rehearsal photos: Patrick Keating event photos: Chung Cheng   event photos: Xiaopei Xu

Paul Huang 黃俊文, violin
https://www.paulhuangviolin.com/

Recipient of the prestigious 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, violinist Paul Huang is considered to be one of the most distinctive artists of his generation. The Washington Post remarked that Mr. Huang "possesses a big, luscious tone, spot-on intonation and a technique that makes the most punishing string phrases feel as natural as breathing," and further proclaimed him as "an artist with the goods for a significant career" following his recital debut at the Kennedy Center.

Known for his "unfailing attractive, golden, and resonant tone" (The Strad), Mr. Huang's recent highlights have included acclaim debut at Bravo!Vail Music Festival stepping in for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4 with Chamber Orchestra Vienna-Berlin, Rotterdam Philharmonic with Lahav Shani, BBC Symphony Orchestra with Marie Jacquot, Detroit Symphony with Leonard Slatkin, Houston Symphony with Andres Orozco-Estrada, NHK and Dallas Symphonies with Fabio Luisi, Mariinsky Orchestra with Valery Gergiev, Baltimore Symphony and Seoul Philharmonic with Markus Stenz, San Francisco Symphony with Mei-Ann Chen, and recital debuts at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and Aspen Music Festival. In Fall 2021, Paul also became the first classical violinist to perform his own arrangement of the National Anthem for the opening game of the NFL at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina to an audience of 75,000. An exclusive recording artist with France's Naïve Records, his second album “Mirrors" was released worldwide to critical acclaim in January of 2025 with Gramophone Magazine remarked as "musical storytelling of such virtuosity and conviction". June 2026 will see the release of his third album of the Korngold and Barber's Violin Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Highlights of the 2026-27 season will include Mr. Huang's Carnegie Hall debut with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, subscription debut with The Cleveland Orchestra, George Enescu Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, China Philharmonic, Guangzhou Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, as well as returns to Rotterdam Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Residentie Orkest Den Haag, Buffalo Philharmonic, Tucson Symphony, and National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan (both in Taiwan and on a U.K. and Germany Tour).

2026-27 season recital, chamber music, and festival performances will include Mr. Huang’s return to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Washington Performing Arts, The Society of Four Arts in Palm Beach, and his return to the Jorden Hall in Boston with duo partner Helen Huang. In January 2027, Mr. Huang will launch the 5th edition of "Paul Huang & Friends" International Chamber Music Festival in Taipei, Taiwan, in association with the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan.

A dedicated advocate for contemporary music, Mr. Huang has recorded John Harbison's solo violin work "Four Songs of Solitute" for Harmonia Mundi, Toshio Hosokawa's Violin Concerto No.1 "Genesis" for Naxos, and has given premieres and champion works by Huw Watkins, Tan Dun, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, Chris Rogerson, and Jessie Montgomery. 

A frequent guest artist at music festivals worldwide, he has performed at the Seattle, Music@Menlo, Savannah, Caramoor, La Jolla, Santa Fe, Moritzburg, Kissinger Sommer, Sion, Orford Musique, Miyazaki, and the PyeongChang Music Festival in South Korea. His chamber music collaborators have included Gil Shaham, Cho-Liang Lin, Nobuko Imai, Mischa Maisky, Jian Wang, Lynn Harrell, Yefim Bronfman, Kirill Gerstein and Marc-Andre Hamelin.

Winner of the 2011 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Mr. Huang made critically acclaimed recital debuts in New York at Lincoln Center and in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center. Other honors include First Prize at the 2009 Tibor Varga International Violin Competition Sion-Valais in Switzerland, the 2009 Chi-Mei Cultural Foundation Arts Award for Taiwan’s Most Promising Young Artists, the 2013 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and the 2014 Classical Recording Foundation Young Artist Award.

Born in Taiwan, Mr. Huang began violin lessons at the age of seven. He is a recipient of the inaugural Kovner Fellowship at The Juilliard School, where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees under Hyo Kang and I-Hao Lee. He plays on the legendary 1742 “ex-Wieniawski” Guarneri del Gesù on extended loan through the Stradivari Society of Chicago and is on the faculty of Taipei National University of the Arts. He resides in New York.

Helen Huang 黃海倫, piano
(Philadelphia Chamber Music Aratists)
https://www.pcmsconcerts.org/artist/helen-huang-piano/

Taiwanese-American pianist Helen Huang was discovered by conductor Kurt Masur upon winning the Young People’s Competition, which resulted in engagements with the New York Philharmonic and a recording contract with the Teldec record label. Known for immaculate technique and her eloquent sensitivity, Huang has enjoyed a multi-faceted career as a soloist and chamber music player and has played with orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Abroad she has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the London Philharmonic, and the Israel Philharmonic, among others. An avid chamber musician, Huang has appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival, La Jolla SummerFest, and at Ravinia’s Steans Institute For Young Artists.

