Ravinia 2022, Issue 2

MARCO BORGGREVE (HELMERSON, BAX) ATAR ARAD, viola Israeli violist Atar Arad began his earliest mu- sical studies on the violin, and in 1968 he was one of the few young artists selected to study at Belgium’s Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. He became drawn to the broad and unfamiliar repertoire and sound of the viola during this time, and in 1971 he devoted himself to the in- strument. The following year, in his first pub- lic appearance as a violist, Arad was awarded the City of London Prize at the Carl Flesch Competition, and a few months later he took first prize at the International Viola Compe- tition in Geneva by the unanimous decision of the jury. In 1980 he moved to the United States and became a member of the Cleveland Quartet. For the next seven years he toured the Americas, Europe, Israel, and Japan with the ensemble, collaborating with such artists as pianists Eugene Istomin, Clifford Curzon, and Emanuel Ax, violists Peter Schidloff and Jaime Laredo, cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Mstislav Rostropovich, flutist James Galway, and clar- inetist Eric Stolzmann. A devoted chamber musician, Arad has appeared both with the Cleveland Quartet and as a guest artist with the Guarneri, Emerson, Tokyo, Mendelssohn, American, and Orion String Quartets, among others, at such music festivals as Aspen, Chautauqua, Edinburgh, Flanders, Norfolk, Paris, Ravinia, Salzburg, and Seattle, as well as New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival and Carn- egie Hall. He began composing in the 1990s, first completing a solo sonata for viola before adding two string quartets and other cham- ber works, as well as multiple viola concertos. In 2018 Arad received the American Viola Society’s Career Achievement Award and the International Viola Society’s Silver Alto Clef. He is currently professor of viola at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and a fac- ulty member of the Domaine Forget academy, Israel’s Keshet Eilon Music Center, and, since 1994, the Ravinia Steans Music Institute. Atar Arad first appeared at Ravinia in 1984 with the Cleveland Quartet, and tonight marks his 18th season performing at the festival. FRANS HELMERSON, cello Swedish cellist Frans Helmerson began play- ing the instrument at age 8, receiving his first training from Guido Vecchi in Gothenburg. He later traveled to Rome to study with Gi- useppe Selmi and in London studied under William Pleeth, also receiving guidance from Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1971 Helmerson won the Gaspar Cassadó International Cel- lo Competition in Florence, his first of many such distinctions. During the 1970s he was principal cellist of the Swedish Radio Sym- phony Orchestra, where he became a protégé of Sergiu Celibidache. Helmerson has since performed under the direction of many of today’s finest conductors, including Ros- tropovich, Seiji Ozawa, Colin Davies, Neeme Järvi, Evgeni Scetlanov, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Herbert Blomstedt, Sergiu Comissiona, Rafa- el Frühbeck de Burgos, and Kurt Sunderling. These symphonic activities have included tours throughout Europe, Asia, the Ameri- cas, and Australia with many of the world’s major orchestras. Helmerson is also an avid performer of the chamber music repertoire and has been a regular guest of such music festivals as Casals, Kuhmo, Naantali, Prades, and Verbier. Between 1994 and 2001 he was artistic director of the Umea-Korsholm Inter- national Chamber Music Festival in Finland, then in 2002 he cofounded the Michelangelo String Quartet with violinists Mihaela Martin and Stephan Picard and violist Nobuko Imai; today he joined in the ensemble by Martin, violinist Conrad Muck, and violist Michael Barenboim. Helmerson’s recording credits in- clude concertos by Dvořák and Shostakovich, Brahms’s “Double” Concerto with Martin, sonatas by Prokofiev and Franck, and Bach’s suites for solo cello. Previously a professor in Oslo and Stockholm, as well as at Madrid’s Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia and Cologne’s University of Music and Dance, he is currently on the faculties of the Hanns Eis- ler University of Music and Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin as well as the Kronberg Academy. This is Frans Helmerson’s eighth season performing at Ravinia, where he made his debut in 2001, and his 14th year on the Steans Music Institute faculty, which he first joined in 1999. CHRISTOPH RICHTER, cello