Evnin Rising Stars I

Collaboration at the Core of Chamber Music 

“You laugh a lot more in chamber music rehearsals,” according to cellist Chase Park, a returnee this year from the 2023 Evnin Rising Stars mentoring program. “There’s something about delving into a project with other people and being surprised in a good way by the results … That’s really a special feeling.” 

That is exactly the atmosphere that Marcy Rosen, the program’s Artistic Director, creates during the weeklong residency at Caramoor. Each Fall she invites about eight early career musicians to work with distinguished artists/mentors. The end goal is to give stellar performances in the two culminating concerts, and essential to this success is collegiality, collaboration, and building personal relationships. 

“Just hanging out with people, you start telling stories and getting to know each other, and I think a lot of the inspiration just comes from having that together time,” Rosen says. The collaborative atmosphere allows for all performers to take part in artistic and interpretive decisions during rehearsals. “I don’t try to be the boss. I try to be a good colleague. It sounds a little hokey to talk about honestly because the process is so natural,” Rosen says. Park agrees: “If someone has an idea, we will listen and try to support it. Caramoor gives us the space and the freedom to experiment,” he shares.  

Just as collaboration was an essential part of the rehearsal process for today’s program, so too was it essential in the genesis and success of the works for the three composers. For each work, the composers engaged their peers for advice and feedback that would dramatically shape the final form of the work. 

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Quintet for Strings in C Minor, Op. 104 

Beethoven’s Quintet for Strings in C Minor, Op. 104 from 1817 began its life as a piano trio, which he published as Op. 1, No. 3, in 1795. According to one account, the three piano trios premiered at a small party hosted by Prince Lichnowsky (the dedicatee of Op. 1), attended by Beethoven’s teacher, Joseph Haydn. Having established his fame as a piano virtuoso, Beethoven had a lot of expectations to live up to in his debut publication. After hearing the three piano trios, Haydn told Beethoven that although he personally admired the work, he felt Beethoven should not publish the third in C minor because the public would not understand or accept it. Beethoven, of course, could not be told, and he published the work anyway to mixed reviews. 

In an important key for Beethoven (sometimes described as his “C-minor mood”), the work has a direct lineage to the Sturm und Drang works of 1760s from Haydn and Mozart. Something of a flash in the pan for the Classical composers, these works full of “storm and stress” often proved too difficult or enigmatic for their audiences. Indeed, Haydn specifically developed a “public style” for music that was full of irony and humor after leaving the employ of Prince Esterhazy and going to London, where he achieved a new level of success. It was likely with this pragmatic view of public taste that Haydn warned Beethoven that his Op. 1 Piano Trio in C Minor was unlikely to succeed. By the time he came back to the composition and arranged it for string quintet in 1817, he had seen major success with other works in C minor including his “Pathetique” Piano Sonata and his Fifth Symphony. 

It is likely that audiences’ expectations for Beethoven’s brooding C-minor mood had shifted in the interim. Still, as a quintet, Beethoven’s work is arguably more successful artistically. Overall, the unified string timbre makes the work more cohesive, whereas the trio in many ways feels like a (radical) Beethoven piano sonata with some intermittent string accompaniment: in the trio version, the piano takes the lead throughout and demarcates the structure. As a quintet, the unison moments stand out more and the performing forces feel less at odds with each other. Dramatic ornamentation like descending lines in the first movement become more contextual and effective, like a stormy inner world and not antagonistic interjections. Orchestral effects like the pizzicato variation in the second movement also become more noticeable without the piano. The staggered entrances at end of the menuet section of the third movement highlight the interaction of all the musicians as relatively equal. That Beethoven came back to his Piano Trio, and rearranged it for strings some 22 years later, not only indicates how special it was to him (it was his first publication after all), but also raises the question of whether he had a change of heart about Haydn’s well-meaning advice from so many years before. 

