THE SHANGHAI QUARTET
Weigang Li, violin
Yi-Wen Jiang, violin
Honggang Li, viola
Nicholas Tzavaras, cello

“The whole performance was superb.”
- The New York Times

The Shanghai Quartet is renowned for its passionate musicality, impressive technique and multicultural innovations. Its elegant style of melding the delicacy of Eastern music with the emotional breadth of Western repertoire allows it to traverse musical genres, from traditional Chinese folk music and masterpieces of Western music, to cutting edge contemporary works. The Quartet celebrated its 25th anniversary in the 2008-09 season with world premieres from the three continents that comprise its artistic and cultural worlds: Krzysztof Penderecki’s String Quartet No. 3, Chen Yi’s From the Path of Beauty and jazz pianist Dick Hyman’s String Quartet.

Formed at the Shanghai Conservatory in 1983, the Shanghai Quartet has worked with the world’s most distinguished artists and regularly tours the major music centers of Europe, North America and Asia. Recent seasons have included concert tours of Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. The Quartet has made regular appearances at Carnegie Hall in chamber performances and with orchestra, and in 2006 gave the world premiere of Takuma Itoh’s Concerto for Quartet and Orchestra in Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium.

Performances at many of the most distinguished festivals and concert halls highlight the Shanghai Quartet’s 25th anniversary season, including appearances at the Ravinia, Tanglewood and Ottawa International Festivals and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as residencies at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Oregon Bach Festival. November 2009 brought the world premiere of Penderecki’s String Quartet No. 3 at a special concert in Poland honoring the composer’s 75th birthday with the US Premieres at Montclair State University and the University of Richmond. Continuing its anniversary collaboration with Chanticleer, the Quartet will present the Asian premiere of Chen Yi’s From the Path of Beauty in China in May 2009.

The Quartet has a long history of championing new music and juxtaposing Eastern and Western sounds. Among its major commissions and premieres are works by Lowell Lieberman, Bright Sheng and Zhou Long.

The Quartet has built an extensive discography that now totals over 25 recordings on multiple labels. Recent releases include the Mendelssohn Octet (Camerata)and Zhou Long’s "Poems from Tang” for Quartet and Orchestra with the Singapore Symphony (BIS). In 2003, the Quartet released its most popular disc: a 24-track collection of Chinese folk songs titled Chinasong (Delos)featuring music arranged by Yi-Wen Jiang reflecting his childhood memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Current recording projects include the complete Beethoven string quartets (Camerata), a seven-disc project.

The Shanghai Quartet has appeared in a diverse and interesting array of media projects, ranging from a cameo appearance in the Woody Allen film "Melinda and Melinda” playing Bartok’s String Quartet No. 4 (and the film’s soundtrack recording)to PBS’s Great Performances series for television. Other film credits include an appearance by violinist Weigang Li in the documentary "From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China,” and the family of cellist Nicholas Tzavaras as the subject of the 1999 film "Music of the Heart” starring Meryl Streep.

The Shanghai Quartet has a distinguished teaching record, and currently serves as Ensemble-in-Residence at Montclair State University in New Jersey and the esteemed title of visiting guest professors of the Shanghai Conservatory and the Central Conservatory in China.

Hung-Kuan Chen 陳宏寬,  Pianist

“This man plays music with uncommon understanding and the instrument with uncommon imagination…” -- Richard Dyer, Boston Globe

“…rarely have I heard such eloquence and musical understanding. Is anyone listening?” -- Ruth Laredo

Hung-Kuan Chen is one of the great personalities of the music world: enigmatic, brilliant and versatile. He is a pianist of uncompromising individuality and a remarkably inspiring pedagogue. Born in Taipei and raised in Germany, Mr. Chen’s early studies fostered strong roots in Germanic Classicism which he tempered with the sensibility of Chinese philosophy: The result is a dynamic and imaginative artistry. Furthermore, he is regarded as an extraordinary interpreter of Beethoven’s music.

