Nan-Cheng
Chen 陳南呈, cellist
Cellist Nan-Cheng Chen’s performance was recently described as
“personable and smile-inducing” and “fine playing” by Washington
Post in 2014 and “Beautiful Tone” by New York Concert Reviews in
2011, Nan-Cheng is passionate about sharing music with music
lovers. At only age of 29, Nan-Cheng is the executive director
and founder of the New Asia Chamber Music Society (NACMS), a
member of Sonic Escape, Chen Trio, Ensemble 101, and many other
active music ensembles in New York City. An active soloist,
Nan-Cheng has collaborated with Simon Bolivar Orchestra,
National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, Queens Symphony Orchestra,
Metro-West Symphony, Classic Orchestra of Taichung, Quincy
Symphony and Symphony Pro Musica, which received a review that
states: “It was the kind of performance one
might hear live only
once a decade”, from Worcester Telegram and Gazette.
Among Nan-Cheng’s many honors and awards are first prize in the
2010 Queens Symphony Concerto Competition, 2009 Lillian Fuchs
Chamber Music Competition, 2006 International Chamber Music
Ensemble Competition, 2005 Quincy Symphony Orchestra Concerto
Competition, 2004 Hsin-Tian Temple National Cello Competition in
Taiwan, and 2003 Metro-West Concerto Competitions. He also won
prizes in 2010 Long Island Conservatory Young Artist
Competition, 2006 Fischoff National Chamber Competition and 1999
Taiwan National Cello and Piano Competition. Nan-Cheng has also
been featured on NPR’s From The Top national radio broadcast in
2006, performing with its host, pianist Christopher O’Riley.
During the summer, Nan-Cheng has been invited to music festivals
such as Canada’s Banff Centre, Sarasota Music Festival, Heifetz
Institute, Encore School for Strings, and Kneisel Hall. He was a
guest-performing artist at Chautauqua Summer Music Festival, a
Kaplan Fellow at the Bowdoin International Music Festival and
served as a teaching artist at the Annual Music Festival of
Walnut Hill. As an educator, Nan-Cheng has given masterclasses
at Penn State University, University of Wisconsin, University of
Calgary as well as prominent universities in Panama, Colombia
and Taiwan.
A Native of Taiwan, Nan-Cheng has earned Bachelor of Music and
Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, studying with
Joel Krosnick, renowned cellist of The Juilliard String Quartet.
Nan-Cheng Chen came to United States at the age of twelve and
attended Idyllwild Arts Academy in California, studying under
Eleonore Schoenfeld. He then entered the New England
Conservatory Preparatory Program to study with Mark Churchill
before attending the Juilliard School. Nan-Cheng is currently a
doctoral candidate at CUNY Graduate Center under the guidance of
cellist Marcy Rosen and teaches as an adjunct faculty at CUNY
Queens College.
Nan-Cheng Chen’s recent musical journeys features over a hundred
performances including several solo and chamber concert tours
throughout North American, South America, Europe and Asia.
Recent highlights including a sold-out debut with National
Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan playing the Schumann Cello
Concerto.
(July- 2017)
Chi-Wei Lo 駱奇偉,
pianist
Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, pianist Chi Wei Lo started studying
piano at the age of three. He soon established himself as one of
the prominently gifted children in the country, and has
experienced success sharing his sincere love for music, winning
all the major national piano competitions. In 2005, Chi Wei
moved to the United States to become a student at the Walnut
hill School of the Arts studying with Mrs. Sylvia Chambless.
After winning First Prize in the Chinese Performing Arts
Festival, he performed Liszt’s Totentanz with the Longwood
Symphony Orchestra at Boston’s Esplanade, under the baton of
Jonathan McPhee. Mr. Lo’s creativity and style made the year
2008 marked by numerous accomplishments, including First Prize
in the A. Ramon Rivera Piano Competition, The New England
Conservatory’s Preparatory School Concerto Competition in the
top category. In the year of 2010, Mr. Lo would go on to win the
Steinway competition.