BÉLA BARTÓK
String Quartet No. 2 

Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2 represented the composer’s return to composition after negative responses from the public. With his First Violin Concerto of 1908, Bartók started turning away from fin-de-siècle style of Strauss (one of his heroes) and the idealism of Romanticism. Instead, he became preoccupied with what he called the “grotesque.” (So it is easy to imagine why audiences may have responded less enthusiastically to his works.) Taking a break from composition, Bartók renewed his focus on collecting folk music from around the world, taking trips to collect North African, Arab, Magyar, Rumanian, and Slavic music, and publishing several books of transcriptions. By collaborating with folk musicians and analyzing their music, Bartók found confirmation of many of his more radical musical idioms in the indigenous musical styles, which emboldened his fascination with the grotesque and led to his String Quartet No. 2. 

What Bartók took from various folk musics amounted to a set of principles for melody, harmony, rhythm, and meter, paying special attention to the ways these traditions diverged from the ideals of the Western classical tradition, which Bartók associated with, at best, Romantic idealism and, at worst, a lot of pretension. His preference, what he called “grotesque,” was for a kind of gritty realism and authenticity absent social pretense. The three movements of String Quartet No. 2 narrate this contrast. With a searching lyricism of late Romantic music, the Moderato first movement builds lush, though deeply chromatic, melodies into powerful emotive climaxes that are easily felt despite the harmonic complexity. The second movement, the most substantial of the three, is fast paced and driving, featuring harmonically stagnant drones, as well as melodies with narrow ranges and chromatic ornaments — all features he specifically observed in North African music. The final movement returns the slow chromatic harmonies of the first movement, but now the mood is markedly more somber and deflating. Writ large, the work thus seems to narrate an emotional journey from curious idealism to invigorating realism that leads to sober disillusionment. By collaborating with folk musicians who he inherently respected as equals, Bartók renewed his commitment to his own aesthetic ideals, ultimately becoming one of the leading composers of the 20^th century. 

JOHANNES BRAHMS 
Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 

Just like Beethoven’s Quintet, Brahms’s Op. 34 went through different instrumentations. And unlike Beethoven, Brahms took the criticism of his musical collaborators to heart. The work started as a String Quintet with two cellos, but violinist Joseph Joachim found it too serious, leading Brahms to arrange it as piano sonata only to have Clara Schumann tell him to go back to a string ensemble. Completed in 1862, the Piano Quintet shows Brahms truly stepping into his own identity as a composer.  

The 1850s were a whirlwind time for the young composer. He met the Schumanns in 1853 at the age of 20 and was declared by Robert to be no less than the messiah of music. He published an essay opposing the so-called “New German School” of Liszt and Wagner (who advocated for program music). After receiving harsh public criticism for the essay, Brahms abandoned much of German musical life, playing concerts mostly to make money and composing very few works. Still harboring some disdain for the public in the 1860s, Brahms began focusing on smaller, private genres of chamber music, composing tightly wrought, organically unified works that mark the period scholars refer to as his “first maturity.” After the response to his essay, Brahms remained tightlipped in public on matters of musical aesthetics. But he was heralded by critics, especially Eduard Hanslick, as the champion of so-called “absolute music” — music that developed through inherently musical elements and musical logic. 

In his Piano Quintet, Brahms demonstrates his masterful abilities with thematic transformation (when a composer refigures a theme in different guises while remaining audibly recognizable), as well-taught motivic development (when a composer grows and varies small motives overtime to propel the music forward). The first movement introduces a gorgeous folk-like melody at the beginning in union with the first violin, cello, and piano. Throughout the movement, Brahms transforms this theme, shifting from minor to major and playing with the rhythmic accent by displacing the natural stress of the melody onto different beats.  

In the slow second movement, Brahms makes a deceptively simple musical idea from the beginning unifying element by organically developing its constituent motives, allowing them to grow into moments of deeply felt drama. The Scherzo third movement contrasts a dotted, march-style rhythm with a rolling triplet 6/8 Trio. (The Trio’s melody also recalls the characteristic opening upward leap from the main theme of the first movement.)  

In the final movement, Brahms subjected the square, tuneful second theme introduced by the cello almost immediately to variation techniques in different accompaniment styles, and then brought it back in full thematic transformation in the climactic 6/8 section toward the end.  

Formal analysis aside, Brahms’s compositional approach gives listeners a sense that the music grows organically from its own germinal seeds into lush, sophisticated complexity. Taking the advice of both Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim to render the work as a piano quintet in its final form, the orchestral quality supports its symphonic grandeur and seriousness even in this smaller ensemble. 

