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The Composers
Robert Stern
Robert Stern was born inPaterson, New Jersey in 1934. He was educated at the University of Rochester, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of California at Los Angeles. In addition to composition awards including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music and ASCAP, Mr. Stern has enjoyed fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Stern's music has been widely performed throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Israel by prominent groups including the Beaux-Arts String Quartet, the Kohon String Quartet, Collage, the DaCapo Chamber Players, the University of Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players and the Eastman Musica Nova. Stern's orchestral work Yam Hamelach (The Dead Sea) won second prize in the prestigious Premio Musicale Citta di Trieste in 1979. Stern's Jewish vocal music has been heard at the 92nd Street Y and the Jewish Museum in NewYork the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and at synagogues around the country Stern's chamber and orchestral music has been programmed on the Musica Viva Concert Series (Tel Aviv), on Lukas Foss' Meet the Modern series, on the Festival of American Music at the Eastman School of Music (Rochester, N.Y.), the Camden Festival (London), the Fromm Contemporary Music Series at Harvard University and at the Aspen Music Festival. Stern's recent commissions have included new works for the Manchester International Cello Festival, the chamber music series of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Library of Congress under the auspices of the McKim Fund, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and the Apple Hill Chamber Players. Mc Stern is presently teaching at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. He frequently appears as pianist performing his own music as well as music of other 20th Century composers.
Hazkarah for Cello & Piano
As I was thinking about Hazkarah, I was rereading Ruth Bondy's admirable Elder of the Jews: Jakob Edelstein of Theresiensta. In enumerating the graphic statistics in connection with Ghetto Theresienstadt, Bondy writes:
It is impossible to end with dry figures. Somewhere in all this there must be a lesson for the coming generations. I have not found it. I know only one thing: humanity has not learned a lesson and perhaps is incapable of doing so. As for the Jews, they have merely lost their innocence - perhaps not even that. Perhaps they simply become more vulnerable. I would like to be able to say that Edelstein and the children died for something, for a Jewish state, for a better future. But in all honesty I cannot do so. They died because they were not allowed to live.
It seemed to me that this was one of the most painfully revealing assertions I have ever encountered in my Holocaust-related readings. Some fifty years ago, we resolved that "never again" would genocides take place. Sadly as Bondy suggests, genocides and holocausts continue. Today we see them live on television and wonder at our former innocence. As I reflected on these thoughts, I decided that the dedication of the score would quote Bondy's last line: to those who "died because they were not allowed to live."
Although primarily dark, there are moments in Hazkarah where light does begin to emerge, as in the climax of the cello/piano "cadenza" near the end and in the high and quiet cello solo on the final page (marked "ethereal"). But in the final bars, dissonance intrudes in the stratospheric E flats, and the piece sinks into darkness with the final minor third (g/b-flat) in the lower register of the piano.
In its melodic structure, Hazkarah makes references to two vocal models. In the opening the cello is asked to play in a manner which suggests the cantorial style. The second half of the piece is based on a Yiddish folk song, Kum aher du Filizof. I chose the song for its musical poignancy and it has found its way into several of my works.
The work was given its world premiere at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum by Steven and Carol Honigberg April I B, 1999.