Huang’s recordings on the Teldec label include Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Mozart’s Piano Concertos K. 488 and K.467, Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur. She also recorded an album titled For Children, which consists of works inspired by the theme of children. She collaborated with violinist Cho-Liang Lin on an album of music by Georg Tintner released on the Naxos label as well as a recording of music by Zhou Long with Cho-Liang Lin and Hai-Ye Ni, released on the Delos label.

Born in Japan of Taiwanese parents, she moved to the U.S. with her family in 1985 and began piano lessons two years later. Within a year, she had won her first competition and several other victories soon followed. In 1994, she received Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award for promising young artists and in 1995 became one of the youngest recipients of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Huang received the Arthur Rubinstein Prize upon graduating from Juilliard in 2004, where she was a student of Yoheved Kaplinsky. She went on to pursue her master’s degree from Yale, under the tutelage of Peter Frankl. Huang has been on the Juilliard Pre-College faculty since 2010, working as an assistant to Kaplinsky. She resides in New Jersey with her husband and two daughters.
 

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
By Dr. Jannie Burdeti

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) :
Spiegel im Spiegel for violin and piano (1978)

“I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence comforts me.” -Arvo Pärt

Crises often serve as a catalyst for new beginnings and innovation. Such was the case for Arvo Pärt when he entered a nearly eight-year hiatus from composing. Born in Estonia in 1935, Arvo Pärt initially gained recognition as one of the leading avant-garde composers in the USSR. He embraced many of the era’s prevailing trends, including serialism, neoclassicism, collage technique, and aleatoricism. Additionally, he was a tremendously prolific film composer, writing for over fifty films.

A turning point came in 1968 when his Credo (for piano, chorus, and orchestra) caused such a sensation that the audience demanded an encore. Before he knew it, the Soviet regime banned the work because of its religious themes, which were thought to be politically subversive. This event shocked him profoundly, much like Dmitri Shostakovich’s public denunciation following his opera, Lady Macbeth. Pärt later recounted, “in that great desperation, [I was] ready to ask anyone how a composer ought to write music… [I] once met a street-sweeper who gave me a remarkable reply. ‘Oh,’ [the street-sweeper] said, ‘the composer would probably need to love each and every sound.’”

This revelation proved transformative for Pärt. He later referred to this stranger as a ‘true theologian.’ From 1968 to 1976, he dived deeply into an intense study of Gregorian chant, the Notre Dame School, and Renaissance polyphony. This period marked a rebirth for Pärt’s creativity, culminating in an entirely new method of composing, which he subsequently named tintinnabuli (Latin for ‘sounding bells’). A true distillation of material, it typically consists of only two musical lines: one arpeggiating a chord (named the “tintinnabular voice”) and a second which consists primarily of stepwise motion. The voices interact in a mathematically exacting manner, producing a meditative and transcendent effect. While deeply rooted in Orthodox Christianity, the universal spiritual appeal of Pärt’s music has been proven again and again. Indeed, his compositions have created a watershed in the world of music, crossing genres like none other; his works are performed by great classical musicians and church choirs, as well as by famous popular artists like Björk and Radiohead.

Arvo Pärt wrote Spiegel im Spiegel (‘Mirror in Mirror’ in German) in 1978 soon after his creative rebirth. The work was commissioned by the celebrated Russian violinist Vladimir Spivakov, who gave its first performance in Moscow with pianist Boris Bekhterev. The violin sings a long, ascending melody that gradually expands outward, while the piano provides a succession of three-note chords—the characteristic tintinnabuli voice. Each rising melodic phrase is answered by a descending, almost mirrored phrase. The melody initially consists of only two notes; with each subsequent phrase, another note is added, creating the sensation of the infinite unfolding itself. Again and again, the melody returns to the central pitch of A.

The title therefore describes the very architecture of the music. The violin seems to gaze into its own reflection, ascending and descending in symmetrical patterns, while the piano's bell-like sonorities surround it with an almost weightless stillness. Of the performer’s role, Pärt has said, “Everything redundant must be left aside. Just like the composer has to reduce his ego when writing the music, the musician too must put his ego aside when performing the piece.”  

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) :
Sonata No. 9 in A major for Violin and Piano,
Op. 47, "Kreutzer" (1803)
I. Adagio sostenuto – Presto
II. Andante con variazioni
III. Presto

Ludwig van Beethoven was intimately familiar with both the violin and the piano. While he had a career as a virtuoso pianist, one of his first jobs as a teenager was as a violist in the court orchestra in his hometown of Bonn. He later befriended important violinists of the day, such as Louis Spohr and Pierre Rode. These acquaintances deeply influenced his approach to idiomatic violin writing. The Ninth of Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas is his large-scale “Kreutzer” Sonata, written between 1802 and 1803, following one of the greatest personal crises of his life: his confrontation with increasing deafness and his struggle, expressed in the 1802 Heiligenstadt Testament—to choose life and art over despair.