— Eric Lubarsky   

Eric Lubarsky works at Carnegie Hall as a managing editor, where he oversees publishing projects for the Hall’s educational and social impact programs and creates program books for main stage presentations and free concerts around New York City. He holds a PhD in musicology from the Eastman School of Music, and his research focused on performance revivals, concert life, and the 20^th-century early music movement. 

Marcy Rosen, Artistic Director and cello 

Marcy Rosen, cellist, has established herself as one of the most important and respected artists of our day. Los Angeles Times music critic Herbert Glass has called her “one of the intimate art’s abiding treasures” and The New Yorker Magazine deemed her “a New York legend of the cello.” She has performed in recital and with orchestras throughout Canada, England, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South America, Switzerland, and throughout the United States. Sought after for her riveting and informative master classes, she has been a guest of the Curtis Institute of Music, the New England Conservatory, the San Francisco Conservatory, the Central Conservatory in Beijing, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea, and the Cartagena International Music Festival in Colombia. 

Rosen was a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet, which toured worldwide for 31 years. Since 1986, she has served as Artistic Director of Chesapeake Music in Maryland. Since first attending the Marlboro Music Festival in 1975, she has participated in 25 Musicians from Marlboro tours, including concerts celebrating the 40^th, 50^th, and 60^th anniversaries of the festival.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Rosen is currently a professor of cello at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, while also serving as Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Live concert series. She is on the faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. 

Daniel Phillips, viola

Violinist Daniel Phillips is co-founder of the Orion String Quartet which gave its last concert in April 2024, presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln after an illustrious 37-year career. 

A graduate of The Juilliard School, his major teachers were his father Eugene Phillips, Ivan Galamian, Sally Thomas, Nathan Milstein, Sandor Végh, and George Neikrug. 

Since winning the 1976 Young Concert Artists Competition, he has performed as a soloist with many orchestras, including the Pittsburgh, Houston, New Jersey, Phoenix, and San Antonio symphonies. He appears regularly at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar, Heifetz Institute, Chesapeake Music Festival, the International Musicians Seminar in England, and Music from Angel Fire, where he is co-artistic director. He was a member of the renowned Bach Aria Group and has toured and recorded in a string quartet for Sony with Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, and Yo-Yo Ma. 

A judge in the 2022 Leipzig Bach Competition  2018 Seoul International Violin Competition, and the 2023 World Bartok Competition and the 2024 Prague Spring Competition, Phillips is a professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and on the faculties of the Bard College Conservatory, and The Juilliard School. 

He lives with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, and their two dachshunds on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. 

Cherry Choi Tung Yeung, violin

Violinist Cherry Choi Tung Yeung was born and raised in Hong Kong. Having won her first job at one of the major orchestras in the United States at the age of 21, she is now the Associate Principal Second Violin of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra.

Yeung has performed with the New York Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, Hong Kong Academy, New World and Princeton Symphony Orchestras, Symphony in C, and New Jersey Festival Orchestra. She served as Concertmaster of The Juilliard School Orchestra and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, where she was awarded the loan of a fine Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin. She led the orchestra in the 2020 Curtis on Tour and performed in world renowned venues including Carnegie Hall.

Yeung has been an artist of the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival since 2022. She has won numerous prizes including first prize at the Hudson Valley Philharmonic String Competition, prompting engagements with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and the Orchestra Sinfonica Rossini di Pesaro in Italy. Her other awards include second prize of the Juilliard Violin Concerto Competition, winner of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts Concerto Competition, second prize of the Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld International String Competition, and first prize of the Hong Kong Youth String Competition. In 2018, she was named a New York Philharmonic Global Academy Zarin Mehta Fellow, and she was the youngest finalist of both the Philadelphia Orchestra and Pittsburgh Symphony Associate Concertmaster Audition.

Yeung plays on a 1768 Pietro Giovanni Mantegazza.

Stephen Kim, violin

Winner of top prizes at the 2019 Queen Elisabeth, 2018 Premio Paganini, and 2016 Sendai international violin competitions, Stephen Kim has established international recognition as a leading artist of his generation, performing with orchestras and ensembles throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia.

