Evnin Rising Stars II

On the Rise: Highest-Caliber Performers Meet Highest-Caliber Music 

“The level of playing and the sheer instrumental ability of everybody involved is just amazing,” explains Marcy Rosen, Artistic Director of the Evnin Rising Stars program at Caramoor. “And these young people are already out there having amazing careers. They all have a real special character that will take them far. It’s a real treat to be able to do this.” For more than 30 years, Caramoor has hosted early career musicians for a weeklong mentorship residency with invited distinguished artists. Along with Rosen, this season’s mentors are violinist Todd Phillips and violist Daniel Philips.  

The results for participants have been transformational, taking them to a higher level of performance. As cellist Chase Park, who returns for his second year in the program, puts it, “I learned so much from being at Caramoor last year. Really, it changed my world working with the two guest artists, Edgar Meyer and Shmuel Ashkenasi … It just set a whole new bar for me.” Although the mentors offer a guiding hand to the Rising Stars, the benefits are reciprocal. “I feel very happy to have the chance to mentor and showcase these amazing young people who keep me interested and continuing to play at the top of my ability,” Rosen shares. 

For audiences today, such professional caliber performances and sophisticated music is what chamber music is about. But that was not always the case. Over the 19^th century, chamber music slowly transformed from music for amateurs to play at home to music for professionals to perform on concert stages. Expectations about the quality of the music went up in turn. In the late 18^th century, chamber music was relegated to enjoyable entertainment for potential sheet-music buyers, but by the end of the 19^th century, it had been elevated to the pinnacle of sophisticated music of the highest order.  

In choosing today’s program, Rosen says she aimed for quality works that would showcase each individual performer’s abilities. The resulting concert promises to be an afternoon of superlative music from professionals taking their performance to a new level. But also, the three composers on this afternoon’s program made chamber music a vehicle for taking their art to a higher level and propelling the genre upward as a result. 

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Piano Quartet in E-Flat Major 

When Mozart composed his Piano Quartet in E-Flat Major in 1786, he was experiencing his greatest personal success and his most productive years. Having moved to Vienna, he was busy developing his reputation by playing concertos and conducting as well as giving private concerts. At the same time, he had completed his six string quartets dedicated to Joseph Haydn, published as Op. 10. His Op. 10 print saw phenomenal sales, after which he began working on a bevy of chamber pieces that were meant not necessarily for public performance but rather for publication and sale to the domestic market, including K. 493. 

Although Mozart likely had amateur performers making music in their homes in mind for this work, he did not let that constrain his artistic vision (in fact his publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister rejected his earlier and now more famous G-Minor Piano Quartet K. 478 as too difficult and unsellable). Each of the three movements shows an expansive view of form. The first movement features a short stately first theme followed by a much longer, almost operatic, second theme. This second theme practically provides all the material for the development section, as Mozart introduces contrapuntal textures and harmonic shift in an expanded section compared to Classical era norms.  

The aria-like second movement begins with the piano and strings responding to each other in question-and-answer phrases before moving into the development section (something often omitted in Classical era slow movements) where the strings introduce chromaticism in slow descending scales.  

In the final movement, Mozart takes the work to a whole new level. The piano takes on a new leading role in the ensemble, and the overall approach starts to suggest the ritornello-concerto structure he revolutionized: Drawing on the Baroque concerto grosso, the pianist performs virtuosic episodes between full ensemble moments. As the movement progresses, Mozart introduces modulations to minor keys and truly dramatic, ominous chromaticism that his late symphonies are known for. Despite any expectations of a private performance by amateurs, Mozart brought the grandeur of the large public genres for which he was becoming increasingly famous into the domestic realm. 

KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI
Trio for Violin, Viola, and Cello

Completed in 1991, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Trio for Violin, Viola, and Cello was his first foray into chamber music since his String Quartet No. 2 of 1968. Between those two dates, the world and the man had changed drastically. Penderecki became one of the most recognizable composers of the midcentury avant-garde with his deeply evocative orchestral work Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1961). Despite his success as the face of the avant-garde, he became quickly suspicious of its institutionalization and its dogmas. As early as the 1960s he began experimenting with Renaissance polyphony, slowly releasing his avant-garde aesthetic until the mid 1970s when he turned toward what he called his Romantic style. But he did not stop there. By the end of the next decade, Penderecki started to reconcile the totality of his artistic expression in a style he called “synthesis,” wherein he attempted to integrate both his Romanticism (and more broadly, his traditionalism) with the avant-garde discoveries of his early career. 

