Ravinia_2018_Issue_4_Week

and lively aspects of native Spanish music.

Max Eschig published the

Siete canciones pop-

ulares españolas

in 1922. Dedicated to Madame

Ida Godebska (a prominent musical benefactor

in Paris), these songs attained an immediate

popularity. Capitalizing on the success of this

collection, Eschig issued numerous arrange-

ments: for orchestra, piano, voice and guitar,

cello and piano, and violin and piano. Polish

violinist Paweł Kochański’s arrangement of six

movements for violin and piano appeared under

the title

Suite populaire espagnole

VITTORIO MONTI (1868–1922)

Csárdás

Though little known today, Vittorio Monti was

a diversely talented musician as a composer,

conductor, violinist, and mandolinist. Born

in Naples, Monti attended the Conservatorio

di Musica San Pietro a Majella. He published

the influential

Petite méthode pour mandoline

op. 245, which included some of his own man-

dolin compositions, sometime around 1895. By

1900, Monti had relocated to Paris, where he

conducted the famous Orchestre Lamoreaux in

its weekly concerts. Compositions from the Pa-

risian period—operettas, ballets, the “mimodra-

ma”

Noël de Pierrot

(

A Clown’s Christmas

), and

ethnically inspired instrumental works, often in

dance forms—catered to popular tastes.

Originally scored for solo violin and small or-

chestra,

Csárdás

(ca. 1904) became Monti’s most

famous composition and the only one still per-

formed today. In it, he evoked the exuberant mu-

sic of the Romani people who wandered through-

out Europe in the 19th century. The

csárdás

originated in Hungary around 1835 as folk-styled

dance music alternating between slow, soulful

sections (

lassan

) and faster, euphoric episodes

(

friss

). Monti dedicated his score to Juliette Dan-

tin, a violinist who performed throughout France

and England at the turn of the century.

RAY CHEN,

violin

The winner of the 2008 Yehudi Menuhin and

2009 Queen Elisabeth Competitions, Taiwan

native Ray Chen grew up in Australia and came

to the United States at age 15 when he was ac-

cepted into the Curtis School of Music to study

violin with Aaron Rosand. After serving on the

jury of the Menuhin Competition, Maxim Ven-

gerov immediately engaged Chen to perform

with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra and on

the opening concert of the next competition.

Chen also soon entered a multiyear recording

deal with Sony Classics, on which he released

Virtuoso

, an ECHO Klassik award–winning col-

lection of works by Bach, Tartini, Franck, and

Wieniawski; an album of concertos by Mendels-

sohn and Tchaikovsky with Daniel Harding and

the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; and an

all-Mozart disc with Christoph Eschenbach and

the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra. Last

year he signed a new recording and multimedia

contract with Decca, on which

The Golden Age

was released in June, featuring Bruch’s Violin

Concerto No. 1 with the London Philharmonic

Orchestra plus original arrangements with his

string quartet, Made in Berlin. Chen is dedicat-

ed to expanding the audience for classical mu-

sic across social media, having drawn over two

million followers on SoundCloud and blogging

about life as a touring classical musician for RCS

Rizzoli, Italy’s largest publishing house. Also

eager to blend the worlds of fashion and pop

culture with classical music, he is supported by

Giorgio Armani and has been featured in

Vogue

magazine. In 2012, Chen became the youngest

soloist ever to perform in the televised Nobel

Prize Concert, and he earned ovations at his

Carnegie Hall debut with the Royal Stockholm

Philharmonic and his sold-out Musikverein

concert with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orches-

tra and Riccardo Chailly. He has since appeared

with such ensembles as the London Philhar-

monic, National Symphony Orchestra, and the

French National Orchestra, and last year he

made his BBC Proms debut with the BBC Sym-

phony Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall. Ray Chen

made his Ravinia debut in 2011 and returned to

the festival last summer for his Chicago Sym-

phony Orchestra debut.

JULIO ELIZALDE,

piano

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, pianist

Julio Elizalde has been the artistic director of the

Olympic Music Festival near Seattle since 2015,

having co-led the festival for the three years pri-

or and long established himself as a multifacet-

ed artist through tours of the music capitals of

the United States, Latin America, Europe, and

Asia. He completed a Bachelor of Music with

honors at the San Francisco Conservatory un-

der the guidance of Paul Hersh, and he subse-

quently earned both a master’s and a doctorate

from The Juilliard School, where he studied

with Jerome Lowenthal, Joseph Kalichstein, and

Robert McDonald. Elizalde is a passionate and

active music educator himself, recently serving

as visiting professor of piano at the University

of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. He has been on

the faculty of the Manchester Music Festival in

Vermont since 2011, and he has led master class-

es at the San Francisco Conservatory, Lawrence

University, and the Music Institute of Chicago.

Additionally, Elizalde has appeared at such sum-

mer festivals as Yellow Barn, Taos, Caramoor,

Bowdoin, and the Music Academy of the West,

and he was a juror for the 2012 Fischoff National

Chamber Music Competition. He is a cofounder

of the New Trio, which was a winner of the 2008

Fischoff Competition, with violinist Andrew

Wan, co-concertmaster of the Montreal Sym-

phony Orchestra, and cellist Patrick Jee of the

New York Philharmonic. The ensemble has per-

formed for several American dignitaries, such

as former president Bill Clinton, Condoleez-

za Rice, Henry Kissinger, and the late senator

Ted Kennedy. Elizalde also tours internation-

ally alongside violinists Sarah Chang and Ray

Chen, as well as with such conductors as Itzhak

Perlman, Teddy Abrams, and Anne Manson.

He has also collaborated with violinist Pamela

Frank, composers Osvaldo Golijov and Stephen

Hough, baritone William Sharp, and members

of the Juilliard, Cleveland, Kronos, and Brenta-

no String Quartets. Julio Elizalde is making his

Ravinia debut.

Vittorio Monti

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