Ravinia 2021 - Issue 2

FAY FOX (CHEN); JIYANG CHEN (LIPMAN) FAY FOX (CHEN); JIYANG CHEN (LIPMAN) Mozartiana occupied the composer from June through early August 1887. A diary entry re- cords its completion on August 9: “I finished putting final touches to my suite.” The follow- ing day, he sent the score to Jurgenson. These four movements represent Tchaikovsky’s or- chestrations of short piano pieces by Mozart that he felt needed rescuing from obscurity. For the opening movement, he selected the Gigue in G major, K. 574, which Mozart creat- ed extemporaneously in Leipzig on May 16, 1789. Modeled on the gigue in Handel’s Suite No. 8 in F minor, this “Leipzig Gigue” was no- tated directly into the notebook of court or- ganist Karl Immanuel Engel. The Minuet in D major, K. 355 (576b), that follows is an excep- tionally chromatic work composed sometime around 1789–90. Its manuscript was rediscov- ered by the theologian and musician Abbé Maximilian Stadler after the composer’s death. Tchaikovsky based the third movement, Preghiera (Prayer), on Mozart’s 1791 Latin motet Ave verum corpus , K. 618, for chorus, strings, and organ—not in its original version but in the piano transcription by Franz Liszt, À la Chapelle Sixtine , where it is combined with Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere , a polycho- ral composition that the 14-year-old Mozart reportedly transcribed from memory af- ter hearing it performed once in the Sistine Chapel. Liszt added an introduction and coda to the original motet. Tchaikovsky concluded this chamber-orchestra suite with Mozart’s set of 10 variations on the aria “Unser dum- mer Pöbel meint,” K. 455, from Christoph Willibald Gluck’s comic opera La rencontre imprévue, ou Les pèlerins de la Mecque ( The Unexpected Encounter, or The Pilgrims to Mec- ca ). Mozart allegedly improvised these vari- ations at a March 23, 1783, recital that Gluck likely attended. Tchaikovsky conducted the world premiere of Mozartiana at a concert of the Russian Musi- cal Society in Moscow on November 26, 1887. Jurgenson published the score that same year. –Program notes © 2021 Todd E. Sullivan Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky by Nikolai Kuznetsov (1893) YUE BAO, conductor Currently an assistant conductor at the Hous- ton Symphony, as the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Foundation Conducting Fellow under music director Andrés Orozco-Estra- da, Yue Bao holds an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute, having previously completed a Master of Music in orchestral conducting at the Mannes New School of Music and Bache- lor of Music degrees in orchestral conducting and opera accompanying from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music following her compo- sition studies. In May 2019 she completed a two-year tenure as the Rita E. Hauser Con- ducting Fellow at the Curtis Institute, where she worked closely with Yannick Nézet- Séguin and guests Michael Tilson Thom- as, Osmo Vänskä, Gilbert Varga, Giancarlo Guerrero, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Bao has also grown her musicianship as the 2019 Bru- no Walter Memorial Foundation Conducting Fellow at the Cabrillo Festival of Contempo- rary Music, the 2018 David Effron Conduct- ing Fellow at the Chautauqua Music Festival, where her concerts with the festival orchestra received major accolades from both the audi- ences and musicians, and, prior to her studies at Curtis, a 2015 conducting fellow at the East- ern Music Festival under Gerard Schwarz. She served as an assistant with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under JoAnn Fallet- ta and David Lockington between 2015 and 2017, making her debut with the orchestra in 2016. Working extensively both in the United States and abroad, Bao toured China with the Vienna Philharmonic assisting Orozco-Es- trada, and she has recently appeared with the Shanghai Opera Symphony Orchestra, Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, and New Symphony Orchestra. She made her Houston Symphony subscription debut on the opening night of the 20/21 season, having led several successful livestream performances during summer 2020, and is poised to make her San Antonio Symphony debut. Equally com- fortable with operatic repertoire, she has led Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin , Bizet’s Carmen , Weill’s Mahagonny , and Menotti’s The Medi- um , and she played piano in a production of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann at the Nation- al Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. Yue Bao