Bruckner's String Quintet
Sun Feb 2, 2025, 5:00 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
Anton Bruckner’s monumental String Quintet offers a rare opportunity to experience the talents of this composer, mostly known for his large symphonies, in a chamber music setting. Two instrumental sonatas by Beethoven—including the G-major Violin Sonata performed by Pinchas Zukerman—complete the program.
Program
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)Sonata in A major for Cello and Piano, Op. 69
(1807–08)Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770–1827)Sonata in G major for Violin and Piano, Op. 96
(1812)Anton Bruckner
(1824–1896)Quintet in F major for Two Violins, Two Violas, and Cello
(1879)
Shai Wosner
Aaron Boyd
Arnaud Sussmann
Pinchas Zukerman
Matthew Lipman
Amanda Forsyth
Pianist Shai Wosner has attracted international recognition for his exceptional artistry, musical integrity, and creative insight. His performances of a broad range of repertoire—from Beethoven and Schubert to Ligeti and the music of today—communicate his imaginative programming and intellectual curiosity. Wosner is Resident Artist of the New York–based Peoples’ Symphony Concerts from 2020 to 2023. In spring 2023, he curated a second annual festival devoted to the music of György Kurtág at Bard Conservatory, where he is on faculty. Additional highlights of his season include a European tour with clarinetist Martin Fröst and violist Antoine Tamestit; concerts with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Columbus Symphony, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra; and performances as part of the Zukerman Trio with violinist Pinchas Zukerman and cellist Amanda Forsyth. He performs regularly at chamber music festivals, including Chamber Music Northwest, Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. His acclaimed recordings for Onyx Classics range from Schubert sonatas, to chamber works by Bartók and Kurtág, to concerti by Haydn and Ligeti. He is the recipient of Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. Born in Israel, Wosner enjoyed a broad musical education from a very early age, studying piano with Opher Brayer and Emanuel Krasovsky, as well as composition, theory, and improvisation with André Hajdu. He later studied at The Juilliard School with Emanuel Ax.
Violinist Aaron Boyd enjoys a versatile career as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral leader, recording artist, lecturer, and teacher. Since making his New York recital debut in 1998, he has concertized throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Formerly a member of the Escher String Quartet, he was a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Martin E. Segal prize from Lincoln Center, and was also awarded a Proclamation by the City of Pittsburgh for his musical accomplishments. A passionate advocate for new music, he has been involved in numerous commissions and premieres, and has worked directly with such legendary composers as Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Charles Wuorinen. He is also founder of the Zukofsky Quartet (quartet-in-residence at Bargemusic); the only ensemble to have played all of Milton Babbitt's notoriously difficult string quartets. As a recording artist, he can be heard on the BIS, Music@Menlo Live, Naxos, Tzadik, North/South and Innova labels. He has been broadcast in concert by NPR, WQXR, and WQED, and was profiled by Arizona Public Television. Born in Pittsburgh, Mr. Boyd began his studies with Samuel LaRocca and Eugene Phillips and graduated from The Juilliard School where he studied with Sally Thomas and coached extensively with Paul Zukofsky and cellist Harvey Shapiro. He now serves as Director of Chamber Music and Professor of Practice in Violin at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University and lives in Dallas with his wife Yuko, daughter Ayu, and son Yuki.
Winner of a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Arnaud Sussmann has distinguished himself with his unique sound, bravura, and profound musicianship. Minnesota’s Pioneer Press writes, “Sussmann has an old-school sound reminiscent of what you'll hear on vintage recordings by Jascha Heifetz or Fritz Kreisler, a rare combination of sweet and smooth that can hypnotize a listener.” A thrilling musician capturing the attention of classical critics and audiences around the world, he has recently appeared as a soloist with the Vancouver Symphony and the New World Symphony. As a chamber musician, he has performed at the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel, London’s Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Dresden Music Festival in Germany, and the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. He has been presented in recital in Omaha on the Tuesday Musical Club series, in New Orleans by the Friends of Music, and at the Louvre Museum in Paris. He has also given concerts at the OK Mozart, Moritzburg, Caramoor, Music@Menlo, La Jolla SummerFest, Mainly Mozart, Seattle Chamber Music, Chamber Music Northwest, and Moab Music festivals. He has performed with many of today’s leading artists including Itzhak Perlman, Menahem Pressler, Gary Hoffman, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Wu Han, David Finckel, and Jan Vogler. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, Sussmann is Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach and Co-Director of Music@Menlo’s International Program, and teaches at Stony Brook University. In September 2022, Sussmann was named Founding Artistic Director of the Boscobel Chamber Music Festival.
