Workshop Leader
Leon Fleisher
Renowned pianist, conductor, and teacher Leon Fleisher—now in his sixth decade before the public—started piano lessons at age four in his native San Francisco and gave his first recital at age eight. A year later, he began studying with the great German pianist Artur Schnabel, and by 16 made his debut with the New York Philharmonic. He was the first American to win the prestigious Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition of Belgium in 1952, which catapulted Mr. Fleisher’s career for the next dozen years.
In 1965, Mr. Fleisher was suddenly struck silent when two fingers of his right hand became immobile. In the nearly 40 years since Mr. Fleisher’s keyboard career was so suddenly curtailed, he has followed two parallel careers—as a conductor and as a teacher—while learning to play the extensive but limiting repertoire of compositions for piano left-hand. He began conducting in 1967 but never gave up the idea of playing with both hands again. Mr. Fleisher has recently been playing—infrequently—with both hands, and made his first two-hand recording in 40 years: a sort of musical biography called Two Hands on Vanguard Classics, released in 2004. Its repertoire ranges from Bach and Scarlatti to Chopin and Debussy, as well as Franz Schubert’s monumental final Piano Sonata in B-flat Major.
Guest Faculty
Pamela Frank
American violinist Pamela Frank has established an outstanding international reputation across an unusually varied range of performing activities. In addition to her extensive schedule of engagements with prestigious orchestras throughout the world and her recitals on the leading concert stages, she is regularly sought after as a chamber music partner by today’s most distinguished soloists and ensembles.
Ms. Frank has appeared with such orchestras as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Houston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Vienna Symphony. She has performed under many esteemed conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Bernard Haitink, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Leonard Slatkin, Yuri Temirkanov, and David Zinman.
Her passion for chamber music continues to find a variety of outlets. In addition to her partnership with her father, pianist Claude Frank, she works regularly with pianist Peter Serkin. Her other frequent collaborators, drawn from a large group of chamber music colleagues, include Yo-Yo Ma, Tabea Zimmermann, and Alexander Simionescu.
Ms. Frank is on the faculties of the Curtis Institute of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, and SUNY—Stony Brook.
Yo-Yo Ma
The multifaceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is testament to his continual search for new ways of communicating with audiences and his personal desire for artistic growth and renewal. Whether performing a new concerto, revisiting a familiar work from the cello repertoire, coming together with colleagues for chamber music, or exploring musical forms outside of the Western classical tradition, Mr. Ma strives to find connections that stimulate the imagination.
Mr. Ma maintains a balance between his engagements as soloist with orchestras throughout the world and his recital and chamber music activities. He draws inspiration from a wide circle of collaborators, each fueled by the artists’ interactions. One of Mr. Ma’s goals is to explore music as a means of communication and a vehicle for the migrations of ideas across a range of cultures. Expanding upon this interest, Mr. Ma established the Silk Road Project to promote the study of the cultural, artistic, and intellectual traditions along the ancient Silk Road trade route that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. During the 2009–2010 academic year, the Silk Road Project is partnering with arts and educational organizations to pilot Silk Road Connect, a multiyear, multidisciplinary educational initiative for middle school students in New York City public schools.
Through the Silk Road Project, as throughout his career, Mr. Ma seeks to expand the cello repertoire, frequently performing lesser-known music of the 20th century and commissions of new concertos and recital pieces.
Mr. Ma remains one of the best-selling recording artists in the classical field. He is an exclusive Sony Classical artist, and his discography of over 75 albums (including more than 15 Grammy Award winners) reflects his wide-ranging interests. Mr. Ma’s most recent recordings include Songs of Joy and Peace; Paris: La Belle Époque, with pianist Kathryn Stott; and New Impossibilities, a live album recorded with the Silk Road Ensemble and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Participants
Amici Piano Quartet
Formed in the fall of 2009, the Amici Piano Quartet is already becoming recognized as an ensemble of the highest caliber. Brought together at The Juilliard School, pianist Byung-Hee Yoo, violinist Regi Papa, violist Molly Carr, and cellist Robert Mayes have each had major successes in their solo careers, winning prizes in several national and international competitions. Members of this New York–based ensemble have studied under many of today’s leading performers and pedagogues, including Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Kyung-Wha Chung, David Soyer, Fred Sherry, Margo Garrett, Jonathan Feldman, and Heidi Castleman. They have performed as chamber musicians and soloists in many well-known venues, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jordan Hall in Boston, Merkin Concert Hall, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Alice Tully Hall.
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