Aprés Une Reve

Please join acclaimed pianist Victor Rosenbaum and violinist Liana Branscome for a profound matinée of music by Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach, as well as a piece by living composer and accomplished pianist in his own right, Lewis Warren Jr..

Program:

Mozart: Sonata No. 21 in E minor for Piano and Violin, K. 304

Bach: Partita No. 2 in D minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1004

Brief Intermission

Lewis Warren Jr.: Ballade (2022)

Chopin: Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60

Beethoven: Sonata No. 5 in F major for Violin and Piano, “Spring” Op. 24

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Internationally known pianist and teacher, Victor Rosenbaum, has received critical acclaim since his first Boston debut recital after joining the New England Conservatory faculty in 1967. Of that Boston debut the Boston Globe wrote: Rosenbaum “makes up for all the drudgery the habitual concert-goer has to endure in the hope of finding the real, right thing”. His critical praise continues to this day. Describing his most recent CD, “Brahms: The Last Piano Pieces” (Bridge), which was released in fall 2020, Glyn Pursglove of MusicWeb International said: “Rosenbaum’s account of of these pieces seems to me impeccable. The whole disc is magisterial; a mature pianist bringing deep thought and empathy to a series of mature pieces which stand revealed, as clearly as I have heard, as masterpieces. This will be the disc I turn to when I next want to hear any of these remarkable pieces”. Retired from New England Conservatory after 55 years of consecutive teaching, the 2022-23 season involves concerts and guest teaching residencies in Puerto Rico, Israel, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, where he was recently appointed Visiting Professor of Piano and Chamber Music at National Taiwan Normal University.

Rosenbaum has concertized widely as soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Europe, Israel, Brazil, Russia, and Asia (including 25 annual trips to Japan) in such prestigious halls as Tully Hall in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. A committed chamber music performer, he has collaborated with such artists as Leonard Rose, Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser, Arnold Steinhardt, Robert Mann, Joseph Silverstein, James Buswell, Malcolm Lowe, Walter Trampler, and the Brentano, Borromeo, and Cleveland String Quartets, and was a member of two trios: The Wheaton Trio and The Figaro Trio. Rosenbaum has played and/or taught at many summer festivals, among them Tanglewood, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Kfar Blum and Tel Hai (in Israel), Yellow Barn, Kneisel Hall (Blue Hill), Musicorda, Masters de Pontlevoy (France), the Heifetz Institute, the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, the International Music Seminar in Vienna, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Festival at Walnut Hill School, the Puerto Rico International Piano Festival,The Art of the Piano Festival in Cincinnati, the Atlantic Music Festival, Piano Texas, the Adamant Music School, and the Eastern Music Festival, where he headed the piano department for five years. Rosenbaum is also a contributor to the online site “Musicale” (WeAreMusicale.com).

Recital appearances have brought him to Chicago, Minneapolis, Tokyo, Beijing, St. Petersburg (Russia), Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and New York, among others. In addition to his absorption in the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (in particular Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms), Rosenbaum has performed and given premieres of works by many 20th and 21st Century composers, including John Harbison, John Heiss, Peter Westergaard, Norman Dinerstein, Arlene Zallman, Donald Harris, Daniel Pinkham, Miriam Gideon, Stephen Albert, and many others. A musician of diverse talents, Rosenbaum is also a composer and has frequently conducted in the Boston area and beyond.

Rosenbaum, who studied with Elizabeth Brock and Martin Marks while growing up in Indianapolis, and went on to study with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Festival and Leonard Shure in New York (while earning degrees at Brandeis University and Princeton), has become a renowned teacher himself. During his long tenure on the faculty of New England Conservatory, he chaired its piano department for more than a decade, and was also Chair of Chamber Music. On the faculty of Mannes School of Music in New York from 2004-2017, he has also been Visiting Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, a guest teacher at Juilliard, and presents lectures, workshops, and master classes for teachers’ groups and schools both in the U. S. and abroad, including at London’s Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, and Guildhall School, the conservatories of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Beijing Central Conservatory, Shanghai Conservatory, the Toho School in Tokyo, Tokyo Ondai, Seoul National University, most major schools in Taiwan, and other institutions such as the Menuhin School near London, and the Jerusalem Music Center. Rosenbaum’s students have established teaching and performing careers in the US and abroad, and have won top prizes in such competitions as the Young Concerts Artists, Charles Wadsworth International Competition, New Orleans International Competition, Casagrande International Piano Competition, Gina Bachauer Competition, and the New York International Competition, among others. Rosenbaum’s sixteen years as Director and President of the Longy School of Music (1985-2001) transformed the school into a full-fledged degree granting conservatory as well as a thriving community music school.

