World-renowned string quartet and acclaimed piano virtuoso
In its 50th-anniversary season, the world-renowned Takács Quartet, comprising Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Richard O’Neill (viola) and András Fejér (cello), maintains a busy international touring schedule. In 2025, the ensemble will perform in South Korea, Japan and Australia. The Australian tour is centered around a new piece by Cathy Milliken for quartet and narrator. As associate artists at London’s Wigmore Hall, the group will present four concerts featuring works by Haydn, Britten, Ngwenyama, Beethoven, Janáček and two performances of Schubert’s Cello Quintet with Adrian Brendel. During the season, the ensemble will play at other prestigious European venues, including Barcelona, Budapest, Milan, Basel, Bath Mozartfest and Bern. The group’s North American engagements include concerts in New York, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., La Jolla, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Tucson, Portland and Princeton, and collaborations with pianists Stephen Hough and Jeremy Denk.
The members of the Takács Quartet are Christoffersen Fellows and artists-in-residence at the University of Colorado, Boulder. During the summer months, the Takács join the faculty at the Music Academy of the West running an intensive quartet seminar. In 2021, the Takács won a Presto Music Recording of the Year Award for their recordings of string quartets by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and a Gramophone Award with pianist Garrick Ohlsson for piano quintets by Amy Beach and Elgar. Other releases for Hyperion feature works by Haydn, Schubert, Janáček, Smetana, Debussy and Britten, as well as piano quintets by César Franck and Shostakovich (with Marc-André Hamelin), and viola quintets by Brahms and Dvorák (with Lawrence Power). For their CDs on the Decca/London label, the quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits.
Known for their innovative programming, the Takács became the first string quartet to be awarded the Wigmore Hall Medal in 2014. In 2012, Gramophone announced that the Takács was the first string quartet to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. The ensemble also won the 2011 Award for Chamber Music and Song presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.
Blessed with “poetic and sensitive pianism” (The Washington Post) and a “wondrous sense of color” (San Francisco Classical Voice), Grammy-nominated pianist Joyce Yang captivates audiences with her virtuosity, lyricism and interpretive sensitivity. She first came to international attention in 2005 when she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The youngest contestant at 19 years old, she took home two additional awards: Best Performance of Chamber Music (with the Takàcs Quartet) and Best Performance of a New Work. In 2006, Yang made her celebrated New York Philharmonic debut alongside Lorin Maazel at Avery Fisher Hall, along with the orchestra’s tour of Asia, making a triumphant return to her hometown of Seoul, South Korea. Yang’s subsequent appearances with the New York Philharmonic have included opening night of the 2008 Leonard Bernstein Festival and an appearance made at the request of Maazel in his final season as music director. The New York Times pronounced her performance in Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety a “knockout.”
Over the last two decades, Yang has blossomed into an “astonishing artist” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), showcasing her colorful musical personality in solo recitals and collaborations with the world’s top orchestras and chamber musicians through more than 1,000 debuts and re-engagements. She received the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant and earned her first Grammy nomination (Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance) for her recording of Franck, Kurtág, Previn & Schumann with violinist Augustin Hadelich (“One can only sit in misty-eyed amazement at their insightful flair and spontaneity.” – The Strad).
Program:
- Beethoven: String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 1
- Ngwenyama: “Flow”
- Intermission
- Schumann: Piano Quintet (with Joyce Yang)
