Leland Ko, cellist
https://www.lelandko.com/about
 
Cellist Leland Philip Ko (b. 1998) is the kind of person who is always asking “why” — American-born but of Chinese-Canadian descent, schooled at both university and conservatory, and extremely thorough in any number of activities ranging from competitive tennis and distance-running to home-baking and origami, he wants to find the similarities between seemingly disparate things, and in doing so hopefully find something human in everything.  Above all, Leland does his best to remember advice once given to him that music is about life, not the other way around.

Described as someone with “Disarming charisma” (South Florida Classical Review) yet simultaneously as someone “Byronic” and “excelling in both poetic longing and dramatic outbursts” (Boston Classical Review), Leland has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in venues across America and abroad, from Carnegie Hall in New York and Symphony Hall in Boston to the Maison Symphonique in Montréal; and internationally in Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Israel, Spain, Korea, and Hong Kong.  He is a first prize winner of the Concours Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Concert Artists Guild Louis and Susan Meisel Competition, and the Walter W. Naumburg International Cello Competition.

Highlights for Leland’s 2025-2026 season include appearances with the Orchestre Symphonique de Sherbrooke and the DuPage Symphony; recitals at the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts, Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, Pro Musica San Miguel de Allende, Pepperdine University, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall; and chamber music for the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, the Kaufman Center’s Merkin Hall, Palm Beach State College, and Chico Performances.  Past engagements over the last decade have included concerto appearances with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the Princeton University Orchestra, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and multiple appearances with the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, the New England Conservatory Philharmonia, Symphony Pro Musica, the Apollo Ensemble of Boston, and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.

Despite growing up a part of Boston’s strong youth orchestra culture, Leland has sought out chamber music throughout his life, having partaken at ChamberFest West, Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, Meetinghouse Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Music Society, Montreal Chamber Music Festival, Yellowbarn, Ravinia's Steans Music Institute, Four Seasons Chamber Music Workshop, and the Perlman Music Program’s Summer Music School and its Chamber Music Workshop.  Leland’s love for chamber music has also led him to be a former Artist in Residence of New York Piano Society (NYPS), and former Music Director of Opus 21, a student-run chamber music collective at Princeton.  He is the cellist of Trio Rai, the OAK Trio, the Phaidros Quartet, and also a frequent member of Sejong Soloists.

Leland was a long-time student of Kirsten Peltz, Ronald Lowry, and Paul Katz before attending Princeton University, where he graduated with an A.B. in German Literature.  He went on to complete an M.M. at The Juilliard School under the teaching of Minhye Clara Kim, Timothy Eddy, and Natasha Brofsky, and then earned an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory under guidance of Laurence Lesser, Yeesun Kim, and Donald Weilerstein.  Leland performs on a cello by Giovanni Battista Rugeri, Cremona, c. 1710, ex-Denis Vigay, which is on generous loan to him from Canimex Inc.; and professional development activities for Leland are generously supported by Marilyn G. and Joseph B. Schwartz.  He resides in Boston, with his 13-year-old cat, Ham.

Adria Ye, pianist
 
Chinese-American pianist Adria Ye has been driven from a young age by a hopeless fascination with music. Described by cellist David Finckel as having a “naturally beautiful sound and lyric instinct,” she made her orchestral debut at nine with the Oregon Sinfonietta, and has since performed as soloist and chamber musician across Europe, China, and the United States. She has been featured in radio broadcasts of “Performance Today” with Fred Child, and National Public Radio’s “From the Top.” Most recently, she was the recipient of the Paul Streit Special Prize at the 2022 Concours de Genéve, and was the winner of the 2022 Music Academy of the West Solo Piano Competition.

An avid chamber musician, Adria has also participated in and performed at festivals including the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival’s Spring Workshop, the Innsbrook Institute, and the David Finckel-Wu Han Chamber Music Studio at the Aspen Music Festival and School. She frequently collaborates with and performs with cellist Leland Ko.

Adria earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the Juilliard School with Yoheved Kaplinsky and Julian Martin, and a Graduate Diploma at the New England Conservatory with Wha-Kyung Byun.

 

  by Leland Ko 

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Sonata for Piano and Cello No. 2
in G Minor, Op. 5 No. 2 (1796) [24’]
Adagio sostenuto ed espressivo — Allegro molto più tosto presto
Rondo (Allegro)

For all that history and popular culture have painted Ludwig van Beethoven as a madman, the deaf genius who would pour water on his head as he composed profound works like his 9th Symphony, the Hammerklavier Sonata, or the Große Fuge, his journey to becoming that figure had to begin somewhere. Especially in his early works, I feel that Beethoven is just as much a composer of love and surprise as he is a composer hinting at that eventual search for the sublime.

