Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts
Annual Summer Concert Series
at New England Conservatory, Boston, Massachusetts

 August 7 – 24, 2019



All conecrts Admission Free, suggested donation $10 at door.
Age 6 and under not admitted.

 



Concert 2
Thursday August 8, 2019, 7:30 pm
at NEC's Burnes Hall


The Formosa Duo
Sam Ou
歐維聖, cello
Chi-Chen Wu
吳紀禛 piano



~ Program ~


Kurt Weill
(1900-1950)

Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (1920)
1. Allegro ma non troppo
2. Andante espressivo
3. Allegro assai

Reza Vali (b. 1952)
Persian Folk Songs, Set No. 16 C (2017)
1. Longing
2. In Memory of a Lost Beloved
3. The Girl from Shiraz
4. Love-Drunk ("Mastom-Mastom")
5. In the Style of an Armenian Folk Song
6. Imaginary Folk Song
7. Folk Song from Khorasan



~ Intermission ~


Arvo Pärt
(b. 1935)
Fratres for Violoncello and Piano (1977)

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Sonata in G Minor for Violoncello and Piano. Op. 19 (1901)
1. Lento – Allegro moderato
2. Allegro scherzando
3. Andante
4. Allegro mosso




 

Admission Free, suggested donation $10 at door.
Age 6 and under not admitted.

中華表演藝術基金會
Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts
Lincoln, Massachusetts


 

 
Sam Ou
歐維 聖, cellist
samweiou.weebly.com

Praised for his "impassioned performance" (Boston Globe) and playing "with remarkable ease and clarity, while maintaining a graceful—if vociferous—line that fit well into the narrative" (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), cellist Sam Ou enjoys an active musical life in the Greater Boston area. A recipient of the Rosemary Scales Prize for best cello concerto performance at the Kingsville International Young Performers Competition, Mr. Ou has performed at several prestigious summer venues including Tanglewood, Sarasota, Musicorda, Santa Fe, and La Jolla music festivals. In 2012, he gave the world premiere performance of Larry Bell’s Cello Concerto entitled The Triumph of Lightness with the Boston Civic Symphony at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall (NEC). An avid chamber musician, Mr. Ou has collaborated and performed with the Borromeo String Quartet, James Buswell, Hung-Kuan Chen, Pi-Hsien Chen, James Dunham, Thomas Hill, Patricia McCarty, Paul Neubauer, Heiichiro Ohyama, Lois Shapiro, and Marcus Thompson. He performed Yehudi Wyner's Tanz and Maissele with violinist Lucy Chapman, clarinetist Bruce Creditor, and the Pulitzer prize-winning composer at the piano at The Center for Jewish History in New York.

Mr. Ou came to the United States from Taiwan at age 4, and began his cello studies at age 9. He has been a pupil of several renowned cello teachers, including Gretchen Geber, Eleanore Schoenfeld, and Aldo Parisot. After completing his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Music degrees in New York from Columbia University and The Juilliard School in their double degree program, Mr. Ou moved to Boston to study with Laurence Lesser at NEC, where he graduated with a Doctorate of Musical Arts. His dissertation was entitled "In Felix's Footsteps: An Examination of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's Approach to Her Chamber Music."

While a student at NEC, Mr. Ou founded the NEC String Trio, which won the NEC Honors Ensemble Competition, was featured on Boston’s WGBH radio station, and was the resident chamber ensemble at the Musicorda Music Festival. As a former member of the Huntington Piano Trio, he performed extensively throughout New England and traveled to Poland, giving concerts in Poznan and Zakopane. He has studied with several inspiring chamber music coaches including Toby Appel, Emanuel Ax, Neil Black, James Buswell, Earl Carlyss, Lucy Chapman, Norman Fischer, Felix Galimir, Christoph Henkel, Lewis Kaplan, and Emma Tahmisian.

In addition to being a prize recipient at the Kingsville International Young Performers Competition, Mr. Ou has also been awarded the Rome Festival Concerto Soloist Award, the Chi-Mei Music Scholarship from Taiwan, the ARTS Level II Award from the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts, and the Joseph Schuster Memorial Cello Scholarship from the Young Musicians' Foundation.

Mr. Ou has been a visiting lecturer, performer, and cello teacher at Fu-Jen University in Taiwan, where he conducted solo and chamber music masterclasses and performed with Fu-Jen faculty musicians. As a participant of Fu-Jen’s 18th Century Piano Literature Symposium and the International Strings Literature Symposium, he presented papers on the chamber music of Beethoven and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. Mr. Ou has also coached undergraduate chamber ensembles and orchestral cello sectionals at Tufts University. Most recently, he was invited to México City to conduct masterclasses and give a solo recital at the National University of México's School of Music as part of the School's "5th National Cello Encounter" Conference.

