Dongmin Kim, conductor

Violin

Sammy Andonian
Jeremiah Blacklow
Amelia Dietrich
Emma Frucht
Leonard Fu
Yiliang Jang
Valerie Kim
Yoonbe Kim
Harriet Langley

Viola

Hannah Burnett
En-Chi Cheng
Yuchen Lu

Cello

Samuel DeCaprio
Madeline Fayette
Josh Halpern

Bass

Milad Daniari

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Founded in 2010, NEW YORK CLASSICAL PLAYERS (NYCP) is an ensemble dedicated to the highest standards of artistry, collaboration, and virtuosity. Fueled by the belief that access to musical excellence is an essential human right, NYCP presents all of its concerts free of charge. NYCP is comprised of dynamic young musicians who are launching their professional careers. Graduates of some of the world’s leading conservatories come together as NYCP to share free performances of familiar masterpieces, bold new commissions, and unexpected musical treasures with the public. Each season, thousands of NYCP concertgoers experience both the dynamic power of the orchestral repertoire and the versatile intimacy of chamber performance – without charge. NYCP is under the direction of Founder and Music Director Dongmin Kim, and a committed board of directors guides and supports the organization.

Learn more about the NYCP at their website.

Since winning the 1991 Naumburg Viola Award, MISHA AMORY has been active as a soloist and chamber musician. He has performed with orchestras in the United States and Europe, and has been presented in recitals at New York’s Tully Hall, Los Angeles’ Ambassador series, Philadelphia’s Mozart on the Square festival, Boston’s Gardner Museum, Houston’s Da Camera series and Washington’s Phillips Collection. 

He has been invited to perform at the Marlboro Festival, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Vancouver Festival, the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center and the Boston Chamber Music Society, and he has released a recording of Hindemith sonatas on the Musical Heritage Society label. 

Mr. Amory holds degrees from Yale University and the Juilliard School; his principal teachers were Heidi Castleman, Caroline Levine and Samuel Rhodes. Himself a dedicated teacher, Mr. Amory serves on the faculties of the Juilliard School in New York City and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

HSIN-YUN HUANG has forged a career as one of the leading violists of her generation, performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Ms. Huang has been a soloist with the Berlin Radio Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Bogotá Philharmonic, the NCPA Orchestra in Beijing, Zagreb Soloists, International Contemporary Ensemble, the London Sinfonia, and the Brazil Youth Orchestra, and has performed the complete Hindemith viola concertos with the Taipei City Symphony. She is a regular presence at festivals including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Rome, Spoleto USA, Moritzburg, Music@Menlo, and the Seoul Spring Festival, among many others. She tours extensively with the Brentano String Quartet, most notably including performances of the complete Mozart string quintets at Carnegie Hall.

NYCP is thrilled to be at Brown University for a runout concert, featuring the Double Concerto No. 2 for Two Violas, by Eric Nathan, with celebrated violists Misha Amory and Hsin-Yun Huang as soloists. NYCP revisits Nathan's Omaggio a Gesualdo, which pays tribute to the renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo. The program follows with barrier-breaking composer William Grant Still's Mother and Child, an elegant, emotional portrayal of motherhood. Concluding the concert is Schubert's beloved Death and the Maiden, known for its emotional depth and intensity.

"Omaggio a Gesualdo" (2013) is inspired by Gesualdo's madrigal "Ahi, disperata vita" from Madrigali a cinque voci Libro terzo (1594). It uses Gesualdo's work as a model, recasting his gestures and musical motives in my own language, while loosely adhering to the form of his work. I have long been an admirer of Gesualdo's music, especially his use of harmony and jarring chord progressions that keep his work sounding as modern today as it did four hundred years ago. 

In revisiting Gesualdo's music for this homage, I noticed a kinship in Gesualdo's approach to harmony with my own – he frequently links distantly related chords in succession, while I frequently combine disparate chords in superimposition, creating new composite harmonies. My homage features these superimposed harmonies at the forefront.

The music of Gesualdo’s madrigals are inseparable from the texts he sets, as Gesualdo is known for his frequent use of “text painting.” Similarly, my work is inspired by the images, gestures and meaning of the text. Please find the text reprinted below: 

"Ahi, disperata vita" 

Ahi, disperata vita,
Che fuggendo il mio bene,
Miseramente cade in mille pene!
Deh, torna alla tua luce alma e gradita
Che ti vuol dar aita! 

English translation: 

Ah, desperate life,
Which, whilst fleeing from my loved one,
fallst miserably into a thousand torments!
Oh, turn to your sweet and gracious light which wants to give you comfort.

The work is dedicated to Tera Younger in loving memory. The original version for string quintet was commissioned by the Chelsea Music Festival. The version for string orchestra was commissioned by the New York Classical Players. 

- Eric Nathan

I took daily walks as I wrote this piece. I walked along a path that sits atop a ridge in the Italian countryside and is lined with trees on both sides: towering cypresses that stand tall and erect like ancient living pillars or guarding giants, and younger lindens that reach across to each other and gently entwine their branches above. The path stretches straight from a castle on one end across the ridge and through a gate to a forest beyond where the eye can see. Walking down this path evoked in me a sense of a procession through time. It was only after completing this work did I realize how much the experience of my daily walks had seeped into my conception of this concerto, both consciously and unconsciously.

At its heart, Double Concerto No. 2 is an exploration of the intertwining relationships between discrete and opposing forces. I contemplate various acts of weaving-together: of one life with another, of the human and natural worlds, of stasis and movement, of the past and present, and of feelings such as love, loss, joy and remembrance.  While the concerto is symphonic in scope, its central focus is the two soloists and their interactions between each other and the orchestra.

The work is structured in five movements and a coda. The movements are woven together without pause by five interludes. In each interlude, waves of sound ripple and rustle across the ensemble, which often are “painted” by the conductor’s sweeping gestures. The two solo violists are often put into conversation with a consort of three violists from the orchestra. In movements II and V, this trio consort introduces quotations from music of the past, which are reimagined and reframed throughout the concerto: 16th-century composer John Dowland’s Flow My Tears (originally Lachrimae Pavan, c. 1596 A.D.), and 11th-century composer Pérotin’s Viderunt Omnes (“All the Ends of the Earth,” c. 1198). Dowland’s lamenting lute song was originally composed in the form of a pavane, which is a slow processional dance for couples that often precedes a faster, joyous dance. Pérotin’s luminous setting of a Gregorian chant is one of the first instances of polyphony in Western European music.

Double Concerto No. 2 was composed for violists Misha Amory and Hsin-Yun Huang and was co-commissioned by Yellow Barn, Seth Knopp, Artistic Director, as part of Yellow Barn’s commissioning project in memory of Roger Tapping; co-commissioned by The Juilliard School; co-commissioned by the New York Classical Players, Dongmin Kim, Music Director; and co-commissioned by Rhode Island Chamber Music Concerts.

Double Concerto No. 2 is dedicated to Misha Amory and Hsin-Yun Huang, and to the memory of violist Roger Tapping. This work was composed during a residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, situated in a 16th-century Italian castle on the site of an 11th-century church.

- Eric Nathan