-Robert Stern, November 2000
Tom Myron
Composer Tom Myron was born November 15, 1959 in Troy, NewYork and was raised in Foxborough, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He began writing music in his early teens and has studied with some of today's most highly regarded composers, including Charles Fussell, Nicholas Maw and Steve Reich. Recent commissions include O Speak Again Bright Angel for the Portland Symphony Orchestra's 1999-2000 season, a Concerto for chamber orchestra for the Atlantic Classical Orchestra (Vero Beach, Florida) for 2000-2001 and, for 2001-2002, a work for the DaPonte String Quartet. In I 998 Myron responded to a commission from the Portland String Quartet for a work for soprano and quartet with a setting of Muriel Rukeyser's Käthe Kollwitz. In May of 2000 Myron began work on the score for James “Huey” Coleman's feature-length documentary Katahdin: Greatest Mountain, writing music based on traditional Penobscot songs and drumming patterns. In 1997, his Five Fables of Aesop for wind quintet and narrator was performed in schools throughout northern New England as part of the PSO's Kinderkonzerts program. Performances by the Portland Symphony Orchestra of The Sun In Leo Dances (in 1995) and Unauthorized Waltz (in 1997) met with popular and critical success. His scores for the Children's theater of Maine include The Light Princess, Greek Myths and Fables and two seasons of Young Playwrights Competition winners. Myron has been the recipient of Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance Grants from the American Music Center in 1995 and 1998. In 1996, he was awarded an Individual Artists Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission in recognition of artistic achievement as a composer
Käthe Kollwitz for Soprano and String Quartet
Käthe Kollwitz was written in response to a commission from violist Julia Adams for a work celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Portland String Quartet in 1998. Julia specifically wanted a large-scale work that the quartet could perform with soprano Christina Astrachan. Given this combination of artists, the idea of composing a musical portrait, with Christina singing the words (perhaps letters or journal entries) of a real person, immediately came to mind. By a stroke of what I now consider to be near-cosmic good fortune, several days later I came across Muriel Rukeyser's haunting Käthe Kollwitz in her 1968 collection The Speed of Darkness. Following Rukeyser's text, the piece is in five parts. All five poems contain imagery taken from Kollwitz's work (gates, poles, children, hands), as well as direct references to specific works (Pieto, Nie Wieder Krieg). Part two quotes extensively from Kollwitz's own journals on matters of life and art and part three makes use of important biographical details. Part five vividly evokes the experience of turning the pages of a book of Kollwitz's work and the resulting time-lapse effect of viewing a lifetime's worth of self-portraits. Throughout, both the poet and her subject make extensive allusions to music. Quite naturally the music of Käthe Kollwitz is as much a response to the poems themselves as it is to the art and artist that they reflect, quote and comment upon. In composing this work, I came to feel that while the vocal line was the voice of the poet, the voice of Kollwitz herself could be heard in the writing for the quartet. My goal has been to write a work in which lines of poetry lines of music and the lyrical, terrifying lines of Kollwitz's beloved etchings, woodcuts and lithographs might interlace across time and, in Muriel Rukeyser's beautiful words, "...make an art harder than bronze."
Lukas Foss (born August 15, 1922, Berlin, Germany)
Lukas Foss, composer, conductor, pianist and pedagogue, has conducted all of the most celebrated orchestras in the world and collaborated with nearly every major artist of our time. When the dark shadow of Nazi domination descended upon Germany the Foss (born Fuchs) family fled in 1933 to Paris; there Foss studied piano with Lazare Lévy composition with Noel Gallon, and orchestration with Felix Wolfes. In 1937 he went to the United States and enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Later, at Yale University, Foss studied composition with fellow emigré Paul Hindemith. In 1997, the NewYork Philharmonic devoted a week of concerts to his works, saluting his remarkable contribution to the vitality of American music. In celebration of the 75th birthday of Lukas Foss, the year 1998 saw numerous performances of his works by orchestras and performing artists around the world, including a Tanglewood Tribute with Seiji Ozawa and James Galway. Formerly Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Milwaukee Symphony and the Brooklyn Philharmonic at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mr. Foss has been a member of the Boston University School of the Arts since 1991. He has held the position of Composer-in-Residence at Harvard, Carnegie Mellon University, Yale University, the Manhattan School of Music and UCLA. In 1995 he delivered the prestigious Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Lukas Foss is the recipient of honorary doctorates, two Guggenheim Fellowships, Fulbright Fellowships, three New York Music Critics' Circle Awards, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Elegy for Anne Frank
The original version was composed to commemorate the 60th birthday anniversary of Anne Frank in 1989. Her life story and her diary touched me so deeply that the music came to me with an unusually passionate speed. Elegy is a short tone poem on her life. It begins with a wistful, nostalgic tune in the violins. Then the mood shifts to a childlike, puckish piano-tune, depicting Anne Frank the innocent youngster. Back to the nostalgia of the beginning and then comes an ominous darkness of sound, drum-beats, the Nazi Hymn - Horst Wessel Lied - distorted, a march to a frantic climax related to the horrors of the Holocaust. A sudden stop. The innocent children's tune returns sadly implying her death. End of the Elegy. The new version for cello and piano was composed for Steven Honigberg and premiered at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum January 23, 2000.