With a celebrated career encompassing five decades, Pinchas Zukerman reigns as one of today's most sought after and versatile musicians—violin and viola soloist, conductor, and chamber musician. He is renowned as a virtuoso, admired for the expressive lyricism of his playing, singular beauty of tone, and impeccable musicianship, which can be heard throughout his discography of over 100 albums for which he gained two Grammy awards and 21 nominations.
This season’s highlights include performances with orchestra and in chamber music recitals, including those with the very distinguished Zukerman Trio, in Spain, Denmark, Sweden and France, and, in his Wolf Trap debut with cellist Amanda Forsyth and pianist Michael Stephen Brown. Orchestral performances abroad include the Adelaide Symphony, Orchestre de Lyon (in France and on tour in Spain), the Bamberg Symphony with Lahav Shani, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (in Rome and Salzburg), the Israel Philharmonic, L’Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto in Italy and the English Chamber Orchestra at Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. After a highly successful tour in Spain last season as a soloist with the Polish Sinfonia Varsovia, Zukerman rejoins the orchestra this season in Poland to conduct.
Recent highlights include performances with Dallas Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Mannheimer Philharmoniker, Adelaide Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon and the Valencia, Sinfonia Varsovia, Castille y Leon orchestras of Spain, Israel Philharmonic, and Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. Chamber music concerts took place in Japan, Italy, France, Germany, and the United States. He and cellist Amanda Forsyth collaborated with friends and colleagues the Jerusalem String Quartet in sextet programs offered in both Israel and the US. He and Amanda Forsyth also appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Reading and New Bedford Symphonies. And with the Zukerman Trio, he visited the Ravinia, Aspen, and Amelia Island Chamber Music Festivals, as well as Parlance Chamber Concerts in New Jersey and Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.
A devoted teacher and champion of young musicians, he has served as chair of the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music for over 25 years, and has taught at prominent institutions throughout the United Kingdom, Israel, China, and Canada, among others. This season, he continues his role as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Artistic & Principal Education Partner, collaborating with DSO in partnership with Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts, to provide intensive coaching and tutoring sessions for its music students.
As a mentor he has inspired generations of young musicians who have achieved prominence in performing, teaching, and leading roles with music festivals around the globe. Mr. Zukerman has received honorary doctorates from Brown University, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of Calgary, as well as the National Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan. He is a recipient of the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence in Classical Music.
American violist Matthew Lipman has been praised by the New York Times for his “rich tone and elegant phrasing” and by the Chicago Tribune for a “splendid technique and musical sensitivity.” Recent seasons have included appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, American Symphony Orchestra, Munich Symphony Orchestra, and Minnesota Orchestra. He has performed recitals at Carnegie Hall, Aspen Music Festival, and the Zürich Tonhalle; was invited by Michael Tilson Thomas to be a soloist at the New World Symphony Viola Visions Festival; and has appeared in chamber music with Anne-Sophie Mutter at the Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, and on Deutsche Grammophon Stage+. An alum of the Bowers Program, he performs regularly on tour and at Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where he occupies the Wallach Chair. In 2022, he made his Sony Classical debut on The Dvořák Album, and his 2019 solo debut recording, Ascent, was released by Cedille Records, marking world premieres of the Shostakovich Impromptu and Clarice Assad Metamorfose. Additionally, he recorded the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with violinist Rachel Barton Pine and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by the late Sir Neville Marriner. An Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and major prize winner at the Primrose and Tertis International Viola Competitions, he studied with Heidi Castleman at Juilliard and Tabea Zimmermann at the Kronberg Academy. Lipman is on faculty at Stony Brook University and performs on a 2021 Samuel Zygmuntowicz viola, made for him in New York.