Along with standard repertoire, Mr. Lo has arranged songs from
pop and rock artists including Michael Jackson, The Beatles, and
Queen, and has received praises for these repertoires in Asia,
the United States, and Europe. Having graduated from the
Juilliard School under the guidance of Mr. Jerome Lowenthal and
Mr. Hung Kuan Chen this past year, Mr. Lo has been gaining
reputations with his improvisation group, The Illustrators. With
the release of their first album, The Illustrators premieres new
works in addition to performing illustrations on pre-existing
works. Mr. Lo also enjoys an active schedule of performances as
a soloist and chamber player and is expanding his creativity
through different genres of music. In 2017, Mr. Lo is beyond
excited to become a doctoral candidate at the New England
Conservatory, majoring in contemporary piano improvisation.
Program notes
by Nan-Cheng Chen
Schubert: Sonata in A minor for Arpeggione
and Piano, D. 821
The Sonata in A minor for Arpeggione and Piano, D.821 was
composed by Franz Schubert in Vienna in November 1824. The
arpeggione, a name used only by Schubert, is standardly called
“Bogen Gitarre” or guitar-violoncello. The stringed instrument,
fell out of fashion before the piece was published in 1871, is
tuned to E-A-d-g-b-e and has frets like a guitar, and to be held
between the knees and bowed like a cello. The instrument is
described as “similar to in form to the standard guitar, but has
a greater range, over spun gut strings, and is not plucked by
the fingers but bowed; the beauty fullness and sweetness of its
tone recall the oboe in the upper registers and the basset horn
in the lower ones; it is particularly well suited for a light
and limpid execution of chromatic passages even in double stops,
and is acclaimed by all specialists as a valuable contribution
to the arts” by Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung in 1823. Today
the piece is widely presented with the cello or viola replacing
the arpeggione, regarded as a standard repertoire for these
instruments.
Beethoven: 7 Variations on 'Bei Männern,
welche Liebe fühlen', WoO 46
Written in 1801, 7 Variations on 'Bei Männern, welche Liebe
fühlen', WoO 46 was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven as he set a
variations for cello and piano base on a folk-like tune derived
from Mozart’s Magic Flute, with which the duet is sung by Pamina
and Papageno, on the subject about love. Observing the two
characters take their turns to sing the theme before they join
together, Beethoven incorporated this witty aspect of Mozart’s
writing throughout his variations, gaining a quality of
conversation between the cello and the piano.
After the grand opening of a held forte E-flat chord, the
theatrical opening is followed by the entrance of the theme
immediately by the piano. Variation I deviates the original
theme by modifying its rhythmic impulses and the added
inharmonic tones. In Variation II, the theme quickens into fast
passages, with thirty-second notes running up and down in scalic
fashion. Variation III draws back from the previous speedy
excitement, as the theme is now ornamented by gracious “turns”,
to prepare for the dark mood of the following Variation IV. In
this mode of absurdly distanced E-flat minor, the cello gets to
explore the instrument’s lowest registers and bassy qualities.
Variation V brings to light another instance of drastic
character change, si prenda il tempo un poco piu vivace is
indicated to guide this lively, arpeggiated movement. Variation
VI, the inevitable Adagio variation pronounces the beauty of the
theme in a stately manner, while loaded with ornamentations
associated with Bel Canto singing. Variation VII concludes the
piece with the two instruments join together in a cheerful,
buoyant manner as expected, yet not without a minor-mode
intrusion in the middle of it.
Beethoven: Cello Sonata No.4 in C Major,
Op.102 No.1
Composed around the beginning of Beethoven’s “late” period in
1815, the Sonata No.4 in C major, Op. 102, No.1 is filled with
peculiar contrasting elements notably in characters, tempo
change and thematic treatments. The component of surprise and
wide range of emotion are to be experienced by both performers
and listeners. Its first movement, Andante - Allegro vivace,
begins an introduction with a several repetitions of the
melodious theme which begins and ends in the key of C major in
an atmosphere filled with peace and tenderness. A storm then
takes over in Allegro vivace in an unexpected A minor, and
upholds its fierceness through the majority of the section and
all the way to the end, ending with three pounding chords in the
same minor key.
The second movement, Adagio - Tempo d’andante - Allegro vivace,
also launches with a slow introduction as in the previous
movement. However, before arriving at Allegro vivace, the theme
of the previous movement briefly returns, and at this curious
moment it establishes the home key of C major for the subsequent
section. Allegro vivace proceeds with an outburst of energy
under a varied version of classical sonata form. The piece
concludes with three glorious C major chords.