is making her Ravinia and Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuts. STELLA CHEN, violin The grand prize winner of the 2019 Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition, American vi- olinist Stella Chen has since been awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant and as a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist, both in 2020. She has previously been honored as the inaugu- ral recipient of the Robert Levin Award from Harvard University, the top prize winner of the Tibor Varga International Violin Compe- tition, and the youngest-ever prizewinner of the Menuhin Competition. Earlier this year Chen completed her doctorate at The Juil- liard School, having also earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology with honors from Har- vard University and a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory. She has re- cently been a featured soloist with the Belgian and Welsh National Orchestras, Brussels and Luxembourg Philharmonics, and Lausanne, Wallonie, and London Chamber Orchestras, and this past season she continued concerto appearances across Europe, including her de- but at Vienna’s Musikverein playing Mendels- sohn. Chen has also recently debuted at the Salzburg Mozarteum and Kronberg Acad- emy Festivals, among other performances throughout Europe, East Asia, and India, and has performed chamber programs at the Met- ropolitan Museum of Art and the Kennedy Center and Phillips Collection in Washing- ton, DC, as well as with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which she joins this season as a member of the Bowers pro- gram. The year ahead also includes her recital debut at Carnegie Hall as well as debuts with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Kremera- ta Baltica, and New Japan Philharmonic. At such festivals as the Perlman Music Program, Music@Menlo, Sarasota, and Yellow Barn, Chen has collaborated with the likes of Rob- ert Levin, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Matthew Lip- man, Federico Cortese, the Silk Road Ensem- ble, and mentors Itzhak Perlman and Miriam Fried. Stella Chen first appeared at Ravinia as a Steans Music Institute fellow in 2013 and 2014, and returned for chamber performanc- es in 2018 and 2019. Tonight she makes her Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut. MATTHEW LIPMAN, viola The 2019 artist-in-residence of the American Viola Society and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, Matthew Lipman has also been featured among WFMT’s Chicago’s “30 under 30” top classical musicians around the world. A former student of Heidi Castleman at The Juilliard School and Tabea Zimmer- mann at the Kronberg Academy, he has also earned a Kovner Fellowship and the Jack Kent Cooke Award, and has been a major prize winner in the Primrose, Tertis, Wash- ington, Johansen, and Stulberg International Viola Competitions. Lipman currently occu- pies the Wallach Chair at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, having previously participated in its Bowers program. In recent seasons he has been a featured performer with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the BBC Philharmonic, and the Minnesota Orchestra, among other ensembles, and in 2019 he appeared alongside Zimmermann at Michael Tilson Thomas’s Viola Visions Fes- tival with the New World Symphony. Recent highlights also include debuts at the Aspen Music Festival, Seoul’s Kumho Art Hall, Wig- more Hall, Chicago’s Symphony Center, and Walt Disney Concert Hall, as well as in re- cital at Carnegie Hall. Lipman was featured on the second season of PBS’s Now Hear This performing Schubert’s “Arpeggione” Sonata with pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen, and he regularly performs at a variety of festivals, including Saint Petersburg’s White Nights, Bridgehampton, Marlboro, Music@Men- lo, and Saratoga, with such collaborators as Mitsuko Uchida, Itzhak Perlman, András Schiff, Jeremy Denk, and Pinchas Zukerman. His 2019 album Ascent on Cedille Records featured first recordings of Shostakovich’s recently discovered Impromptu and Clarice Assad’s Metamorfose , which Lipman com- missioned. He has also expanded the viola repertoire with premieres of works by Helen Grime, David Ludwig, and Malika Kishino. Matthew Lipman first appeared at Ravinia with the string quartet Polaris in 2008 and returned in 2012 and 2013 as a Steans Music Institute fellow, then in 2014 for a Musicians from RSMI tour. Tonight he makes his Chica- go Symphony Orchestra debut. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 59