From his point of view, Penderecki returned to traditional forms not because he was attempting to kowtow to audience tastes or market demands. (He was avowedly against populism, and even more so felt that mass culture had relativized high and low art to a point of spiritual bankruptcy.) Rather his traditionalism was a path to explore new ways of making music outside of the Utopian ideology of his youth. And chamber music, he felt, offered him an especially unique vehicle for discovery:  

“Today, after passing through a lesson in late Romanticism and utilizing the possibilities of the postmodernist thinking, I see my artistic ideal in claritas. I am returning to chamber music, for I realize that more can be said in a hushed voice condensed in the sound of three or four instruments.”  

Indeed, with Trio for Violin, Viola, and Cello, Penderecki achieved the remarkable synthesis of his many faces. The work is cast in two movements. The first is free and expansive, opening with a cadenza for each instrument before moving through alternating fast and slow sections that, according to musicoiogist Ray Robinson, develop cellular motives from the cadenzas. The second movement combines fugue with elements of sonata form. The opening viola subject, which dovetails the end of the first movement, is a composite of three motives from the cadenzas. The movement continues in a contrapuntal manner but opens to a development section following an extended cello solo. The motivic materials continue to develop and evolve, and Penderecki integrates some extended techniques in the bowing to reach a point of saturation, after which the opening material returns as a clear recapitulation.  

Thus, in broad strokes, the work is a prelude and fugue, a classic pairing of the dual beauty of expressive freedom and rational order. This traditional form allowed Penderecki to take his music to a new level, synthesizing his various stylistic idioms and also the dual sides of his artistic personality: the intrepid freedom of the avant-garde seeking a new path forward and the thoughtful contemplative traditionalist seeking order and balance. 

JOHANNES BRAHMS 
Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36

By the middle of the 1860s when Brahms composed his Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36 (1864–5), chamber music was rapidly becoming associated with professional performances, and it was also becoming more commonly programmed on public stages. Throughout this transitional period, chamber music remained in liminal space, always carrying with it some connotation of domesticity and intimacy, most famously in salon concerts. These were themselves a literal hybrid of two spheres: they were concerts given in domestic homes (albeit large homes of wealthier members of society) that included a small and select audience from the host’s social circles, but increasingly, the performers were professionals hired for the concert.  

Although chamber music concerts were on the rise, Brahms particularly favored the genre at this point in his career as the antithesis of the large public genres. His reputation had suffered public skewering in the press after he published an essay criticizing the aesthetic philosophy of Liszt and Wagner, who argued music should express extramusical narratives. The notably self-conscious composer turned to chamber music and its perceived (if not wholly realistic) privacy and intimacy as an outlet.  

The perceived intimacy and privacy of chamber music also allowed the composer to wear his heart on his sleeve more freely, and in the first movement of the Sextet in G Major, he did just that. A few years earlier, Brahms abruptly ended his secret engagement to the soprano Agathe von Siebold when he received a disappointing critical response to his D Minor Piano Concerto in Leipzig. After the relationship ended, Brahms continued to write works, mostly songs, that included references to Agathe in the form of a five-note motive that spelled out her name A-G-A-B-A (in the German system, B natural is spelled with an H). In the exposition of the first movement, Brahms placed Agathe’s theme in the highest register as an exasperated climax, imbuing the work with deep personal meaning. Although he never revealed the specific meaning, the prominent violin and cello solos throughout the movement and the recuring oscillating half-step motive are all suggestive of a secret narrative about the relationship.  

The remaining movements too seem to convey scenic moments and emotional journeys. The Scherzo second movement, for example, features rustic peasant dances reminiscent of the countryside, which Brahms loved. In the Adagio, a set of variations on a theme, the initial theme is immediately catapulted into tumult with chromatic lines and a modulation to minor key, but following these first two variations, Brahms proceeds through a tour of music history — a Baroque fugue, a Mozartian classical variation, and finally a pastorale — that may well narrate a journey through struggle leading to idyllic calm. In the last movement, Brahms attempts to reconcile dual styles: the first fiddle-like driving 16^th notes, and the second, a rolling triplet melody. As the movement unfolds, the themes’ emotional quality flips, the initially anxious 16^th notes become a calm reprieve after high-note dramatics from the triplet melody. Even though Brahms championed so-called absolute music, he used musical styles and features to convey narrative elements, including personal tribulations from his life. By capitalizing on chamber music’s connotations of privacy and intimacy (even as it became more public), Brahms was able to achieve a new level of musical and personal expression.  

 — 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 Passingconcerto 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.