág; and a Grammy Award in 2013 for Kurtág and Ligeti: Music for Viola . She has worked with Eötvös, Kurtág, and other compos- ers—including Lera Auerbach, Giya Kancheli, Thomas Larcher, Tigran Mansurian, Arvo Pärt, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, and Ken Ueno—to help enrich the repertoire for viola. Kashkashian also has long-standing duo performance partnerships with pianist Robert Levin and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky, and she has performed in a quartet with violin- ists Gidon Kremer and Daniel Phillips and cel- list Yo-Yo Ma. She has also collaborated with the Tokyo, Guarneri, and Orion String Quartets and many other artists through regular appearances at such festivals as Verbier, Salzburg, Locken- haus, Marlboro, and Ravinia, as well as recitals in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, Athens, and Tokyo. As a soloist, Kashkashian has performed with the orchestras of Berlin, London, Vienna, Milan, New York, Cleveland, and many others. She is a founding member of Music for Food, an initiative by musicians to fight hunger in their home communities. Kim Kashkashian has been on the faculty of Ravinia’s Steans Music Insti- tute nearly every year since 2003, the same year she made her Ravinia debut. Tonight marks her ninth performance at the festival. RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JUNE 24 – JUNE 30, 2019 92