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
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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.
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