CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS

Performance Wednesday, November 5, 2014 | 7:30 PM

Itamar Zorman
Kwan Yi

Weill Recital Hall
A 2013 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Tel Aviv–born violinist Itamar Zorman performs music that spans the 18th to 20th centuries. Zorman performs unaccompanied works by Bach and Hindemith, and is joined by pianist Kwan Yi, cited for his “ravishing control and pitch-perfect clarity” (Chicago Sun-Times), in sonatas by Brahms and Schnittke.

Part of Salon Encores.

Performers

  • Itamar Zorman, Violin
  • Kwan Yi, Piano

Program

  • BACH Solo Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Major
  • SCHNITTKE Violin Sonata No. 2, "Quasi una sonata"
  • HINDEMITH Solo Violin Sonata, Op. 31, No. 1
  • BRAHMS Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor

    • Encores:
  • JOSEPH ACHRON Hebrew Melody, Op. 33
  • MOSHE ZORMAN Hora

Event Duration

The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.

Bios

  • Itamar Zorman


    Recently awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, violinist Itamar Zorman was also the winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011, subsequently performing in the winners' concerts with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. Other awards include first prize at the Freiburg International Violin Competition in 2010 and The Juilliard School's Berg Violin Concerto Competition in 2011. Mr. Zorman has performed as soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Het Gelders Orkest at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, and with the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

    Highlights for Mr. Zorman's 2014-2015 season include concerto performances with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as his debut at Palermo's Teatro Massimo, performing the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Daniel Oren. He also performs in Denmark at the Copenhagen Summer Festival.

    A resident at the Marlboro Music Festival since 2013, he will also take part, for the second season, in the Musicians from Marlboro touring series.An avid chamber musician, Mr. Zorman is a member of the Lysander Piano Trio, with which he has won numerous competitions, including the Concert Artists Guild Competition (2012), Coleman Chamber Music Ensemble Competition (Grand Prize, 2011), J. C. Arriaga Chamber Music Competition (first prize, 2011), and Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition (bronze medal, 2010). A founding member of the Israeli Chamber Project,

    Mr. Zorman has toured Israel and North America extensively and has appeared at Lincoln Center in New York and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

    Born in Tel Aviv in 1985 to a family of musicians, Mr. Zorman moved to the US following his graduation from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. A student of Robert Mann and Sylvia Rosenberg at The Juilliard School, he completed his master's degree in 2009 and received an artist diploma in 2012. Further studies took him to the Kronberg Academy under the guidance of Christian Tetzlaff. He is a recipient of scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.

    Mr. Zorman plays a 1745 Pietro Guarneri violin from the private collection of Yehuda Zisapel.

    More Info

  • Kwan Yi


    Pianist Kwan Yi has performed throughout the US, Europe, and Asia in such venues as New York's Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum of Art; Philadelphia's Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and Mann Center for the Performing Arts; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; Chicago's Symphony Center; Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Jordan Hall; Houston's Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts; the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida; Paris's Auditorium du Louvre; Tokyo's Suntory Hall; and Seoul Arts Center.

    In recent seasons, Mr. Yi has performed concertos with the Russian National Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra, and Brevard Festival Orchestra under the batons of Hans Graf, Julian Kuerti, Grant Llewellyn, and Mikhail Tatarnikov.

    As a chamber musician, Mr. Yi has frequently collaborated with Itzhak Perlman and Roberto Díaz on national tours, and he has been invited to perform at the Kronberg Academy Festival, Ravinia Festival, and Castleton Festival. As a recitalist and master class instructor, he has completed residencies at Bowdoin College, University of Arkansas, Ouachita Baptist University, Stephen F. Austin State University, and Marylhurst University. His performances have been broadcasted by WQXR, WHYY, KUHF, Radio France, and Radio Frankfurt.

    A recipient of numerous honors and prizes, Mr. Yi's awards include the Mieczysław Munz Prize, a National Federation of Music Clubs award, and top prizes from the Sendai International Music Competition in Japan and the International Competition "Premio Trio di Trieste" in Italy.

    Mr. Yi is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, and the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, where he worked with Leon Fleisher and Robert McDonald. He has also attended the Ravinia Festival's Steans Music Institute. Mr. Yi is on the faculty at Radford University in Virginia.

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At a Glance

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH  Solo Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1005

A magisterial compendium of compositional styles and instrumental techniques, Bach’s six sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin have delighted listeners and performers since their rediscovery in the mid-1800s. The three sonatas share the standard layout of a four-movement Italian sonata da chiesa (“church sonata”). Each is centered on a mighty fugue—or, in the case of the C-Major Sonata, an ingenious double fugue.


ALFRED SCHNITTKE  Violin Sonata No. 2, “Quasi una sonata”

A Russian composer of German extraction, Schnittke is best known for his stylistically eclectic and richly expressive string quartets, symphonies, and concertos. The Violin Sonata No. 2, composed in 1968, signaled the composer’s embrace of a compositional principle that he called “polystylism.” The music blends avant-garde sounds and instrumental techniques with a recurring four-note motif based on the four letters of Bach’s name. 


PAUL HINDEMITH  Solo Violin Sonata, Op. 31, No. 1

Long before his expressionistic operas and other mold-breaking works made him a household name in Weimar Germany, Hindemith had a promising career as a chamber violinist. Both his virtuosity and his intimate knowledge of the instrument are apparent in this, the second of his three sonatas for solo violin. With its subliminal echoes of Bach’s unaccompanied violin music, this sonata is at once boldly modernist and deeply traditional. 


JOHANNES BRAHMS  Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 108

Brahms wrote the last of his three violin sonatas in the late 1880s. The D-Minor Sonata reflects his close friendship with Hungarian violin virtuoso and composer Joseph Joachim, to whom he often turned for artistic advice. Dark and impassioned, the music may also allude to his longtime platonic love affair with pianist and composer Clara Schumann.

Program Notes
Distinctive Debuts is supported, in part, by endowment gifts from The Lizabeth and Frank Newman Charitable Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
This performance is part of Distinctive Debuts.

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