January 26 – Brentano String Quartet with Mihae Lee, piano

TICKETS ON SALE IN LATE FALL.

Concert sponsored by Jeffrey N. Mehler, CFP^® LLC and Essex Meadows

Where and When:

VALLEY REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
256 Kelsey Hill Road, Deep River, CT
Click here to view in Google maps.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Concert begins at 3:00 pm; outer doors open at 2:00 pm; auditorium doors open at 2:30 pm.

Accessible parking, entry and seating are available.

Concert Program:

Mark Steinberg, violin
Serena Canin, violin
Misha Amory, viola
Nina Lee, cello
Mihae Lee, piano

String Quartet in D Major, Op. 33, No. 6, Hob. III: 42 – Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809)

String Quartet in No. 2 in C Major – Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81 – Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
with Mihae Lee, piano

Artist Biographies:

Brentano String Quartet

Brilliant, virtuosic, and still mellow, its members perfectly meshed in sound while retaining their individual personalities—the Brentano Quartet…must be one of the great musical hopes of a field overcrowded with contenders…The [players] made every utterance sing and every phrase connect within the total.”

— Los Angeles Times

Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. “Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding,” raves the London Independent; the New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism.”

Within a few years of its formation, the Quartet garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and was also honored in the U.K. with the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut. Since then, the Quartet has concertized widely, performing in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House.

In addition to performing the entire two-century range of the standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet maintains a strong interest in contemporary music, and has commissioned many new works. Their latest project, a monodrama for quartet and voice called “Dido Reimagined,” was composed by Pulitzer-winning composer Melinda Wagner and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, and will premiered in spring 2022 with soprano Dawn Upshaw.  Other recent commissions include the composers Matthew Aucoin, Lei Liang, Vijay Iyer, James Macmillan, and a cello quintet by Steven Mackey (with Wilhelmina Smith, cello.)

The Brentano Quartet has worked closely with other important composers of our time, among them Elliot Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. They have also been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, and pianists Richard Goode, Jonathan Biss, and Mitsuko Uchida. The Quartet has recorded works by Mozart and Schubert for Azica Records, and all of Beethoven’s late Quartets for the Aeon label. In 2012, they provided the central music (Beethoven Opus 131) for the critically-acclaimed independent film A Late Quartet.

Since 2014, the Brentano Quartet has served as Artists-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music. They were formerly the Ensemble-in-Residence at Princeton University, and were twice invited to be the collaborative ensemble for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the intended recipient of his famous love confession.

Mark Steinberg, violin

Mark Steinberg is an active chamber musician and recitalist. He has been heard in chamber music festivals in Holland, Germany, Austria, and France and participated for four summers in the Marlboro Music Festival, with which he has toured extensively. He has also appeared in the El Paso Festival, on the Bargemusic series in New York, at Chamber Music Northwest, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and in trio and duo concerts with pianist Mitsuko Uchida, with whom he presented the complete Mozart sonata cycle in London’s Wigmore Hall in 2001, with additional recitals in other cities, a project that continues for the next few years. Mr. Steinberg has been soloist with the London Philharmonia, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Kansas City Camerata, the Auckland Philharmonia, and the Philadelphia Concerto Soloists, with conductors such as Kurt Sanderling, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Mark Steinberg holds degrees from Indiana University and The Juilliard School and has studied with Louise Behrend, Josef Gingold, and Robert Mann. An advocate of contemporary music, Mr. Steinberg has worked closely with many composers and has performed with 20th century music ensembles including the Guild of Composers, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Speculum Musicae, and Continuum, with which he has recorded and toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe. He has also performed and recorded chamber music on period instruments with the Helicon Ensemble, the Four Nations Ensemble, and the Smithsonian Institute. He has taught at Juilliard’s Pre-College division, at Princeton University, and New York University, and is currently on the violin faculty of the Mannes College of Music.

