Chamber Music

Lou Harrison

Concerto for Violin and Percussion

A student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and Virgil Thomson, American composer Lou Harrison is known primarily for his synthesis of Western and non-Western traditions and his preference for tuning systems other than the equal temperament of common-practice tonality. Coming from the West Coast—Portland, then San Francisco—Harrison’s aesthetic was more attuned to the Pacific Rim and native American musical styles than it was to Europe, and this is reflected in the timbres and instrumentations of many of his works. He was especially drawn to percussion influenced by Indonesian music and the Javanese gamelan. Like his colleague John Cage, Harrison occasionally built his own percussion instruments out of found objects and unconventional materials, including brake drums and

trash cans.

In his attempts to integrate percussion more fully into Western music, Harrison composed a number of concertos with percussion ensemble, including a First Concerto for Flute and Percussion from 1939. The following year he began a similarly conceived Concerto for Violin and Percussion, which took nearly twenty years to complete. Its three-movement fast-slow-fast format is entirely traditional. It was the combination of those conventionalities with the timbres and rhythmic effects of the percussion orchestra that were new in this work.

Harrison titled the Concerto alternatively in Esperanto—Koncerto por la violono kun percuta orkestra—to emphasize its universalist worldview. Unlike many other composers, Harrison uses the percussion ensemble as much for tone color as rhythm, drawing parallels with Asian percussion practices. Harrison firmly roots his Violin Concerto in this multicultural ethos. The piece “is among many of my compositions which follow the pattern of having a single melodic part accompanied (or enhanced) by rhythmic percussion. The model is, of course, world-wide. This is the standard usage in India, in Islam, in Africa . . . The use of a modern European instrument as a soloist, the mixture of ‘junk’ instruments with standard ones in the percussion section, and the employment of romantic concerto form constitute the only novelties, from the world[-music] point of view.”

In this work the percussion battery includes traditional instruments, but also an assortment of novelties on the concert stage: flowerpots, springs, tin cans, and a double bass laid on its back and hit with sticks. The violin, whose lyricism is intentionally contrasted with the percussion orchestra, plays only three kinds of intervals throughout the entire work—minor seconds, major thirds, and major sixths.

The first movement is in a traditional sonata form, beginning with a simultaneous entrance in the orchestra and a grand stentorian statement from the violin. Proceeding along the jagged yet circular melody, the violin floats through the development section over a very gamelan-like texture before a virtuosic cadenza which is surprisingly legible despite the heavily atonal pitch construction. (Rather than twelve-tone pitch organization, Harrison calls his emphasis on three interval types “interval control.”) Next is a very slow second movement, conventional in a three-movement sonata, with long flowing lines from the violin set against sparse gestures from the percussion. The fast finale thrashes through a rondo form, culminating in another cadenza-like sequence and a crashing conclusion.

— © Luke Howard

York Bowen

Fantasia for Four Violas

Until the twentieth century, the viola received relatively little attention from composers; only a few well-known works featured the alto member of the viol family in a prominent way. Bach’s Sixth Brandenburg Concerto (1721) features two solo violas, and Telemann’s Viola Concerto in G major from about the same period is the earliest known concerto for the instrument. Classical and Romantic composers often used the viola’s middle voice merely to augment the lines of other string sections or to provide underlying harmonic support.

This is partly the viola’s fault, as it is an instrument of compromises. Tuned an octave higher than a cello and a fifth lower than a violin, its size needs to be somewhere in between to provide proper resonance, but an ideally sized viola would be impossibly large for any musician to play on their shoulder; even today, the instrument has no standard size. Few musicians saw reason to write music or develop performance techniques that could help the viola find its voice, and it became known as an instrument to be played as the second choice of violinists—the joke being that these opportunistic violinists would not have been quite up to snuff in their own section.

The English musician Lionel Tertis (1876–1975) was a leading figure in the twentieth century’s new-found love for the viola. As a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, he encouraged many British composers to write for the instrument, including Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Walton, whose Viola Concerto is one of the most famous modern examples of the form. Also included was Edwin York Bowen, a fellow professor who composed the Fantasia for Four Violas as a piece Tertis could play with his advanced students.