This period was extraordinarily productive for Beethoven, yielding some of his most powerful and individual works, including Violin Sonatas Nos. 6–9, Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3, the Piano Concerto No. 3, and the Waldstein Sonata. Despite its familiar name, the sonata was not originally intended for Rodolphe Kreutzer. Beethoven wrote it for George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, a brilliant young violinist of mixed African and European heritage who arrived in Vienna in 1803. The two musicians prepared the work with great haste and gave its first performance together in May of that year. Beethoven originally intended to dedicate the sonata to Bridgetower, but following a quarrel between the two, the dedication was changed to the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer when the work was published. Ironically, Kreutzer himself never performed the sonata and apparently found it unsuitable to his style of playing. Nevertheless, his name would become permanently attached to one of Beethoven’s greatest works for violin and piano.

The first movement opens with a weighty Adagio sostenuto, beginning with four measures of unaccompanied violin. This opening seems almost improvisatory at first and immediately becomes increasingly tonally unsettled and searching. From this material Beethoven gradually isolates a small germinal gesture—a rising second—which becomes an important building block for the themes of the ensuing Presto in A minor. The dramatic relationship between the slow introduction and the fast, intensely charged minor-key music that follows recalls the first movement of Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata, also written during this time period. In both works, an enigmatic opening gives way to music of extraordinary urgency. Here, the Presto unleashes an inexorable rhythmic drive. The chorale-like second theme, marked dolce, offers a moment of respite, yet remains connected to the material of the introduction. Beethoven eventually brings back the Adagio in the coda. He described the work as being written in a “very concertante style, like that of a concerto.” As such, the violin and piano are continually challenging, answering, interrupting, and propelling one another as equal partners.

The Andante con variazioni, in F major, provides a striking contrast. Its graceful theme unfolds with remarkable poise, followed by four increasingly elaborate variations. With each variation, Beethoven transforms the character and texture of the theme, moving from ornamented lyricism toward increasingly florid and virtuosic writing. The extended coda brings the movement to a gentle close. After the turbulence of the first movement, the Andante is a comforting respite.

The Finale erupts into an entirely different world. Its Presto, a rondo infused with the rhythmic character of a tarantella, is brilliant, unrelenting, and almost breathless. Beethoven had originally conceived this music as the finale of his earlier Violin Sonata in A major, Op. 30 No. 1, but ultimately decided that it was too brilliant for that work. The violin and piano race, imitate, and propel one another through a perpetual whirl of scales, arpeggios, and rhythmic energy. The result is a true tour de force, bringing the sonata to an exhilarating conclusion. Nearly a century later, in 1889, Leo Tolstoy would make the sonata central to his novella The Kreutzer Sonata.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921):
Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75 (1885)
I. Allegro agitato
II. Adagio
III. Allegretto moderato
IV. Allegro molto

Camille Saint-Saëns’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75 is a cornerstone of the French violin sonata repertoire: dramatic, virtuosic, and architecturally bold. Composed and dedicated in 1885 to the great Belgian violinist Martin-Pierre Marsick, it reflects the confluence of Romantic intensity and French elegance. By this point, Saint-Saëns was already one of France’s most accomplished musicians—a celebrated pianist, organist, composer, and advocate for instrumental and chamber music at a time when French musical life remained largely dominated by opera. The sonata is structured in two large sections, each comprising two contrasting movements played without a pause. This unusual architecture anticipates the interconnected design of his Symphony No. 3, “Organ,” composed the following year.

The opening Allegro agitato is tempestuous and restless, its energy heightened through changing meters and displaced beats. The violin and piano engage in a fierce dialogue, propelled by sweeping arpeggios and shimmering tremolos in the piano. Against this turbulence, a contrasting second theme emerges in F major, lyrical, expansive, and immediately memorable. The development intensifies the drama, including a brief fugal episode, before the agitation gradually dissolves into the Adagio, which enters seamlessly. The Adagio offers an intimate, dreamlike suspension of time—a moment of calm after the turbulence of the opening. Its long, singing lines reveal another side of Saint-Saëns: lyrical and inward, yet still connected to the expressive world established earlier.

The second half opens with an elegant, skipping scherzo in triple meter—buoyant, witty, and quintessentially French. Its lightness provides a striking contrast to the preceding Adagio, while a cantabile second theme subtly recalls the lyrical character of the first half, reinforcing the sonata’s sense of unity and cyclic design.

Without warning, the Allegro molto bursts in: a dazzling whirlwind, propelled by brilliant, sparkling runs. Saint-Saëns brings back the first movement’s lyrical second theme in triumphant transformation. The coda unleashes one final burst of unbridled virtuosity, with the violin and piano racing in unison through scales and arpeggios toward an exhilarating D-major conclusion.

Saint-Saëns himself joked about the extraordinary demands of the work, calling it the “Hippogriff Sonata”—a reference to a mythical creature, which combines the front half of an eagle with the body and hindquarters of a horse. The remark suggests that the sonata’s formidable technical demands are inseparable from its originality and imaginative breadth. This sonata also famously played a role in inspiring Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way.