Internationally Renowned Juilliard Quartet Opens Essex Winter Series Season

Mihae Lee

The Essex Winter Series will launch its 39th season on January 10 with a performance by the Juilliard Quartet with pianist Mihae Lee at 3pm at Valley Regional High School in Deep River. This series founded by Fenton Brown in 1978 with a mission to bring the finest music, in live performance, to the Connecticut River Valley and Shoreline Region during the winter months. This concert series is renowned not only for their world-class artistic quality, but also for their extraordinary variety and friendly, informal atmosphere. Programs in the past have ranged from an intimate solo guitar recital to a full symphony orchestra. Programming includes both instrumental and vocal music performances and the Stu Ingersoll Jazz concert is an annual occurrence as is the Fenton Brown Emerging Artists concert presenting young performers.  

The first concert of this season will feature one of the country's most revered string quartets. This performance is part of the quartet’s international tour of America, Europe, and Asia in celebration of its 70th season. The Juilliard String Quartet will perform two favorites from the classical repertory, Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet and Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major, Op. 135, and will then be joined by Essex Winter Series artistic director and pianist Mihae Lee in the monumental F minor Piano Quintet of Brahms. The JSQ members are violinists Joseph Lin and Ronald Copes, violist Roger Tapping, and cellist Joel Krosnick, who will perform his 41st and final season with the quartet before his retirement later in 2016. 

“I am thrilled that the Juilliard Quartet will appear on the series, and I’m honored to perform with them, especially in Joel’s last season with the group,” says Mihae Lee. “They have such a fantastic history of performing old and new music at the highest level, and bringing great young players into the group over the years. The audience will really have a wonderful time – this concert should not be missed!”

Tickets, all general admission are $35, $5 for full-time students, and may be purchased on the EWS website, www.essexwinterseries.com, or by calling 860-272-4572.

About the Artists:

The Juilliard String Quartet, widely known as the quintessential American string quartet, celebrates the 2015/16 season, the Quartet’s 70th, with concert tours in North America, Europe and Asia; performances of Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 1 and a new work by Richard Wernick commissioned for them by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; and concerts honoring cellist Joel Krosnick at New York’s Alice Tully Hall, the Ravinia Festival and the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, featuring the Schubert Cello Quintet with guest cellist Astrid Schween who succeeds Mr. Krosnick in the fall of 2016. The Quartet also celebrates a groundbreaking new interactive app on Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, released in 2015 by Touchpress and the Juilliard School.

Founded in 1946, the Juilliard String Quartet was the first ensemble to play all six Bartok quartets in the United States, and its performances of Schoenberg’s quartets helped establish the works as cornerstones of the modern string quartet literature. The Quartet’s recordings of the Bartok and Schoenberg Quartets, as well as those of Debussy, Ravel and Beethoven won Grammy Awards, and in 2011 the Quartet became the first classical music ensemble to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 2014 Sony Classical reissued the Quartet’s landmark recordings of the first four Elliott Carter String Quartets together with the recently recorded Carter Quartet No. 5, making a complete historical document.

Over its seven decades, the Quartet has made manifest the credo of its founders to “play new works as if they were established masterpieces and established masterpieces as if they were new.” In addition to Carter and Wernick, the Quartet’s 2015/16 season repertoire features Schubert’s Quartettsatz, Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet, the Debussy Quartet and Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 135. Their collaborations also include the Brahms Piano Quintet with Mihae Lee, as well as the Brahms G major Sextet with cellist Marcy Rosen and former Juilliard Quartet violist Samuel Rhodes. Last season they toured North America, Asia and Europe with typically varied programming including Shulamit Ran’s Quartet No. 2, “Vistas”, works by Webern, Berg, Martinu and Elgar, as well as Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet. In 2013 they premiered the String Quartet No. 3, “Whereof man cannot speak . . . ” by Jesse Jones.

Devoted master teachers, the members of the Juilliard String Quartet offer classes and open rehearsals when on tour. At The Juilliard School, where they are the String Quartet in Residence, all are sought-after members of the string and chamber music faculty. Annually in May, they are hosts of the 5-day internationally recognized Juilliard String Quartet Seminar.

In performance, recordings and incomparable work educating and training the major quartets of our time, the Juilliard String Quartet has carried the banner of the United States and The Juilliard School throughout the world.

Praised by Boston Globe as “simply dazzling,” Artistic Director and pianist Mihae Lee has been captivating audiences throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia in solo recitals and chamber music concerts with her poetic lyricism and scintillating virtuosity. She has performed in such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Jordan Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Academia Nationale de Santa Cecilia in Rome, Warsaw National Philharmonic Hall, and Taipei National Hall.

An active chamber musician, Ms. Lee is a founding member of the Triton Horn Trio with violinist Ani Kavafian and French hornist William Purvis and was an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society for three decades.

Her recordings of Brahms, Shostakovich, Bartok, and Stravinsky with the members of BCMS were critically acclaimed by High Fidelity, CD Review, and Fanfare magazines, the reviews calling her sound “as warm as Rubinstein, yet virile as Toscanini.”

Ms. Lee has appeared frequently at numerous international chamber music festivals including Dubrovnik, Amsterdam, Groningen, Festicamara (Colombia), Great Woods, Seattle, OK Mozart, Mainly Mozart, Music from Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, Rockport, Sebago-Long Lake, Bard, Norfolk, Mostly Music, Music Mountain, Monadnock, and Chestnut Hill Concerts. In addition to many years of performing regularly at Bargemusic in New York, she has been a guest artist with the Chamber

Music Society of Lincoln Center, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Speculum Musicae; has collaborated with the Tokyo, Muir, Cassatt, and Manhattan string quartets; and has premiered and recorded works by such composers as Gunther Schuller, Ned Rorem, Paul Lansky, Henri Lazarof, Michael Daugherty, and Ezra Laderman.

In addition to her concert career, Ms. Lee maintains her commitment to give back to her community and help many worthy charities. At the invitation of the Prime Minister and the First Lady of Jamaica, she has organized and performed in concerts in Kingston and Montego Bay to benefit the Jamaica Early Childhood Development Foundation. For many years she brought world-class musicians, both classical and jazz, to perform in fund-raising concerts for the Hastings Education Foundation outside of New York City, and she recently launched an annual Gala Concert for the Community Health Clinic of Butler County, a free health clinic outside of Pittsburgh.

Born in Seoul, Korea, Ms. Lee made her professional debut at the age of fourteen with the Korean National Orchestra after becoming the youngest grand prizewinner at the prestigious National Competition held by the President of Korea. In the same year, she came to the United States on a scholarship from The Juilliard School Pre-College, and subsequently won many further awards including First Prize at the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition, the Juilliard Concerto Competition, and the New England Conservatory Concerto Competition. Ms. Lee received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School and her artist diploma from the New England Conservatory, studying with Martin Canin and Russell Sherman. She has released compact discs on the Bridge, Etcetera, EDI, Northeastern, and BCMS labels. Most recently, Ms. Lee was appointed Music Director of the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival in Maine.