Ravinia Steans Music Institute 2019

RAVINIA’S STEANS MUSIC INSTITUTE 21 with the orchestras of Berlin, London, Vienna, Milan, New York and Cleveland in collaboration with Eschenbach, Mehta, Welser-Moest, Kocsis, Dennis Russel Davies Blomstedt Robertson and Holliger. Recital appearances include the great halls of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, Athens and Tokyo. Kashkashian has ongoing chamber music partnerships with pianist Robert Levin, percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky, and the trio Tre Voce. Her association with the prestigious ECM label since 1985 has resulted in a rich discography including the complete sonatas of Hindemith and Brahms, an album of Argentinian songs, the concertos of Schnittke, Bartók, Penderecki and Kurtág, as well as the Bach Viola da Gamba sonatas, recorded with Keith Jarrett. Kim Kashkashian’s recording, with Robert Levin, of the Brahms Sonatas, won the Edison Prize in 1999. Her 2000 recording of concertos by Bartok, Eotvos, and Kurtag won the 2001 Cannes Classical Award for a premiere recording by a soloist with orchestra. Kim Kashkashian lives in Boston, where she coaches chamber music and viola at New England Conservatory. She is a founding member of Music for Food, an initiative by musicians to fight hunger in their home communities. To learn more, visit musicforfood.net Martha Strongin Katz , viola Arie and Ida Crown Memorial Endowment, in honor of Renee Schine Crown, Hildegarde F. Schine, Doris Schine Maxwell, and C. Richard Schine Violist Martha Strongin Katz was a founding member of the Cleveland Quartet and has also appeared in recital and concerto performances across the United States. Winner of the Geneva International Viola Competition and the Max Reger Award, she has served on the juries of the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Naumburg International Viola Competition. She was a faculty member at Rice University, the Eastman School of Music, and Interlochen Arts Academy, and is now at New England Conservatory. Ralph Kirshbaum , cello The MacLean Family Chair The distinguished career of Texas-born cellist Ralph Kirshbaum encompasses the worlds of solo performance, chamber music, recording, and pedagogy and places him in the highest echelon of today’s cellists. He has appeared with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Cleveland Orchestra; Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras; Los Angeles Philharmonic; London Symphony, Philharmonia; Zurich Tonhalle; Orchestre de Paris; and Israel Philharmonic. He has collaborated with many of the great conductors of the time including Christoph von Dohnányi, the late Sir Colin Davis, James Levine, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir André Previn, Sir Simon Rattle, and the late Sir Georg Solti. Kirshbaum founded the RNCM Manchester International Cello Festival in 1988 as a celebration of the cello, its music, and musicians. The final festival, which took place in 2007, was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Music Award for Concert Series and Festivals. In 2012, Kirshbaum inaugurated the Piatigorsky International Cello Festival in Los Angeles, centered at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. The highly successful festival returned to Los Angeles in May 2016 and was attended by some of the world’s foremost cellists and rising young artists receiving international acclaim. With an extensive discography which includes recordings on the EMI/Virgin Classics, Hyperion, Onyx Classics, and Virgin Classics labels, among others, Kirshbaum is noted for his recordings of the Bach Cello Suites, Brahms Double and Beethoven Triple Concertos with Pinchas Zukerman, the Schubert Quintet with the Takács Quartet, and the complete cello sonatas and variations of Beethoven with Shai Wosner. Robert Levin , piano Pianist and conductor Robert Levin has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia, appearing with the orchestras of Atlanta, Berlin, Birmingham, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Montreal, Philadelphia, Toronto, Utah and Vienna on the Steinway and with the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Baroque Soloists, the Handel & Haydn Society, the London Classical Players, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Orchestre Révo-lutionnaire et Romantique on period pianos. Renowned for his improvised cadenzas in Classical period repertoire, Robert Levin has made recordings of a wide range of repertoire. A passionate advocate of new music, Robert Levin has commissioned and premiered a large number of works, including Joshua Fineberg’s Veils (2001), John Harbison’s Second Sonata (2003), Yehudi Wyner’s piano concerto Chiavi in mano (Pulitzer Prize, 