A faculty member and assistant string chairperson at NEC’s Preparatory School and School of Continuing Education, Mr. Ou also teaches at Powers Music School and maintains a private teaching studio. In the summer, he has taught at Music on the Hill in Belmont, MA, the Vianden International Music Festival in Luxembourg, the Walnut Hill Music Festival in Natick, MA, and Point Counterpoint in Leicester, VT. Mr. Ou released a CD entitled With String & Pipe, in which he collaborated with the late organist Harry Lyn Huff. He was also featured in Larry Bell’s CDs entitled In a Garden of Dreamers, where he collaborated with recorder player Aldo Abreu and harpsichordist Paul Cienniwa.



Chi-Chen Wu  吳紀禛, pianist, fortepianist
www.ccwpiano.com

Praised by Fanfare Magazine for her “astonishing” and “poetic piano playing” and “symphonic, expansive texture of breathless virtuosity” (Historical Keyboard Society), pianist Chi-Chen Wu has appeared as recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Taiwan, China, Thailand, the Aspen Music Festival, Monadnock Music Festival, and the Boston Early Music Festival Fringe Concert Series, among others. Her concerts have been broadcast on NPR’s Simply Grand Concert Series and NPR-From The Top in Boston. Musicians and conductors with whom she has concertized include Karl-Heinz Steffens, Jonathan McPhee, Zuill Bailey, members of the Juilliard String Quartet, Takács String Quartet, musicians from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as New York Philharmonic. American Record Guide chooses her recording of Schumann duo sonatas as one of the top recordings, and recommends its reader to “Stick with Kremer and Argerich (Nov/Dec 1987) or DiEugenio and Wu (Sept/Oct 2015) for more enthusiastic performances.”

A native of Taiwan and prize winner of several Taiwanese national piano competitions, Wu came to the United States for graduate study and received two master’s degrees, piano performance and collaborative piano, and a doctorate from New England Conservatory (NEC), where her teachers included Jacob Maxin, Irma Vallecillo, John Moriarty, Kayo Iwama, and John Greer. She has also worked with Thomas Quasthoff, Martin Katz, Kim Kashkashian, Lawrence Lesser, and Gabriel Chodos. Upon her graduation from NEC with Distinction in Performance and Academic Honors, she was appointed Assistant Professor at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU).

In 2007, Dr. Wu accepted a position of visiting scholar at Cornell University, where she taught piano, studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson, and conducted research on historical performance practice with Neal Zaslaw. Continuing with her research interests, in the summer of 2011 she presented a research paper on Schumann’s metronome markings at World Piano Conference in Serbia. This paper received “Diploma of Excellence” from the World Piano Teachers Association, the highest accolade of this organization. Her most recent paper “Pianist as Portrayer of Imagery in ‘En Sourdine’ by Fauré and Debussy” was published as a featured article in the September/October 2017 issue of Journal of Singing.

An interpreter of contemporary music, Chi-Chen Wu was the official pianist of Aggregate, a Boston-based composers group and was pianist in the premier of the piano version of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby. She world premiered The Poet and The War by Norber Palej. Recently, she performed Malcolm Williamson’s Concerto No. 2 as soloist with Pacifica Chamber Orchestra in Seattle.

Chi-Chen’s newest album of Schumann Fantasie and Carnaval has won a silver medal in the Global Music Awards. Her recording of the complete Schumann sonatas for piano and violin received two gold medals from the same competition. It was also named in the Top 10 "Best Classical Recordings of 2015" by The Big City, New York. She has recorded Haydn Lieder on a replica of Walter fortepiano with soprano Andrea Folan for Musica Omnia. Her recital and discussion on piano collaboration are featured on the DVD “Performing the Score” released in 2011. This year’s engagements include performance as soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, Wölfl’s Concerto No. 1, and tour in Spain.

Dr. Wu is Associate Professor of Piano and Coordinator of Collaborative Piano at the University of Wyoming (UW). Her students have been prizewinners in numerous competitions, including the northwest division of the MTNA competition, and have been accepted for graduate study to the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, McGill University, Conservatoire de Paris and other such institutions. She was selected as one of the Top 10 Teachers of 2017 at UW and recently won Extraordinary Merit in Research Award. Chi-Chen is represented by Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates.

 




Thank you for your generous contribution to
Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts


中華表演藝術基金會
Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts
Lincoln, Massachusetts