A passionate chamber musician, Kim has performed with Isabelle Faust, Christian Tetzlaff, Tabea Zimmermann, Antoine Tamestit, Gary Hoffmann, Jörg Widmann, and musicians from the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, among others. He has recently performed recitals and chamber music at Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, and Seoul Arts Center, and at the Marlboro, Kronberg, Seoul, Krzyżowa, Ravinia, Kingston, and Verbier festivals.

Also an avid performer of contemporary music, Kim stunned the Belgian audience at the Queen Elisabeth Competition with his performance by heart of the final-round commissioned work, Kimmo Hakola’s Fidl. He also performed Steven Mackey’s Beautiful Passing concerto in its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall. His album, Till Dawn, released by Sony Classical in 2021, features various works by Korean composer Shinuh Lee and includes two new pieces, the second violin sonata and first caprice for solo violin, both dedicated to him.

Kim studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Shmuel Ashkenasi, Joseph Silverstein, and Aaron Rosand, at The Juilliard School with Hyo Kang, and at the Kronberg Academy with Antje Weithaas in Germany.

Geneva Lewis, violin

American/New Zealand violinist Geneva Lewis has forged a reputation as a musician of consummate artistry whose performances speak from and to the heart and who has been lauded for the “remarkable mastery of her instrument” (CVNC) and hailed as “clearly one to watch” (Musical America). 

Named a BBC New Generation Artist (2022-24), Lewis is also the recipient of a 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant. She was also Grand Prize winner of the 2020 Concert Artists Guild Competition, winner of the Kronberg Academy’s Prince of Hesse Prize (2021), Musical America’s New Artist of the Month (June 2021), a Performance Today Young Artist in Residence and a YCAT Concordia Artist.

In 2023, Lewis made her BBC Proms debut with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Jaime Martin. Her 2024-25 season includes debuts with the Orquestra Filarmonica de Minas Gerais, Indianapolis Symphony, Des Moines Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, The Florida Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and Vancouver Symphony.

Lewis received her Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory as the recipient of the Charlotte F. Rabb Presidential Scholarship, studying with Miriam Fried. She also studied with Professor Mihaela Martin in the Professional Studies Program at the Kronberg Academy. Prior to that, she studied with Aimée Kreston at the Colburn School of Performing Arts.

She currently performs on a composite violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, c. 1776 generously on loan from a charitable trust.

Cara Pogossian, viola 

Armenian-American violist Cara Pogossian is an avid chamber musician and has attended numerous summer festivals, including the Marlboro Festival, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, and Taos School of Music. In 2022, Pogossian was the winner of the Borromeo String Quartet Guest Artist Award, and her quartet was selected as a 2022-23 Honors Ensemble at the New England Conservatory. She has also toured with the Curtis Institute, performing Schubert’s Cello Quintet in various U.S. cities with Ida Kavafian and Peter Wiley. She is the newly-appointed Principal Violist of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared as a guest artist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Boston Pops Orchestra. 

Pogossian is lucky to have an entire family of musicians with whom she frequently performs. During the pandemic, the Pogossian/Manouelian Clarinet Quintet collaborated with composers Timo Andres, Ian Krouse, Artashes Kartalyan, and Aida Shirazi, premiering each of their works in a series of online concerts. 

She is a recent graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Hsin-Yun Huang and Misha Amory, and is currently continuing her graduate studies with Kim Kashkashian at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Luther Warren, viola

Violinist and violist Luther Warren enjoys a varied career as a chamber musician and educator. As a performer, he has appeared at such festivals as Ravinia, Yellow Barn, Four Seasons, the Perlman Music Program, Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music, Olympic Music Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Norfolk, and Taos. He has collaborated with esteemed artists including Itzhak Perlman, Kim Kashkashian, Donald Weilerstein, Miriam Fried, Daniel Phillips, Steven Tenenbom, and, as a frequent substitute violist, the Borromeo String Quartet, among others. 

Warren has a keen interest in new music and has worked with composers Steven Mackey, Billy Childs, Gabriella Smith, Joan Tower, Ethan Chaves, and others to present new and recent works. Warren is a founding member of ensemble132, a chamber music collective presenting original arrangements of familiar works together with standard repertoire. He also performs regularly with the LA-based contemporary chamber orchestra Delirium Musicum.

