Beethoven: Variations in G major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 121a, “Kakadu”
Recorded live in Alice Tully Hall on November 15, 2022.
Video produced by Ibis Productions.
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Gilles Vonsattel
Francisco Fullana
David Finckel
Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is celebrated for his versatility and originality. He has been honored with an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the 2016 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and top prizes in the Naumburg and Geneva competitions, and has performed alongside world-renowned orchestras like the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, San Francisco Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg. He has performed recitals and chamber music at venues including Ravinia, Tokyo’s Musashino Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Lucerne Festival, Bravo! Vail, Chamber Music Northwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Music@Menlo. An advocate of contemporary music, he has premiered compositions in the United States and Europe, collaborating closely with composers Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, Anthony Cheung, and George Benjamin. Recent milestones in his career encompass a performance of Carlos Chávez’s Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium with The Orchestra Now, a debut at Mostly Mozart, and a critically acclaimed recording of Richard Strauss and Kurt Leimer’s music with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and Mario Venzago for Schweizer Fonogramm. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and a master’s degree from the Juilliard School. Vonsattel is Professor of Piano at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is on the faculty at Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Spanish-born violinist Francisco Fullana, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2023 Khaledi Prize, has been hailed as “frighteningly awesome” (Buffalo News). His latest album on Orchid Classics, Bach’s Long Shadow, was named BBC Music Magazine’s Instrumental Choice of the Month. Its five-star review stated: "Fullana manages to combine Itzhak Perlman's warmth with the aristocratic poise of Henryk Szeryng." His thoughtful virtuosity has led to collaborations with conducting greats like Sir Colin Davis, Hans Graf, and Gustavo Dudamel. Besides his career as a soloist, which includes recent debuts with the Philadelphia and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras and a season-long artist residency with the Grammy-winning orchestra Apollo’s Fire, he is making an impact as an innovative educator. He created the Fortissimo Youth Initiative, a series of seminars and performances in partnership with youth and university orchestras, and co-founded San Antonio’s Classical Music Institute, an outreach-focused chamber music festival that serves hundreds of Title I underrepresented minority students every summer. He was a first-prize winner of the Johannes Brahms and Angel Munetsugu International Violin Competitions and is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. A graduate of the Juilliard School and the University of Southern California, Fullana performs on the 1735 Mary Portman ex-Kreisler Guarneri del Gesù violin, on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
Co-Artistic Director of CMS since 2004, cellist David Finckel’s dynamic musical career has included performances on the world’s stages in the roles of recitalist, chamber artist, and orchestral soloist. The first American student of Mstislav Rostropovich, he joined the Emerson String Quartet in 1979, and during 34 seasons garnered nine Grammy Awards and the Avery Fisher Prize. His quartet performances and recordings include quartet cycles of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorák, Brahms, Bartók, and Shostakovich, as well as collaborative masterpieces and commissioned works. In 1997, he and pianist Wu Han founded ArtistLed, the first internet-based, artist-controlled classical recording label. ArtistLed’s catalog of more than 20 releases includes the standard literature for cello and piano, plus works composed for the duo by George Tsontakis, Gabriela Lena Frank, Bruce Adolphe, Lera Auerbach, Edwin Finckel, Augusta Read Thomas, and Pierre Jalbert. In 2022, Music@Menlo, an innovative summer chamber music festival in Silicon Valley founded and directed by David and Wu Han, celebrated its 20th season. As a young student, David was winner of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s junior and senior divisions, resulting in two performances with the orchestra. Having taught extensively with the late Isaac Stern in America, Israel, and Japan, he is currently a professor at both the Juilliard School and Stony Brook University, and oversees both CMS’s Bowers Program and Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute. David’s 100 online Cello Talks, lessons on cello technique, are viewed by an international audience of musicians. Along with Wu Han, he was the recipient of Musical America’s 2012 Musicians of the Year Award.