Bowen had attended the Royal Academy as a student before joining the faculty, and during World War I played horn and viola in the Band of the Scots Guards. His compositions never gained much popularity outside of England, and even that success faded once new musical trends emerged and Bowen’s Romantic style fell out of fashion.

Bowen’s rich harmonies are well suited to the warm and smooth timbre of the viola. Opening with a plaintive theme, the Fantasia’s introductory section soon gives way to more energetic material, which accelerates into a grand pause before returning and developing, becoming pensive. The four players have the opportunity for growling power on the C string as well as reaching into the upper register and utilizing crystalline harmonics. The application of mutes further mellows the sound as the piece sighs to a peaceful resolution.

— © David Hoyt

Michael Kimber

Violas on Fire!

How is a viola different from a violin?

The viola burns longer.

Every violist is familiar with this and countless other “viola jokes,” a result of the viola’s historic reputation as the forgettable middle child of the string family. Consigned to playing harmonies and accompaniments, the instrument’s voice is too often drowned out by the soaring melodies of the violins and the powerful depths of the cellos and basses. But most violists are happy to laugh along with the jokes, and instead of getting mad, can get even with this brief showpiece of the viola’s true colors and capabilities.

Composer Michael Kimber is himself a proud viola performer and pedagogue who has won awards from the American and International Viola Societies in recognition of his contributions to the instrument. By writing for viola quartet, he makes sure there are no violins or cellos to steal the stage here. In his score, Kimber also leaves room for the first viola to improvise, and reminds the players to “have a wild, fun time!” and to “leave your audience screaming (for more?)!”

Jokes aside, Kimber has produced a great number of serious works for viola, joining other composers throughout history who have helped remedy the underutilization of this warm and soulful instrument at the heart of the orchestra. Berlioz, who literally wrote the book on orchestration with his Treatise on Instrumentation, used a solo viola to represent the wandering protagonist of Harold in Italy. Dvořák, who played viola professionally, opens his famous American String Quartet with one of the greatest riffs in the viola repertoire. And Bloch leaned on the viola’s mournful and rhapsodic qualities in his Suite Hébraïque.

Violas on Fire! begins aggressively as the fourth viola lays down a driving ostinato punctuated by stinging sforzandos. Unsettling dissonances bring to mind another popular burn—that the definition of a minor second is two violas playing in unison—and rhythms that are almost in sync remind us that the difference between the first and last stand in a viola section is usually about half a measure. The ensemble moves between 4/4, 5/4, and 3/4 bars while the first viola explores the instrument’s upper range, demonstrating double stops, glissandos, and harmonics.

Periodically the forward momentum comes to a sudden stop with the arrival of slower interludes marked “suspended, austere,” which the composer instructs the players to take as “spooky time to cool down and recharge.” But the pent-up aggression of four violists scorned always returns, rushing this tongue-in-cheek piece to a thrilling conclusion. — © David Hoyt

Franz Schubert

Fantasy in F minor, D. 940, op. 103

Schubert particularly favored music-making by two players sitting at a single piano, and he composed a substantial amount of music for that medium, from simple dance pieces to full-scale sonatas. The Fantasy in F minor is Schubert’s very last work for this medium before his premature death, and it has long been regarded as one of the finest works ever composed for four-hands piano. Like the better-known Wanderer Fantasy, it is cast as a continuous movement in four sections that have as much variety and contrast as a full sonata while being far more compact.