Serena Canin, violin

Violinist Serena Canin was born into a family of professional musicians in New York City. She is an active, accomplished chamber musician, teacher, and presenter. As a founding member of the Brentano Quartet, Serena has performed to critical acclaim around the world. She has also been heard at the Marlboro Festival, Chamber Music Quad Cities, Salt Bay Chamberfest,the Festival Internacional de Cartagena, the Continuum Series at Alice Tully Hall, and on tour with Music from Marlboro and the Brandenburg Ensemble. Serena has worked with young musicians at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Mannes Beethoven Institute, and the Chamber Music Center of New York. She holds degrees from Swarthmore College and The Juilliard School, where her principal teachers were Burton Kaplan and Robert Mann. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, pianist Thomas Sauer, and their two sons.

Misha Amory, viola

Since winning the 1991 Naumburg Viola Award, Misha Amory has been active as a soloist and chamber musician. He has performed with orchestras in the United States and Europe, and has been presented in recital at New York’s Tully Hall, Los Angeles’ Ambassador series, Philadelphia’s Mozart on the Square festival, Boston’s Gardner Museum, Houston’s Da Camera series and Washington’s Phillips Collection. He has been invited to perform at the Marlboro Festival, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Vancouver Festival, the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center and the Boston Chamber Music Society, and he has released a recording of Hindemith sonatas on the Musical Heritage Society label. Mr. Amory holds degrees from Yale University and The Juilliard School; his principal teachers were Heidi Castleman, Caroline Levine and Samuel Rhodes. Himself a dedicated teacher, Mr. Amory serves on the faculties of The Juilliard School in New York City and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

Nina Lee, cello

Through a public school program, Nina Lee began learning cello in Chesterfield, MO at the age of ten. Six years later, she left home to study with David Soyer at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, PA. An active chamber musician, Nina has collaborated with many artists such as Felix Galimir, Jaime Laredo, David Soyer, Nobuko Imai, Isidore Cohen and Mitsuko Uchida, and has performed at the Marlboro and Tanglewood Music Festivals. She has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has participated in the El Paso International Chamber Music Festival. She is the recipient of a Music Certificate from the Curtis Institute of Music, and Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in music from The Juilliard School, where her teacher was Joel Krosnick. Nina teaches at Princeton University and Columbia University and is currently coaching chamber music at the Yale School of Music where the Brentano Quartet is in residence.

Mihae Lee, piano

Praised by The Boston Globe as “simply dazzling,” Artistic Director and pianist Mihae Lee has been captivating audiences throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia in solo recitals and chamber music concerts with her poetic lyricism and scintillating virtuosity. She has performed in such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Jordan Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Academia Nationale de Santa Cecilia in Rome, Warsaw National Philharmonic Hall, and Taipei National Hall. An active chamber musician, Mihae is a founding member of the Triton Horn Trio with violinist Ani Kavafian and French hornist William Purvis and was an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society for three decades. Her recordings of Brahms, Shostakovich, Bartok, and Stravinsky with the members of BCMS were critically acclaimed by High Fidelity, CD Review, and Fanfare magazines, the reviews calling her sound “as warm as Rubinstein, yet virile as Toscanini.”

Mihae has appeared frequently at numerous international chamber music festivals including Dubrovnik, Amsterdam, Groningen, Festicamara (Colombia), Great Woods, Seattle, OK Mozart, Mainly Mozart, Music from Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, Rockport, Sebago-Long Lake, Bard, Norfolk, Mostly Music, Music Mountain, Monadnock, and Chestnut Hill Concerts. In addition to many years of performing regularly at Bargemusic in New York, she has been a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Speculum Musicae; has collaborated with the Tokyo, Muir, Cassatt, and Manhattan string quartets; and has premiered and recorded works by such composers as Gunther Schuller, Ned Rorem, Paul Lansky, Henri Lazarof, Michael Daugherty, and Ezra Laderman. Mihae is often heard over the airwaves on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” and on WNYC and WQXR in New York City, WGBH in Boston, and other stations around the country.

A native of Korea, Mihae is a graduate of The Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory studying with Martin Canin and Russell Sherman. She has released recordings on the Bridge, Etcetera, EDI, Northeastern, and BCMS labels. Since 2016 she serves as Music Director of the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival in Maine, since 2010 as Artistic Director of Essex Winter Series, and as of 2024, she also serves as the Artistic Director of Chestnut Hill Concerts, which offers a series of August performances locally at The Kate in Old Saybrook, CT.