Webern: Three pieces for Piano and Cello,
Op.11
Anton von Webern composed Drei kleine Stücke, or Three Little
Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op.11 in 1914, during a period of
his life when he was following in the footsteps of the early
composition style of Arnold Schoenberg, to produce free atonal
works.
To perform it in its entirety requires only barely three
minutes. The piece bears a close resemblance to Schoenberg’s
Drei Klavierstücke, or Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11, written five
years earlier in 1909, in terms of its elements of atonality,
brevity, three-piece structure, and corresponding opus number.
As a cellist and a pianist of near-professional caliber, Webern
likely felt confident in writing for this particular instrument
combination. Indeed, there is evidence that he considered the
Op.11 to be one of his representative works, although he
considered it to be too difficult for performers and audiences
alike to fully understand. The piece was first performed in
1924, ten years after its completion in 1914. It was well
received by audiences then, according to the Austrian composer,
Alban Berg. Nonetheless, Webern felt that the pieces should not
be performed.
Like many other works by Webern, this piece embraces its sense
of color and beauty with explicit expressive markings on almost
every note. For this reason, the resulting fragmentation of this
work demands the performer an addition layer of thoughts to
connect and pan out those musical gestures.
Debussy: Cello Sonata
Near the end of his life, Claude Debussy wrote the Cello Sonata
in 1915, intended for it to be a part of “Six sonates pour
divers instruments”. However, he only completed two others, the
sonata for flute, viola and harp and the sonata for violin. The
latter being the last piece the composer ever composed as he
died in 1918.
The cello sonata demonstrates the composer’s ability to draw
rich palette of timbre from both the cello and the piano. I.
Prologue opens the piece with a bold gesture that quickly
resolves into a more impressionistic sound world, marked by the
cello’s use of open strings. Debussy’s trademark exploitation of
pentatonic scales and major-minor mixture underlines the
movement along with various speed changes. The impressionistic
theme recur as the final statement at almost half the original
speed. II. Sérénade exhibits a wide range of color by its use of
unconventional cello techniques. A plucked theme, harmonics,
bursting vibrato on a single note, flautendo, glissando and
fingerboard bowing. Through attacca, the music launches into
III. Finale. This final movement continues and further develops
the wild rapid shifting of characters of the previous movement,
with more rubatos and drastic tempo changes. The energy
accumulates throughout the movement and finally climaxes into
the last few measures, ending the piece abruptly with short but
strong attacks from the both instruments.
Sciarrino: “Ai Limiti Della Notte”
Composer Salvatore Sciarrino was born in Pelermo, Italy, in
1947. A self-taught composer primarily, Sciarrino began writing
music at the age of twelve, and held his first public concert
when he was only fifteen. He was a former artistic director of
Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Academic of Santa Cecilia (Rome),
Academic of Fine Arts of Bavaria and Academic of the Arts
(Berlin). He has won distinguished awards such as Feltrinelli
International Award (2003) and Salzburg Music Prize(2006).
Ai Limiti Della Notte was first written for viola solo in 1979.
The cello transcription was published in 1984 under the
publisher Ricordi, dedicated to cellist Luigi Lanzillotta of
Roma Sinfonietta. The piece explores the combination of
harmonics and tremolo, combined with a low dynamic to create a
“whisper” effect. The five-minute music emerges from silence and
disappears into nothing, while the tremolo-harmonics echo one
another in between, creating timelessness.
Schumann: Adagio and Allegro, Op.70
Originally conceived as a work for horn and piano, Robert
Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro, Op.70 (1849) is a popular work
among cellists. The transcription for cello, along with another
version for violin, was authorized by the composer.
The Adagio, marked “Langsamm mit innigem Ausdruck” (“Slowly,
with tender feeling”) serves as the contrasting introductory
section to the Allegro. Indulging in lyricism, the cello and the
piano takes turns to sing their instrumental voices tenderly.
The beginning themes returns as the final closure ending quietly
in A-flat major. Without transition, fast triplets in both
instruments inaugurates the passionate Allegro section, marked
“Rasch und feurig” (“Fast and fiery”). The robust athleticism of
the theme prevails throughout the piece, except for a brief
return of adagio theme marked Poco tranquillo in the middle
section.
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