-Lukas Foss, November 2000
Karl Weigl
KariWeigl (1881-1949) was born on February 6, 1881 in Vienna, the only child of parents who had come from Temesvar in the Hungarian portion of the former Austro-Hungarian empire. Keenly aware of his musical talent from a very young age, his mother arranged for him to study composition with Alexander von Zemlinsky later also the teacher of Arnold Schoenberg. In 1899 Weigl entered the Vienna Musikakademie, earning a diploma in piano in 1901 and then in composition in 1902. He simultaneously studied at the "Philosophische Fakultät" (College of Philosophy) at the University of Vienna, receiving his Ph.D. in musicology in 1903. He was also a member of theVereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler (Society of Creative Musicians), founded by Zemlinsky and Schoenberg to promote new music.
When Schoenberg began to abandon tonality for the 12-tone technique, Weigl remained faithful to the late Romantic tradition but went beyond it, composing in a highly expressive style employing rich, chromatic harmonies and colorful orchestration, thereby developing a language entirely his own. This became the basis of a strong connection to Mahler who hired Weigl as a coach for soloists at theVienna Opera, where Weigl worked with some of the world's best vocal artists and conductors, including Bruno Walter. In 1906, Weigl left the Opera for the life of a professional freelance composer. Already his music was championed by the Rosé Quartet, and Universal Edition, the Austrian publisher of great prestige, issued six of Weigl's works including the First Symphony when he was merely thirty years old.
After the First World War, Weigl was named professor of theory and composition at the new Vienna Conservatory and he became a pillar of Viennese musical community during the ensuing twenty years. Throughout the 1920's into the 1930's, Weigl's music enjoyed performances by renowned artists such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Ignaz Friedman, George SzeIl, the Busch and Rosé Quartets, and Elisabeth Schumann. He also continued to gain fame as a theoretician and teacher, and was awarded the title of “Professor” by the Austrian government in 1928. But since he was Jewish (however assimilated) and a socialist, his name was dropped from publishers catalogues when Hitler entered Austria in 1938. Consequently the Weigls and their son emigrated to America the same year followed by daughter Maria and her husband, Gerhad Pisk-Piers, in 1939.
Stripped of his Viennese status and renown, Weigl had to begin a new life in New York at age fifty-seven, and never regained the prestige - nor the financial comfort - that he had enjoyed. Matters improved somewhat when he joined the faculty at the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut (1941-42), Brooklyn College in NewYork (1943-45), Boston Conservatory (1945-48), and then the Philadelphia Academy of Music until shortly before his death, having become an American citizen in 1943.
During his eleven years in the USA, Weigl composed more songs, a nostalgic cycle of dances, three more string quartets, two large symphonies and many smaller works, including the Viola Sonata which Paul Doktor edited and then recorded after Weigl died of bone marrow cancer on 11 August 1949 in NewYork.
In 1968 Leopold Stokowski conducted the American Symphony Orchestra in Weigl's Fifth Symphony (Apocalyptic), broadcast on Voice of America to Europe. Composed during 1942-45, this work was Weigl's personal response to World War II, which he dedicated to "the people of the United Nations" in memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Piano Trio of 1939 is generously proportioned, impeccably crafted, and lushly romantic. The Trio is representative of Weigl's lifelong allegiance to the musical values of his youth -- an assurance echoed by Pablo Casals, who had prophesied, “Kon Weigl's music will not be lost. One will come bock to it when the storm will have passed.”
Special thanks to Evelyn Chih-Yih Chan (Paris),. Heidi Waleson (New York), Gerlinde Illich (Vienna) & Dr Primavea Gruber of the Orpheus Trust (Vienna).
Käthe Kollwitz
(German, 1867-1945)
One of the most influential and famous German printmakers of the twentieth century Käthe Kollwitz starkly depicted the plight of the poor and denounced the atrocities of war. Throughout her life, Kollwitz devoted herself to describing the human condition. She declined the use of color, letting her vigorously clear and articulate line express urgency and social purpose, and her simplification of form and the absence of extraneous detail contribute to the power of her work. She lived and worked during the times of the first and second world wars. In her journals, she wrote of dangers of air raids, dwindling food rations, and near poverty. Throughout World War II she experienced depression after the deaths of her son Peter and one of her grandsons. Käthe funneled her energy into the feminist movement as well. Many women looked up to her as she became one of the first females to break through social barriers. She also promoted women artists and their work across Germany. Käthe was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of the Arts in 1919. She was then forced to resign from the Academy under Nazi Pressure. During the war she fled to friends homes in different parts of Germany to avoid the heavy warfare. She died on April 22, 1945, four months before the end of World War II. At the time of her death she had no worldly possessions. She wrote right before she died that she had learned "to take life as it is and, unbroken by life, without complaining and overmuch weeping - to do one's work powerfully Not to deny oneself, the personality one happens to be, but to embody it".