The outer sections are filled with pathos and energy, and the closing section takes up some of the material of the opening’s second theme for new kinds of development, including a fugal passage. These framing sections are in the home key of F minor; the two inner sections are, very strikingly, in the distant key of F-sharp minor. The slow section is compact but complete, in a full A-B-A form, with the B section representing Schubert’s purest vein of lyrical melody. The third section, which functions as a scherzo, is the only part of the Fantasy that actually reaches the normal length that it might have in a four-movement sonata. It is often said that Schubert’s counterpoint was not very strong, and we know that he planned near the end of his life to undertake further study in that area of composition. The fugal section that dominates the Fantasy’s finale nevetheless has a profound effect, particularly in the dramatic falling off into complete silence that ends the fugue. — © Steven Ledbetter

Paul-Boris Kertsman is an emerging conductor and pianist noted for his expressive musicianship and instinctive connection with audiences. In the upcoming season he begins his appointment as head of music and conductor at Lucerne Theatre and joins the Aspen Music Festival as assistant conductor. He recently completed two seasons as assistant conductor of the Musikkollegium Winterthur, where he worked closely with Music Director Roberto González-Monjas, led performances, and supported renowned guest artists. Notable engagements include Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti in Lucerne, a production of Mozart’s Idomeneo directed by Michael Sturminger, and his debut at the Musikverein Vienna with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has led the Vienna Philharmonic’s Prokopp Academy, appeared on Austrian National TV, and worked with the WDR Rundfunkchor. A committed advocate for contemporary music, Kertsman has collaborated with composers including Matthias Pintscher, Chaya Czernowin, and Hannah Kendall. He debuts next season with the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra for a festival performance of new music. Born in New York and raised in Vienna and Chicago, Kertsman completed his conducting studies with Mark Stringer at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

Jacob Chang is an undergraduate student at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) studying percussion and timpani performance with Marc Damoulakis and Paul Yancich. In addition to performing at CIM, he has been a member of the Wheaton Municipal Band and has performed with the Canton Symphony Orchestra. Jacob attended the Aspen Music Festival in 2023 and 2024, and was named the Charles Owen Memorial Fellow in 2025. Jacob also received the 2025 Bruce D. Collie Prize in Percussion at CIM.

Heeyeon Kim is a South Korean percussionist currently pursuing her undergraduate studies at The Juilliard School under Daniel Druckman and Markus Rhoten. She made her solo debut with the Kumho Young Artist Recitals and previously studied under Garrett Arney and Mari Yoshinaga at the 2020 Curtis Young Artist Summer Program. She has studied at festivals including the Sandbox Percussion Seminar, where she collaborated with Sandbox Percussion, and the New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall. In 2024 she won the Aspen Music Festival Percussion Concerto Competition and was a featured soloist with the ensemble. Heeyeon Kim’s return to Aspen in 2025 is supported by the Deanna J. Anderson Life & Legacy Percussion Fellowship.

Jonathan Haas is known worldwide as a soloist, orchestral timpanist, percussionist, conductor, teacher, clinician, and entrepreneur. He has garnered international acclaim for his performances of Philip Glass’s Concerto Fantasy for two timpanists and orchestra, which he commissioned and has performed seventy times worldwide with numerous top orchestras. Haas is the principal percussionist of the American Symphony, principal timpanist of the New York Pops Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, principal timpanist of the Aspen Chamber Symphony, percussionist of the American Composers Orchestra, and president of Gemini Music Productions. Haas is a professor of music, director of percussion studies, co-director of the orchestra program, and conductor of the Contemporary Music Ensemble at New York University. He also teaches at the Juilliard Pre-College Division (JPC), and conducts the JPC and Aspen percussion ensembles. Haas has performed and recorded with Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Aerosmith; Black Sabbath; The Who; and Grammy award-winning Zappa’s Universe, among others. In his quest to showcase the timpani in unusual musical settings, Haas is known for his Hot Jazz Timpani performances and for highlighting a unique instrumental combination with his nine-piece Latin/Jazz ensemble, Johnny H. & The Prisoners of Swing. Haas is also the author of the timpani method book Jazz Virtuostics for Timpani.

Adriana Harrison is a Chicago-based percussionist completing her master’s degree in percussion performance at DePaul University. She received her bachelor’s degree from New York University with a minor in French studies. She currently studies with Cynthia Yeh and Eric Millstein. Adriana Harrison is a 2025 recipient of a Maestro’s Circle Scholarship.