As an educator, Warren has served as chamber music faculty for the Heifetz International Music Institute and violin and viola instructor for Merrimack College, Thayer Academy, and the Performing Arts Center of MetroWest. He has presented masterclasses and residencies at East Carolina University, Queens College, and Texas Christian University, and maintains an active private studio. He is a doctoral student at the New England Conservatory where he has studied with Kim Kashkashian, Donald Weilerstein, and Miriam Fried. Additional mentors have included Erin Keefe and Mimi Zweig.

Zachary Mowitz, cello

A native of Princeton, N.J., cellist Zachary Mowitz made his solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in July 2018. An artist who wears many hats, Mowitz co-founded ensemble132, Nodality Music, and Trio St. Bernard — the 2018 Gold Prize winner of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition. He has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, and has played as Guest Principal Cello with the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra and Princeton Symphony Orchestra. In the summers of 2022 and 2023, he appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival. He recently joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Having collaborated with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Donald Weilerstein, Hsin-Yun Huang, Jonathan Biss, Ida Kavafian, and Peter Wiley, Mowitz has an intense passion for chamber music. He has appeared throughout the United States, visiting halls such as the Kimmel Center, Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, and Johns Hopkins’ Shriver Hall. He is also a member of the Sakura Cello Quintet and Philadelphia’s Gamut Bach Ensemble.

Mowitz attended the Curtis Institute of Music, Royal College of Music, and Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, where he worked with Peter Wiley, Carter Brey, Richard Lester, and Gary Hoffman. He was awarded First Prize in the 2020 World Bach Competition. Last season he was an Associated Artist at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and co-taught a class at the Curtis Institute on music and climate justice. In his spare time, he enjoys exploring the endless world of podcasts and tossing a frisbee.

Chase Park, cello 

Cellist Chase Park, winner of the 2021 Juilliard Cello competition, is a multifaceted performer who enjoys collaborating in a variety of traditional and avant-garde settings. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated and performed with esteemed artists such as Mitsuko Uchido, Jonathan Biss, Scott St. John, Samuel Rhodes, Anthony McGill, Carmit Zori, Schmid, Pamela Frank, and Itzhak Perlman, among others.

Performances with Curtis on Tour brought him to international stages in Athens, Paris, Kempten, Teulada, and Berlin, launching his international reputation. In 2021 he made his Alice Tully Hall debut performing the Haydn Cello Concerto in D Major with the Juillard Chamber Orchestra. His love for chamber music has resulted in fellowships at the Perlman Music Program (“Littles”) and Chamber Music Workshop, Ravinia Steans Institute, the Marlboro Music Festival, and the Valley of the Moon Festival. He is a member of Sejong Soloists, which brought him to Asia to collaborate with artists such as Phillipe Quint, Joyce Di Donato, and Tod Machover.

Park is passionate about historical performance and championing lesser-known solo works in the cello repertoire, and he employs multiple art disciplines to better convey this music to larger audiences. Adapting cello music to film is one way he believes he can make the abstract nature of music accessible to those with little or no exposure to classical music.

Evren Ozel, piano 

American pianist Evren Ozel is known for his “refined restraint” (Third Coast Review), blending virtuosic technique with insightful interpretations. A 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, he also holds a 2022 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant and is represented by Concert Artists Guild as a winner of their 2021 Victor Elmaleh Competition.

Ozel made his debut with the Minnesota Orchestra at age 11 and has since performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, and The Orchestra Now at Bard College, under conductors such as Jahja Ling and Leon Botstein. His first album, featuring Mozart Concertos with the ORF Radio Symphony of Vienna and conductor Howard Griffiths, will be released in 2025 on Alpha Classics.

His 2024-25 season includes solo recitals for La Jolla Music Society, Capital Region Classical, and Cal Performances. He has previously performed for the Harvard Musical Association, Schubert Club, and The Gilmore.

An accomplished chamber musician, Ozel has collaborated with artists like David Finckel, Wu Han, and Stella Chen, and has performed at the Marlboro Festival. He is currently a Bowers Program Artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and will tour with Musicians from Marlboro in 2024-25.

Ozel is based in Boston and is pursuing an Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory under Wha Kyung Byun, with mentorship from Jonathan Biss, Imogen Cooper, and Mitsuko Uchida.