Käthe Kollwitz
I.
Held between wars
my lifetime among wars,
the big hands of the world of death
my lifetime
listens to yours.
The faces of the sufferers
in the street, in dailiness,
their lives showing through their bodies
a look as of music
the revolutionary look
that says I am in the world
my lifetime
is to love to endure to suffer the music
to set its portrait
up as a sheet of the world
the most moving the most alive
Easter and bone
and Faust walking among the flowers of the
world
and the child alive within the living woman,
usic of man,
and death holding my lifetime between great
hands
the hands of enduring life
that suffers the gifts and madness of full life,
on earth, in our time,
and through my life, through my eyes,
through my arms and hands
may give the face of this music in portrait
waiting for
the unknown person
held in the two hands, you.
II.
Woman as gates, saying:
"The process is after all like music,
like the development of a piece of music.
The fugues come back and again and again
interweave.
A theme may seem to have been put aside,
but it keeps returning -
the same thing modulated,
somewhat changed in form.
Usually richer
And it is very good that this is so."
A woman pouring her opposites.
"After all there are happy things in life too.
Why do you show only the dark side?"
"I could not answer this. But I know -
in the beginning my impulse to know
the working life
had little to do with
pity or sympathy
I simply felt
that the life of the workers was beautiful."
She said, "I am groping in the dark."
She said, "When the door opens, of sensuality,
then you will understand it too. The struggle
begins.
Never again to be free of it,
often you will feel it to be your enemy
Sometimes
you will almost suffocate,
such joy it brings."
Saying of her husband: "My wish
is to die after Karl.
I know no person who can love as he can,
with his whole soul.
Often this love has oppressed me;
I wanted to be free.
But often too it has made me
so terribly happy"
She said: "We rowed over to Carrara at dawn,
climbed up to the marble quarries
and rowed back at night. The drops of water
fell like glittering stars
from our oars."
She said: "As a matter of fact,
I believe that bisexuality
is almost a necessary factor
in artistic production; at any rate,
the tinge of masculinity within me
helped me in my work."
She said: "The only technique I can still manage.
It's hardly a technique at all, lithography
In it only the essentials count."
A tight-lipped man in a restaurant last night
saying to me:
"Kollwitz? She's too black-and-white."
III.
Held among wars, watching
all of them
all these people
weavers,
Carmagnole
Looking at
all of them
death, the children
patients in waiting-rooms
famine
the street
the corpse with the baby
floating, on the dark river
A woman seeing
the violent, inexorable
movement of nakedness
and the confession of NO
the confession of great weakness, war,
all streaming to one son killed, Peter;
even the son lift living; repeated,
the father the mother; the grandson
another Peter killed in another war firestorm;
dark light as two hands,
this pole and that pole as the gates.
What would happen if one woman told the
truth about
her life?...
The world would split open.
IV. Song: The Calling Up
Rumor stir of ripeness
rising within this
sensual blossoming
of meaning, its light and form.
The birth-cry summoning
out of the male, the father
from the warm woman
a mother in response.
The word of death
calls up the fight with stone
wrestle with grief with time
from the material make
an art harder than bronze.