Canadian Juno award winning cellist Amanda Forsyth is considered among her peers and critics alike to be one of the most dynamic cellists on the concert stage today. Describing a recent performance, California’s Ventura County Star raves: “In Forsyth’s hands, it was sheer magic.” She has achieved an international reputation as a premiere soloist and chamber musician and previously enthralled audiences as the principal cellist of both The Calgary Philharmonic and Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestras. Her intense richness of tone, exceptional musicality and passion are reminiscent of cellists of a former age. She captivates audiences with every phrase. Ms. Forsyth has been soloist on international tours with: The Royal Philharmonic; English Chamber Orchestra; Seoul Philharmonic and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras. Among others, she has appeared abroad with: Orchestra Radio de France; Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Orchestra; Calgary Philharmonic; Toronto Symphony; National Arts Centre Orchestra; Vancouver Symphony; Luxembourg Philharmonic; Gyeonggi Philharmonic; Teatro San Carlo and Seoul Philharmonic. With multiple tours in Australia, she has performed with the Sydney, Perth and Adelaide Symphonies. In the U.S., she has performed with: The Chicago Symphony; Washington National Symphony; San Diego Symphony; Colorado Symphony; San Antonio Symphony; Madison Symphony; Oregon Symphony; New West Symphony; Grand Rapids Symphony and Dallas Symphony. She has appeared on tour and in St Petersburg numerous times with the Marinsky Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. Her Los Angeles Philharmonic debut was conducted by Zubin Mehta and Ms. Forsyth made her Carnegie Hall debut with The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
As a founding member of the Zukerman ChamberPlayers, Amanda Forsyth has performed in: Germany; Israel; Finland; Holland; Switzerland; New Zealand; and Turkey and cities such as: London; Vienna; Paris; Budapest; Belgrade; Sofia; Bucharest; Dubrovnik; Warsaw Moscow and Barcelona. As Cellist of the Zukerman Trio, she has played on six continents and participated in prestigious Music Festivals such as: Edinburgh Festival; Miyazaki Festival; Verbier Festival; BBC Proms; Tanglewood; Ravinia; Spring Festival of St. Petersburg; White Nights Festival; La Jolla SummerFest and Aspen. Her current season includes engagements with: Chamber Music Sedona; The 92nd Street Y in New York; Detroit Chamber Music Society; Music Institute of Chicago; Savannah Music Festival; Verbier Festival and Tsinandalli Festival. She started her 2019-2020 season with the cello concerto, “Electra Rising”, written by her father, Malcolm Forsyth. Ms. Forsyth brings Avner Dorman’s Double Concerto written for her and violinist Pinchas Zukerman to Ottawa with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and to Tel Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic, having previously performed the world premieres with Adelaide Symphony and Boston Symphonies. Additional engagements this season include performances with: Lincoln’s Symphony; Fort Wayne Philharmonic; IRIS Orchestra; Royal Philharmonic; Polish Symphony; Prague Philharmonic and the Dallas Symphony. A second USA tour as guest with The Jerusalem Quartet offering sextet repertoire with Pinchas Zukerman is booked throughout the USA. Ms. Forsyth is a recording artist on the Sony Classics, Naxos, Altara, Fanfare, ProArte
and CBC labels. Her recording of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with the Zukerman ChamberPlayers and Yefim Bronfman was released by Sony in 2008. Her most recent disc features the Brahms Double Concerto with Pinchas Zukerman and the National Arts Centre Orchestra released by Analekta Records. Born in South Africa, Ms. Forsyth immigrated to Canada as a child and began playing cello at age three. She became a protege of William Pleeth in London and later completed her studies at The Juilliard School with Harvey Shapiro. Her instrument is a rare 1699 cello by Carlo Giuseppe Testore.