One of the most decorated pianists of his generation, Mr. Chen won top prizes in the Arthur Rubinstein, the Busoni and the Geza Anda International Piano Competitions, along with prizes in the Queen Elisabeth, Montreal, Van Cliburn, and Chopin International Competition; also the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career grant and a Young Concert Artists winner. He has appeared in the music capitals of Asia, Europe and the Americas and collaborated with many major orchestras including Houston, Baltimore, Israel, Montréal, Pittsburgh, the Tonhalle, San Francisco and Shanghai. Mr. Chen has performed with highly esteemed conductors; Hans Graf, Christoph Eschenbach, George Cleve, Josef Silverstein, Andrew Parrett and Sui Lan; and colleagues including Yo-Yo Ma, Chao-Liang Lin, Roman Totenberg, Denes Zsigmondy, Bion Tsang, Anthony Gigliotti, David Shifrin, and Laurence Lesser and pianists Tema Blackstone and Pi-hsien Chen.

Mr. Chen is Chair of the Piano Department of the Shanghai Conservatory and is the Director of the International Piano Academy in Shanghai. Prior to this he joined the faculty of Boston University, New England Conservatory Preparatory and was a Distinguished Artist in Residence at Mount Royal Conservatory in Canada. Mr. Chen has adjudicated International Piano Competitions and has taught and performed in the annual music festival for the Foundation of Chinese Performing Arts in Boston since 1993.

In 1992 Hung-Kuan Chen suffered an injury to his hand which caused neurological damage and eventually resulted in Focal Dystonia. Through Qi Gong meditation and his own unique research he was able to heal and return to his life as a concert artist. His first post-accident solo recital in March of 1998 received rave reviews and he was described as a transformed artist: "Back in the ‘80’s Apollo and Dionysus, Florestan and Eusebius were in Chen’s pianistic personality. He could play with poetic insight, he could also erupt into an almost terrifying over drive. Now there is repose and the forces have been brought into complimentary harmony.” (Boston Globe)
In recital this season, Mr. Chen is playing in San Francisco, Boston, New York (Carnegie Hall Isaac Stern Auditorium), and in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other major cities worldwide.

Hung-Kuan Chen is represented by Blackstone Artists Management.

Notes on Krzysztof Penderecki’s String Quartet No. 3

The Third String Quartet has been written for the Shanghai Quartet; its premiere is scheduled for the Krzysztof Penderecki Festival in Warsaw, 21 November 2008.

For Penderecki, in the beginning was the violin. "When I was twelve, my father bought a good instrument for me from a Soviet soldier for a bottle of raw spirits,” he recalls in an interview. And he adds that he wrote his first violin pieces for his own pleasure, at eleven or twelve.

Two string quartets occupy a significant place in the composer’s oeuvre. His first (of 1960)appears in the context of Threnody, Anaklsasis and Polymorphia, i.e. works that have shaped the image of Polish sonorism. In the 1960s, sonorism became a trademark of the Polish School of Composing phenomenon and highlighted tone and colour, The Second Quartet (of 1968)was already composed after the St. Luke Passion, which gave rise to comments on Penderecki’s betrayal of the ideals of the avant-garde, the same avant-garde that he had spearheaded and defined. The Second and Third Quartets were written forty years apart. Significant changes had occurred in the composer’s oeuvre within these four decades: he was no longer "a barbarian in the garden” of music (as he had been seen with his early sonorist works that had caused such an outcry); using melody and euphony, he now drew thinner, more delicate lines, purified of excess.

A first reading of the yet unfinished score of the Third Quartet is enough to observe some features of the piece. Its dramaturgy is constructed according to the principle of continuity in the course of music – quite similarly to what happens in Concerto grosso. Yet this assumed continuity has its own phases, its own facets of music, contrasted as they are in tempo, character and tone. This music, then, can accommodate equally the brilliant and energetic playing in Vivace sections and the moments of softness and meditation as exemplified by the reflexive Adagio notturno. The singing and nocturne-like, indeed nocturnal tone has become a trademark of Penderecki’s "sound language” of recent years – and the same is true of recurring motives of music anchored in static tonal centres. What remains is thinking in terms of form delineated within clear boundaries of beginning and end. And intense emotion meeting a predefined order.

In a conversation with students of the Academy of Music in Kraków (conducted in February 2008), the composer confessed: "My entire life is to surprise, seek and find myself in a thicket”. This finds its confirmation in his music. More and more often, very special places can be found in the thicket of sounds – like green, sun-drenched clearings in a dark forest.

MALGORZATA JANICKA-SLYSZ