Emma Dell Mitchell is a freelance percussionist and educator in the Chicagoland area. She teaches private lessons at local schools and also performs with various regional groups, including the Lake County and Evanston Symphony Orchestras. Dell holds various positions at DePaul University in Chicago, including percussion graduate assistant, concerts and events manager, and audience services representative at the box office. Dell graduated magna cum laude from Florida State University in 2022, where she studied with John Parks. She recently graduated with her master’s degree in percussion performance from DePaul University, where she primarily studied with Eric Millstein and Cynthia Yeh. This year Dell receives a Talent and Inclusion Scholarship, funded by Joan Fabry and Michael Klein.

A tenacious young artist with a passion that enraptures his audience in every performance, violinist Blake Pouliot has anchored himself among the ranks of classical phenoms. Since his orchestral debut at age eleven, Pouliot has performed with the orchestras of Aspen, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Madison, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, and Seattle, among many others. Blake Pouliot’s 2024–25 symphonic highlights have included debuts with the LA Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, Houston Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and San Antonio Symphony. Blake expanded his presence in Europe this season with performances with the London Philharmonic and Alevtina Ioffe, Chamber Orchestra of Europe with conductor Mattias Pintscher and cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and KYMI Sinfonietta and Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire. During his time as soloist in residence of Orchestre Métropolitain in 2020–21, Pouliot and Yannick Nézet-Séguin performed Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto and Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons, which led to Pouliot’s 2022 debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center performing John Corigliano’s The Red Violin. Highlights elsewhere include Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Angela Hewitt, Bryan Cheng, and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal in 2022–23. Pouliot released his debut album of twentieth-century French music on Analekta Records in 2019 to critical acclaim and a Juno Award nomination. Pouliot performs on the 1729 Guarneri del Gesù, which is on generous loan from an anonymous donor.

Zhenwei Shi was appointed principal violist of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 2019 at age twenty-three. He received first prize in the 2010 International String Players Competition in Hong Kong and third prize in the 2014 Johansen International Young String Players Competition in the U.S. He was also awarded the Special Jury Prize from the 2016 XII Lionel Tertis Viola International Competition and the Regent’s Award from the Duchess of Gloucester of British Royalty and Royal Academy of Music. As a scholar of the Drake Calleja Trust and Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in the U.K. since 2016, Shi has performed as a solo violist and chamber musician at prestigious venues such as Buckingham Palace, Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Shanghai Concert Hall, and on the BBC’s In Tune broadcast. Since 2018 he has been a frequent guest player with the San Francisco Symphony and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Shi has performed with the Georgian Chamber Players since 2019, and was invited in 2020 to be an artist-faculty member at the AMFS.

Choong-Jin (C. J.) Chang, a native of Seoul, South Korea, joined the Philadelphia Orchestra as associate principal viola in November 1994 and became principal viola in April 2006. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, from which he received degrees in both violin and viola. Since giving a successful debut solo recital at Carnegie Hall in 2007, Mr. Chang has appeared in numerous recitals and as a frequent soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra as well as many orchestras in the U.S. and South Korea. Mr. Chang is a founding member of the Johannes Quartet, whose debut performances at Philadelphia’s Ethical Society and at Carnegie Hall in New York City received glowing reviews. Since 1997 the Quartet has performed to audience and critical acclaim throughout the United States. Alongside his extensive performing activities, Mr. Chang is a respected teacher of both violin and viola. He currently serves on the viola faculty of Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute of Music.

Victoria Chiang is a professor of viola at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. Her recordings of Stamitz’s and Hoffmeister’s viola concertos, and of Ignaz Pleyel’s Sinfonia Concertante, can be found on the Naxos label. Career highlights include appearances with the National Philharmonic Orchestra, Romanian State philharmonics of Constanta and Târgu Mureș, the Duluth Superior Symphony, and solo performances at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and the International Viola Congress. Chiang has collaborated as a guest artist with the Guarneri, Takács, Tokyo, American, Arianna, and Pro Arte string quartets and is a founding member of the Aspen String Trio. Other festival appearances include Domaine Forget, Madeline Island Chamber Music Festival, the Heifetz International Music Institute, and the Perlman Music Program Winter Residency. Chiang recently joined the faculty at Mercer University’s McDuffie Center for Strings, where she shares a studio with Rebecca Albers. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a master’s degree and performer’s certificate from the Eastman School of Music. Her principal teachers include Heidi Castleman and Masao Kawasaki (viola) and Dorothy DeLay and Kurt Sassmannshaus (violin). Chiang first came to Aspen as a student in 1985.