In addition to his Brahms disc, Rosenbaum’s recordings on the Bridge and Fleur de Son labels include a Mozart CD, three Schubert discs, one of which was described as “a poignant record of human experience”, and two recordings of Beethoven which the American Record Guide named as among the top classical recordings of 2005 and 2020.

The New York Times put it succinctly after his performance at Tully Hall: Rosenbaum “could not have been better”. And a headline in the Boston Globe summed up the appeal of Rosenbaum’s playing: “Fervor and Gentleness Combined”.

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Liana Branscome is the first prize winner of the Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota Competition Scholarship Level (2015), the Boca Raton Symphonia Concerto Competition (2014), the Ars Flores Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition (2014) and second prize winner of the New World Symphony Young Artist Competition (2014). She has appeared as soloist with the Vidin Philharmonia in Bulgaria, Palm Beach Atlantic Symphony, the Ars Flores Symphony Orchestra and the Treasure Coast Youth Symphony. She has also performed as guest artist at the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island and the Auras Nunes Aula de Cámara in Santiago, Spain. Liana has given numerous recitals throughout the United States, Spain, Portugal and London. She has performed solo and chamber music in venues such as the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall and Indiana University’s Auer Hall. In the spring of 2022, Liana was a member of the Heifetz Institute’s Ensemble in Residence. She was also an artist in resident of the inaugural Windwood Music Festival in the fall of 2022.

Liana graduated with her Master of Music in violin performance at the University of Southern California!s Thornton School of Music where she studied under Glenn Dicterow. She received her Bachelor of Music at the New England Conservatory under the instruction of Paul Biss and Lucy Chapman. Her precollege teachers include David and Linda Cerone. Liana served as a Fellow in NEC’s Community Performances and Partnerships Program where she presented numerous solo and duo recitals in the Boston community. In 2016, she founded the Palm Beach Gardens Soirée Series, an in-house concert series designed to build connection and community between the performer and the audience.

Liana served as a teaching assistant at the University of Southern California in non-major violin. She also served as a guest adjudicator for the Florida Orchestra Association’s Solo and Ensemble Competition and has presented several masterclasses and recitals at schools in South Florida, Boston and Southern California. Liana holds the Rev. Chris and Paula Gray Chair in the Venice Symphony in Venice, Florida and is a regular artist at the Classical Music Institute in San Antonio, TX.

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Lewis Warren Jr. is an award-winning pianist and an accomplished arranger and improviser. His special ability to connect with people through music was evident at an early age.

Featured in many televised and broadcast performances including NBC’s America’s got Talent, and two live Nascar events, Lewis is also a three time TEDx speaker and performing artist. He’s had the honor of playing Chopin’s 2nd Concerto with the DSO conducted by Maestro Jaap Van Zweden. One of his solo performance highlights was to be the featured performer at the Van Cliburn Foundation’s 50th Anniversary Gala Celebration.

Lewis’s versatility is seen through not only his ability to play classical, but also his involvement with jazz, arranging, and composing. His earliest personal project was in 2009 where he released his first instrumental CD “Shine on Us” at Gateway Church, and in 2014 he created his second instrumental album “ A Christmas Album”.

As for competitions, Lewis recently received Honorable Mention in the Memphis International Piano competition in October 2019. He was a semi-finalist in the Piano Arts Competition in 2018, and in the New England Conservatory’s Honors Piano Competition in April 2016.

Over the years Lewis has performed, spoken, and participated in various programs and venues, including: TedxSMU, Vision Africa, the Morton H. Meyerson Family Tzedakah Foundation, Sower of Seeds, the Empty Bowls Foundation of Wichita Falls, and the Van Cliburn Awakenings Program. He obtained his Bachelors Degree from the New England Conservatory of Music; Masters Degree from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and received a Performers Diploma from SMU under Dr. Carol Leone.