2006), Bernard Rands’ Preludes (2007), Thomas Oboe Lee’s Piano Concerto (2007), and Hans Peter Türk’s Träume (2012). Robert Levin has long performed and recorded with violist Kim Kashkashian. He appears frequently with his wife, pianist Ya-Fei Chuang, in duo recitals and with orchestra, and with cellist Steven Isserlis. A noted Mozart scholar, Mr. Levin’s completions of Mozart’s Requiem and other unfinished works have been recorded and performed throughout the world. In 2005 his completion of the Mozart C-minor Mass, commissioned by Carnegie Hall, was premiered there and has since been widely heard in the United States and Europe. He has been an artist teacher at the Sarasota Music Festival since 1979 and was its Artistic Director from 2007-2016. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and member of the Akademie für Mozartforschung, he is President of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition (Leipzig, Germany). He was awarded the Bach Medal of the City of Leipzig in 2018. From 1993 to 2013 he was Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and is presently Visiting Professor at The Juilliard School. Mihaela Martin , violin William H. and Marjorie L. Green Endowment Romanian-born violinist Mihaela Martin performs regularly as an orchestral soloist and with the world’s most outstanding conductors. Active as a recitalist and chamber musician, she has performed live on radio and television as well as on records . Her numerous awards include first prize at the First International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and prizes at Belgium’s Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition and the Tchaikovsky International Competition. She is a founding member of the Michelangelo String Quartet. In addition to her busy performing career, she has been a professor of violin at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne and the Kronberg Academy since 2013. Howard Nelson , Physical Therapy Howard Nelson has been a physical therapist since 1989. He worked for ten years at Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC. Currently he is in private practice in NewYork City. Most recently Mr. Nelson has worked with Washington University’s physical therapy department, developing his expertise in movement- related impairments. Specifically, he analyzes how postures and movements in daily life can be the cause of injury and pain. His physical therapy practice is focused on treating the biomechanical causes of injuries by modifying faulty movement patterns. Since 2013 Mr. Nelson has been applying movement system principles to musicians. He has presented Pamela Frank’s case study and worked with musicians at Curtis Institute, Ravinia, Caramoor, Chicago Music Institute, New England Conservatory, NewWorld Symphony, the Tokyo Viola and Menuhin Competitions, the Tanglewood Music Center, The Performing Arts Medicine Association, The Juilliard School, Peabody Institute, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, the Oberlin Conservatory, Music Academy of the West, and at festivals in Rolle and Verbier, Switzerland. Currently, Mr. Nelson works with musicians on a weekly basis at the Curtis Institute of Music, five times a semester at Thornton School of Music at USC, and bi-annually at Oberlin Conservatory. Marcy Rosen , cello The MacLean Family Chair Marcy Rosen has performed throughout Canada, England, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South America, Switzerland, and all fifty of the United States. She has given Master Classes at the Curtis Institute of Music, New England Conservatory, San Francisco Conservatory, Central Conservatory in Beijing, China, Seoul Arts Center in Korea and the Cartagena International Music Festival in Colombia. Ms. Rosen has collaborated with the world’s finest musicians, including Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Andras Schiff, Mitsuko Uchida, Jonathan Biss, Peter Serkin, and Isaac Stern, and with the Juilliard, Emerson, Ying and Orion Quartets. She is a founding member of La Fenice and the Mendelssohn String Quartet. With the Mendelssohn she was Artist-in-Residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts and for nine years served as Blodgett-Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University. Since first attending the Marlboro Festival in 1975, she has taken part in 23 “Musicians from Marlboro” tours and has performed in concerts celebrating the 40th, 50th, and 60th anniversaries of the festival. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Ms. Rosen is currently professor of cello at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and on the faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. PIANO AND STRINGS FACULTY RSMI