Masao Kawasaki, viola, leads an international career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, and pedagogue of both violin and viola. He has performed extensively with orchestras throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, and has collaborated with distinguished artists including Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Yefim Bronfman, Joseph Suk, Joshua Bell, Cho-Lian Lin, Nadja Solerno-Sonnenberg, and Leon Fleischer. Guest appearances include performing with the Tokyo, Emerson, Juilliard, and American string quartets. Mr. Kawasaki has recorded for the CBS Sony, EMI, Nonesuch, Phillips, and Bis labels and has been featured globally on radio broadcasts. Television appearances include NHK-TV Classic Hours and PBS’s Great Performances Series. Mr. Kawasaki frequently presents master classes and is invited to serve on juries of competitions for both violin and viola in the United States and abroad. In 2004 he was awarded the prestigious Presidential Scholars Program’s Teacher Recognition Award. In addition to his activity as a performer and teacher, he co-hosted the 2010 International Viola Congress in Cincinnati and is regularly featured at the Miyazaki International Music Festival. Currently he is on faculty at The Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival and School. Mr. Kawasaki resides in New York City with his wife, Fumiko

Pianist Cameron Stowe is a leading specialist in the study and performance of song recital repertoire. He has appeared in concert venues and music festivals in China, Europe, South America, and throughout the U.S. and Canada, playing with some of the most prominent singers of his generation, including Randall Scarlata, Denyce Graves, Measha Brueggergosman, Susan Graham, Danielle DeNiese, Faith Esham, Vinson Cole, Sari Gruber, and Jesse Blumberg. Since 2008 Stowe has served as chair of the collaborative piano department at New England Conservatory (NEC) and as faculty at The Juilliard School. Formerly a professor at University of Toronto, his festival teaching includes residencies at Aspen Music Festival and School, Toronto Summer Music Festival, and Vancouver International Song Institute. He has given masterclasses for singers and pianists in the United States and abroad. Recent educational projects include the creation of the innovative Song Lab at NEC and extensive work with musicologist Benjamin Binder, with whom he has designed song workshops and summer courses for performers, musicologists, theorists, and literary scholars. Together they led the Scholarship in Song Performance summer festival at University of British Columbia for four years, assembling students and professionals to encourage cross-disciplinary approaches in the study of song. In addition Stowe served as keynote speaker and artist-teacher at the first Chinese National Conference on Collaborative Piano. Stowe holds a doctorate from Juilliard with a specialized focus in song and vocal chamber music, as well as degrees from Peabody Conservatory and Oberlin Conservatory. Cameron Stowe is an artist-faculty member of the New Horizons Program, which is made possible by an endowment gift by Kay and Matthew Bucksbaum.

Winner of the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition at Carnegie Hall, Anton Nel continues to tour internationally as recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. Highlights in the U.S. include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, and Detroit symphonies as well as coast-to-coast recitals. Overseas he has appeared at Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and major concert halls in China, Korea, and South Africa. He holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair at the University of Texas at Austin, where he heads the division of keyboard studies. He also teaches annual masterclasses at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto and the Manhattan School of Music. During the summers he is on the artist-faculties of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival and the Orford Music Academy in Quebec. Nel also frequently performs as a harpsichordist and fortepianist. His teachers have included Adolph Hallis at the University of the Witwatersrand and, at the University of Cincinnati, Bela Siki and Frank Weinstock. He first appeared at the Aspen Music Festival and School in 1988 and joined the faculty in 1997. More information at www.antonnel.com.