WPCNR ORCHESTRA PIT. From Purchase College. January 28, 2005: The Purchase College Conservatory of Music Faculty Artist Series presents the internationally acclaimed Mozartean Players, featuring Professor Steven Lubin, in an early music concert February 25 at 8 PM in the Recital Hall of the Music Building. The concert is free and open to the public.
The evening’s program includes Mozart’s Sonata in E Minor, K.304, for violin and fortepiano, Beethoven’s Sonata in F, Op.5/1, for cello and piano, Haydn’s Trio in C, Hob.XV/27, and Mozart’s Trio in Bb, K.502.
Purchase College, State University of New York, is located at 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY. For more information, call 914-251-6700.
The Mozartean Players, founded in 1979, is one of the oldest, continuously active, early music organizations in America. The group’s special focus is the idea of “historically informed” performance, involving the use of accurate period instruments and ways of approaching interpretation relevant to the period. In its initial decade from orchestral to varied chamber formats, the group reinterpreted the classical masterworks in period style in a long series of path-breaking and widely publicized concerts in major halls in New York City. The concerts and recordings of the Mozartean Players Classical Orchestra influenced other artists’ projects internationally, and led to Mr. Lubin’s monumental Beethoven-concerto cycle of recordings for Decca in London.
The current configuration of the group as a piano trio, unchanged since 1987, is comprised of Mr. Lubin, fortepiano, Stanley Ritchie, violin, and Myron Lutzke, cello. The group’s repertoire spans the era from Haydn through Schumann, the period during which the piano, starting as the delicate, five-octave, wooden-frame instrument of the Classics, changed gradually into the larger, early-Romantic piano. A large proportion of the group’s touring has involved Mr. Lubin’s readily transportable five-octave Walter fortepiano replica, performing trios of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven. The stringed instruments are accordingly in period disposition.
Steven Lubin, a founding member of the Mozartean Players, is one of the world’s premier fortepianists, sustaining a busy international career as a performer and recording artist. He is a professor of music at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase, and was the recipient of a Kempner Distinguished Professor Award in 2001. Mr. Lubin has served as soloist and conductor of The Mozartean Players Classical Orchestra in a five-year cycle of concerts at New York’s Metropolitan Museum and Alice Tully Hall, and in a series of Mozart-concerto recordings. His Decca recording of the five Beethoven concertos with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music was chosen as a Recording of the Year by The New York Times, Stereo Review and Gramophone, and was cited as the finest recorded Beethoven cycle available by the Penguin Guide.
Stanley Ritchie, an internationally recognized authority on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century performance practice, joined The Mozartean Players in 1987. He has appeared as a soloist at festivals such as Mostly Mozart, Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Lufthansa (in London). He has performed on modern violin in numerous tours and recordings as first violinist of the Philadelphia String Quartet, and concertmaster of the New York City Opera and Musica Aeterna Orchestras. He is currently on the faculty of the Early Music Institute and director of the Bloomington Baroque at Indiana University’s School of Music.
Myron Lutzke is one of the foremost American players of eighteenth-century cello. Equally active as a performer on both modern and period instruments, he is a member of the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the Aulos Ensemble and the Bach Ensemble, and serves as principal cellist of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra and the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra. As a continuo player he has performed in the Metropolitan Opera production of Handel’s Julius Caesar and in Peter Sellars’ television production of the Mozart-DaPonte operas. Mr. Lutzke is a member of the Early Music faculty of the Mannes College of Music.
The concert is part of a residency the Mozartean Players are conducting at the Conservatory of Music on February 22 and 24, funded by the Chamber Music America Residency Grant Program. The residency focuses on the so-called Viennese classicism period, the era of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven (circa 1770-1800). Chamber Music America is a national non-profit service organization based in New York City that works toward promoting the art of chamber music in various ways.