As a young man in his 20s in Vienna, brand new to the city, Beethoven was (by all accounts) making a name for himself as an astonishingly virtuosic pianist as well as a bold composer, and his early works definitely take advantage of both of those things. His Sonata for Piano and Cello, Op. 5 No. 2, written when he was 26 years old, consists of two movements which really could not be more different. The first movement, with its hefty introduction and relentless main body, is full of drama (perhaps more like a storm rather than a cosmic statement about the human condition), while the second is a romp, full of joy and humor (and perhaps unnecessary pomposity — how I imagine Beethoven felt when he had to dress up in a wig around those Viennese aristocrats!).

GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924)
Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1
in D Minor, Op. 109 (1917) [20’]
Allegro
Andante
Finale — Allegro commodo

The music Gabriel Fauré began writing towards the end of his life is an opportunity for musicians and music-lovers to spend some time in a very special corner of the heart. Fauré was suffering from a worsening deafness — different from the ringing tinnitus that plagued Beethoven — which caused him to hear some pitches a third too low, some a third too high, and others not at all. This, combined with upheaval from the First World War, resulted in a man who became increasingly withdrawn and private.

It’s impossible to really know how much political and personal events influence one’s craft, but I always wonder. In this Sonata No. 1 for Cello and Piano, written in 1917, is the first movement infected by something militaristic off in the distance? Is the second movement a private reflection of loss, of hearing or of a way of life? Is the third movement a wish for release from suffering, rather than the shake of a fist?

And in his late music in general, are the many “wrong-sounding” sounding notes and almost proto-jazz harmonies because of his impaired hearing or because it was the only way to express where life had taken him? Does the unchanging flow of time and rhythm reflect how he felt time passing at the end of his life? Is the music kind and gentle above all else because Fauré himself was those very things?

NADIA BOULANGER (1887-1979)
3 Pieces for Cello and Piano (1914) [7’]
Modéré
Sans vitesse et à l'aise
Vite et nerveusement rythmé

Nadia Boulanger wrote these 3 Pieces for Cello and Piano in 1914 at the age of 26, in the midst of her all-too-brief composition career — Nadia’s younger sister, Lili, whom Nadia believed was a more talented composer, passed away in 1918, and survivor’s guilt among other factors led Nadia to turn from composition to its pedagogy. Her legendary pedagogy career included students such as Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla, Grażyna Bacewicz, Daniel Barenboim, Dinu Lipatti, and more, not to mention herself being a student of Gabriel Fauré.

This work strikes that magical balance of being so well-crafted architecturally and instrumentally that no one notices because of their beauty (or perhaps they are free to be so beautiful because they are so well-crafted). I like to think of the set of three pieces as a little day — the first piece is vague and foggy like a morning, the second has the relaxed haze of midday sun, and the third is a lively night out (in Paris, perhaps?).

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Intermezzo, from the F-A-E Sonata (1853)
(arr. cello and piano) [3’]

The “F-A-E” Sonata for Violin and Piano is a beautiful and fascinating artifact of collaboration: it consists of four movements, two composed by Robert Schumann, one by a young Johannes Brahms, and one by Schumann’s student Albert Dietrich, gifted to their mutual friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim — and all based upon the musical notes F-A-E, signifying Joachim’s maxim “frei aber einsam” (“free but lonely,” how Joachim apparently felt as a touring violinist in the 1800s). The work was written in 1853, only months before Schumann attempted to die by suicide and was committed to a sanatorium, but was never published in its entirety until 1935. The Intermezzo, the second movement, is by Robert Schumann, and is one of those works that reminds me that some feelings are better captured in music than in words…

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)
Sonata for Piano and Cello
No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op.45 (1838) [26’]
Allegro vivace
Andante
Allegro assai

Felix Mendelssohn wrote his Sonata No. 1 for Cello and Piano in B flat major, Op. 45 in 1838 at the age of 28 — which perhaps explains its youthful joy, but doesn’t account for my bias towards Mendelssohn as one of my favorite encoders of exuberance and welling-of-the-heart in Western classical music.

Why some pieces rise to fame and others don’t is a funny thing to explore. Separately from whether one loves the piece, sometimes there are explanations — maybe a composer wrote more popular works, maybe a work is too hard to play, or too “modern” for the listeners of its time, or it comes from a historically disenfranchised community — but I have yet to understand why this sonata is less popular than its older (younger?) sister, the Sonata No. 2 in D major, Op. 58. This first sonata captures a wonderful feeling, it’s beautifully written and fits well in the hands (even if it’s a lot of notes), and Mendelssohn was by no means a marginalized composer. And of course, it’s overflowing with tunes that get deliciously stuck in one’s head.

Could the reason for its relatively low popularity be something as silly as the fact that it ends quietly? Or because it has three movements rather than the four in the D major Sonata? But then what about the Brahms E minor Sonata Op. 38, which has three movements but shares equal popularity with its four-movement’d counterpart, the F major Sonata Op. 99? And then what about all the popular two-movement Beethoven piano and cello sonatas??

Anyways, despite my rant on the subject, I should maintain that my true obsession with this sonata lies not with its popularity, but with how Mendelssohn manages to come up with brand new melodies that somehow already feel like old friends…

[Program Notes by Leland Ko]