Previously the principal cellist of Germany’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Christoph Richter began a solo career after winning top prizes in competitions in Moscow, Paris, and Geneva, embarking upon a close collab- oration with violinist Sándor Végh. He also became a member of the Cherubini String Quartet for several years and continues to perform regularly with pianists András Schiff and Menahem Pressler, plus violinists Isabelle Faust, Miriam Fried, and Midori, among oth- ers. Richter is also a frequent guest of such fes- tivals as Ittingen, Risor, and Salzburg, where he premiered Werner Henze’s Introduction, Theme, and Variations for Cello and Orches- tra in 1994. His interest in contemporary mu- sic has led to collaborations with such other composers as Krzysztof Penderecki, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Heinz Hol- liger, Aribert Reimann, and Jörg Widmann. Richter has been the principal cellist of the chamber orchestra Cappella Andrea Barca since its founding in 1999, regularly perform- ing at the Mozartwoche in Salzburg and the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. As a solo artist, he has focused concert seasons in London on the complete cello works of various compos- ers, including Brahms and Webern (2008), Beethoven (2009, 2015), Mendelssohn (2010), Bach (2013) and Schumann (2017). Richter’s discography includes works by Schumann and Holliger for the ECM label, concertos by Julius Klengel for CPO, a Mozart divertimen- to on Naxos, and Brahms’s String Sextet No. 2 for Harmonia Mundi, which was awarded the Diapason d’Or. A professor of cello at the Royal Academy of Music in London and Germany’s Folkwang University of the Arts, Richter regularly leads master classes at the European Chamber Music Academy and ChamberStudio in London, and he also ju- ries major competitions in Vienna, Weimar, Norway, and London. Christoph Richter made his first appearance at Ravinia as both a performer and a Steans Music Institute facul- ty member in 2016; this is his second perfor- mance and fifth season on the RSMI faculty. ALESSIO BAX, piano At just the age of 14, pianist Alessio Bax grad- uated with top honors from the conservato- ry of Bari, his hometown in Italy, and after further studies in Europe, he moved to the United States in 1994. He catapulted to prom- inence as the top prize winner of the 1997 Hamamatsu and 2000 Leeds International Piano Competitions, and then in 2009 he was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Four years later he received both the An- drew Wolf Chamber Music Award and the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. Regularly performing across five continents as a chamber musician and solo artist, he has also been a guest of more than 150 orchestras, including the London, New York, Royal, and Saint Petersburg Philharmonics; the City of Birmingham, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Se- attle, and Sydney Symphony Orchestras; and Japan’s NHK Symphony, alongside such con- ductors as Marin Alsop, Vladimir Ashkena- zy, Andrew Davis, Fabio Luisi, Simon Rattle, Yuri Temirkanov, and Jaap van Zweden. With his regular piano duo partner Lucille Chung, Bax was recently featured with the Saint Louis Symphony and in recital at Lincoln Center. Additionally, he has toured extensively with violinist Joshua Bell, joined by cellist Steven Isserlis for a recent trio tour of Spain, and has performed Beethoven’s complete cello and piano works with Paul Watkins in New York. His chamber music collaborators have also included tenor Ian Bostridge, flutist Emman- uel Pahud, trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov, vi- olinist Daishin Kashimoto, violists Lawrence Power and Tabea Zimmermann, and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras. In 2020 Bax released Italian Inspirations , his 11th album on Signum Classics where his discography also includes Beethoven concertos and sonatas, a Mozart album with London’s Southbank Sinfonia, and works by Scriabin, Mussorgsky, Brahms, Bach, and Rachmaninoff. Since 2017 he has been the artistic director of the Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival in the Val d’Orcia re- gion of Tuscany, and in 2019 he was invited to join the piano faculty of the New England Conservatory. Joining the Ravinia Steans Mu- sic Institute faculty for the first time this sum- mer, Alessio Bax is also making his Ravinia concert debut. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 31