V. Self Portrait
Mouth looking directly at you
eyes in their inwardness looking
directly at you
half light half darkness
woman, strong, German, young artist
flows into
wide sensual mouth meditating
looking right at you
eyes shadowed with brave hand
looking deep at you
flows into
wounded brave mouth
grieving and hooded eyes
alive, German, in her first War
flows into
strength of the worn face
a skein of lines
broods, flows into
mothers among the war graves
bent over death
facing the father
stubborn upon the field
flows into
the marks of her knowing -
Nie Wieder Krieg
repeated in the eyes
flows into
"Seedcorn must not be ground"
and the grooved cheek
lips drawn fine
the down-drawn grief
face of our age
flows into
Pieta, mother and
between her knees
life as her son in death
pouring from the sky of
one more war
flows into
face almost obliterated
hand over the mouth forever
hand over one eye now
the other great eye
closed
Muriel Rukeyse, 1968
Käthe Kollwitz, from A Muriel Rukeyser Reader
W.W. Norton 1994 - NewYork NY
©William L. Rukeyser
Special thanks to
Tom Myron
Dr. Ronald Rouner
Weigl Family Arts Fund at the Rochester Area Community Foundation
The Artists
STEVEN HONIGBERG, heralded as a "sterling cellist" by the Washington Post, has emerged as one of the outstanding cellists of his generation. Mr. Honigberg gave his New York debut recital in Weill Hall and has since performed to critical acclaim throughout the United States in recital, in chamber music and as a soloist with orchestra. A member of the National Symphony Orchestra, he has been featured numerous times as soloist with that ensemble. He won rave reviews for the 1988 world premiere of David Ott's Concerto For Two Cellos performed with the National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Maestro Rostropovich, with repeat performances on the NSO's 1989 & 1994 United States tours. Mr. Honigberg is noted for his explorations of important new works, such as Lukas Foss' Anne Frank (1999), Benjamin Lees Night Spectres (1999), Robert Stern's Hazkarah (1998), Robert Starer's Song of Solitude (1995) & David Diamond's Concert Piece (1993), written for and premiered by Steven Honigberg. Mr. Honigberg graduated from the Juilliard School of Music with a Master's degree in Music, where he studied with Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins. Other mentors include Pierre Fournier and Karl Fruh. Voted "Best New Chamber Music Series" of 1994 by the Washington Post, Steven Honigberg has been The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's chamber music series director since its inception. Mr. Honigberg has an extensive CD recording list, the latest a recording of Ernst Toch's cello works. He has also recorded Ludwig van Beethoven's complete works for cello & piano, an album of 20th century American cello works, the chamber music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and recordings of music performed at the Holocaust Memorial Museum; Darkness & Light, Volumes 1 and 2. Recent performances include a concert at the 1998 Ravinia Festival, at Weill Hall in NewYork and a performance of the Samuel Barber Cello Concerto with Concertante di Chicago. Steven Honigberg performs on the “Stuart” Stradivarius cello made in 1732.
CAROL HONIGBERG performs as soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States and Europe. She has appeared as soloist with the Dutch Radio Philharmonic, l'Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and the Belgian Radio and Television Orchestra. A tour with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra included performances in Prague, Warsaw, Berlin and Leipzig. She has been featured in broadcasts on Radio France Musique, La Radio Suisse-Romande, KRO in Holland, the BRT in Belgium and Radio Ireland. Her NewYork debut took place at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. Carol Honigberg has recorded the Samuel Barber Piano Concerto and Sonata for the Musical Heritage Society. She has a solo CD on the Pavane label which features works by Gershwin, Piston, Ginastera and Bruzdowicz. She also performs on the Albany recordings Darkness & Light: Volumes 1 and 2. Her latest CD on the Albany label features the complete works for cello and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven with her son, Steven Honigberg. Carol Honigberg is currently on the faculty of Roosevelt University in Chicago. Her teachers included Rudolph Ganz and Marguerite Long in Paris. She received her Master of Music degree from Northwestern University.
Mezzo-soprano PATRICIA GREEN has gained international acclaim for her expressive voice, noted for three-octave ease in extremely diverse repertoire. Ms. Green is appearing in major halls such as the Concertgebouw and the Kennedy Center with L'Orchestre de Radio-France, the Dutch Radio Philharmonic, MUSICA (Strasbourg), the National Symphony Posthoornkerk Concerts (Amsterdam), Continuum (London), Library of Congress Concerts, Bethlehem Bach Society, Toronto Symphony's New Music Festival, the US Holocaust Museum chamber music series, Toronto's Opera in Concert, Vancouver New Music, Washington Choral Arts, Wolf Trap Festival, Scotia Festival of Music, and the Michoacan Tri-National Arts Festival, Mexico. She is a member of Theatre Chamber Players of the Kennedy Center. Conductors she has appeared with include Peter Eötvös, Rheinbert de Leeuw, Pascal Rophé, Leonard Slatkin and Leon Fleisher. This season she has toured Canada, France and England in the opera, Kopernikus by Claude Vivier. Opera roles performed include Dido, Adalgisa, Ruggiero, La Principessa, Second Lady and Anne Boleyn. As an avid performer of contemporary music, Ms. Green has sung works of Ligeti, Boulez, Berio, Dusapin, Schwantner, Schoenberg, Wuorinen, Schafer Weir and as a champion of young composers, has given many premieres of their works. Her CD of the JS Bach and CPE Bach Magnificat with the Washington Bach Consort is available on Newport Classics. She received the prestigious Artist Diploma in Voice and the George Castelle Prize from the Peabody Conservatory where she studied with Phyllis Bryn-Julson. Ms. Green is a member of the voice faculty at Michigan State University She is from Saskatchewan, Canada.
JOSEPH HOLT enjoys a wide ranging musical career as soloist, chamber music performer educator conductor and arranger Since 1990 his appointments include pianist with The United States Army Chorus, Artist Member of the Chamber Artists of Washington, Adjunct Professor at The American University a Baldwin Concert Artist and pianist/associate conductor for the Choral Arts Society of Washington. In 1997 he was named Conductor and Music Director of Singers For All Seasons, a community outreach program of the Choral Arts Society. Recent highlights include performances of Rhapsody in Blue in Dallas and San Antonio with The United States Army Band, Artist in Residence at Mankato State University in Minnesota, and a chamber music salute to cellist Leonard Rose at the Rossborough Festival of the University of Maryland. Dr. Holt can be heard on recordings of music performed at the Holocaust Memorial Museum; Darkness & Light, Volumes 1 and 2. Dr. Holt holds a bachelor of music degree with distinction and the Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, a master of music degree from Shenandoah Conservatory and a doctor of musical arts degree in chamber music from The Catholic University of America. His primary instructors include David Burge, Nelita True and Marilyn Neeley
KATHRYN BRAKE, born in Washington, D.C., attended The Juilliard School of Music and received her Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. Her teachers include Julian Martin, Nadia Reisenberg and Leon Fleisher. Ms. Brake has performed solo recitals throughout the United States and Canada as well as in Italy, France, Switzerland and Spain. A winner of the National Young Chopin Competition, the Beethoven Competition, the Kociusko Foundation Awards and the Elizabeth Davis Award, she has performed as soloist with several orchestras, including the Baltimore Symphony and the National Symphony Orchestra. A much sought after chamber music player Kathryn Brake has recently performed at the Kennedy Center the National Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, Teatro Real in Madrid, and the Palau de Ia Musica in Barcelona. In 1992 Ms. Brake's collaboration with Mr. Honigberg on a compact disc of American cello music earned them the highest 5 star rating from Classical Pulse/Tower Records. Ms. Brake can also be heard on recordings of music performed at the Holocaust Memorial Museum; chamber music by Ernst Toch and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
GEORGE MARSH has been a member of the National Symphony Orchestra since 1979. Mr. Marsh has performed as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Virginia Chamber Orchestra, the Catholic University Orchestra, and several other orchestras in his native midwest. As a chamber musician, he is a founding member at the Chamber Artists of Washington; he has also performed with the Vaener String Trio, the New England Piano Quartet, the Washington Chamber Society and the Alexandria Chamber Ensemble. Recital performances include concerts at the Phillips Collection, the Organization of American States, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Mr. Marsh has received numerous awards, including first prize in the 1985 Washington International Bach Competition. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he studied with Paul Makanowitzky. Mr. Marsh can be heard on recordings of music performed at the Holocaust Memorial Museum; chamber music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Darkness & Light: Volumes 1 and 2. Mr. Marsh plays a 1758 J.B. Guadagnini, the "ex Joseph Silverstein."
GLENN DONNELLAN, second violinist with the National Symphony orchestra, is a native of Washington State. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance at the University of Minnesota under Almita and Roland Vamos. He continued with Graduate work in the U of MN Graduate, String Quartet. His association with the violin traces back to his Norwegian family heritage of many generations of Hardanger fiddle players (the Hardanger fiddle is a national folk instrument of Norway). He and his wife, Jan Chong, also a violinist, perform as Duo Concertante. In addition to chamber music activities within and outside the NSO, he is active in creating and performing educational outreach programs for the NSO that reach young audiences.
TSUNA SAKAMOTO, violist in the National Symphony Orchestra was born in Tokyo, Japan. She studied at the Toho-Academy School of Music. Ms. Sakamoto came to the United States where she studied with the renowned violinist Naoko Tanaka at the Aspen Summer Music School. She decided to continue studying violin performance in the United States at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and received her Master's degree from the Ohio State University. While all of her degrees are in violin performance, she always had a passion for the viola. Her love for viola playing blossomed recently while she was a violinist in the San Antonio Symphony.
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