spring of chosroes (1977)
Morton Feldman (1926–1987)
Sonata No. 3 for violin and piano (1944)
Bohuslav Martinů
I Poco allegro (1890–1959)
II. Adagio
III. Scherzo
IV. Lento - Moderato - Allegro
INTERMISSION
violin and piano II for Ben and David (2023)
— World Premiere —
Commissioned by David Kalhous and Ben Sung for their Extension project
Fantaisie in C Major for violin and piano, D 934
Nomi Epstein (b. 1978)
Franz Schubert
Andante molto (1797–1828)
Allegretto
Andantino
Allegro vivace - Presto
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
ABOUT THE FEATURED COMPOSER
The music of Boston-based composer Nomi Epstein centers around her interest in sonic fragility, where structure arises out of textural subtleties. Her work invites both performer and listener to enter into her sound world through focused listening, and concentration on the subtleties of each sound, and its placement, even if indeterminate, in sonic/temporal space. Her music has been performed throughout the US and Europe working with ensembles such as SurPlus, ICE, Wet Ink, Mivos Quartet, Wild Rumpus, Dedalus, Southland, and counter)induction. In 2020, she released her first solo composer album sounds under New Focus Recordings including performances by Reinier van Houdt and for Collect/Project, and her collections for Juliet was released in a compilation album by Juliet Fraser under HCR. An active practitioner and advocate of experimental music, she is the founder/director of the critically acclaimed, experimental music ensemble a•pe•ri•od•ic, in which she also performs. Her curatorial work includes large scale festivals as in the Chicago area 2012 centennial John Cage Festival, the 2014 Chicago Wandelweiser Festival, the 2017 Galina Ustvolskaya Festival, in addition to experimental music concerts in the US and abroad involving guest composers and performers from across the globe. She continues to research, write, and lecture on post-Cagean, notated, experimental music. Epstein currently serves as Associate Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Associate Professor of Violin at Florida State University, violinist Benjamin Sung is also a Faculty Artist and violin coordinator at the Brevard Music Center. Recent concert highlights include the 2022 Brevard Music Festival; the 24 Caprices by Paganini during the COVID-shortened 2019-20 season; a TED talk for TEDx Fargo; and a complete Beethoven cycle with pianist David Kalhous. In 2022, after sharing 10 years of concerts of the violin-piano repertoire, Sung and Kalhous are embarking on a new chapter of their partnership, called extension: an effort to present the greatest music of the existing repertoire along with newly commissioned works from today’s most exciting composers, both in live performance and recorded and streaming media.
Sung has performed as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Camerata Romeu of Havana, Cuba, the Virtuosi of Festival Internacionale de Musica in Recife, Brazil, and the National Repertory Orchestra. He is equally in demand as a chamber musician, having shared the stage with great performers including pianist Monique Duphil, and cellists Antonio Meneses and Marcio Carneiro. He is a past winner of the Starling Award of the Eastman School of Music and the Violin Fellowship of the Montgomery Symphony, and an Aaron Copland Fund Recording Grant.
An enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music, Sung has recorded the music of composers Steve Rouse and Marc Satterwhite for Centaur Records, has performed and taught for Studio 2021 at Seoul National University, and has worked with many of the greatest composers of this generation, including John Adams, Pierre Boulez, George Crumb, and Helmut Lachenmann. In 2012, he released an album of new American works entitled FluxFlummoxed on Albany Records, a recording hailed by Fanfare Magazine as “a brilliant performance of four superb works” with “impeccable intonation and tone production.” Sung has an upcoming new solo album featuring works by Sciarrino, Berio, Maderna, and Schnittke.
Sung holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Oleh Krysa, and Master’s and Doctorate degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, from the studio of Nelli Shkolnikova.
Sung also studied at the Professional Training Program at Carnegie Hall, the Lucerne Festival Academy, the New York String Seminar, and the Chamber Music Residency at The Banff Centre.
Associate Professor of Piano David Kalhous has gained recognition in Europe and the United States for his elegant musicianship, brilliant pianism, probing intelligence, and engaging programming. With a wide-ranging repertoire spanning three centuries, he is equally at home with music of Scarlatti and Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, and Ligeti, and Feldman.
Kalhous’ debut solo recital at the Prague Spring Festival was met with critical acclaim, and he has been invited to present recitals at Symphony Space, Bargemusic, Spectrum, Bohemian National Hall and SoapBox in New York City; PianoForte Foundation and WFMT radio station in Chicago; Embassy of the Czech Republic in Washington, D.C.; Prague Symphony Orchestra’s World Piano recital series, Czech Philharmonic Chamber Music Society, Czech Radio’s Studio Live Concert Series, Israel Contemporary Players recital series at Teiva in Tel Aviv-Yaffo, and Konvergence New Music Series in Prague, to name a few. He also recently performed at Northwestern University, Yale University, University of Chicago, Eastman School of Music, and University of North Carolina School of the Arts, among others.
Recent collaborations with orchestra include Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety with Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra under Stefan Asbury, Brahms’ D Minor Concerto with the North Bohemia Symphony Orchestra, Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra with the Florida State University New Music Ensemble, Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto for Violin and Piano with the Plzeň Philharmonic Orchestra, and Beethoven’s third and fifth piano concertos with the Chamber Philharmonia Pardubice. David Kalhous also appeared as a soloist with the Israel Symphony Orchestra, Prague Philharmonia, Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, Moravian Philharmonic, West-Bohemia Symphony Orchestra, and Musici di Praga among others, and has worked with such conductors as Stefan Asbury, Libor Pešek, Eli Jaffe, Leoš Svárovský, Stanislav Vavřínek and Marián Valčuha.
Kalhous has made various recordings for the Czech Radio and Television, and his performances were broadcast on WFMT Chicago, WUOT, and WFSQ. He was also the author and host of a series of radio programs devoted to music for piano and its interpretation that were produced and broadcast by the radio station Classic FM in Prague. Czech Television’s Channel 2 showed a documentary film about Kalhous.
Recently, Kalhous recorded 12 piano sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti as part of the Czech Radio’s Complete Scarlatti Sonatas project, as well as a solo CD for the Arco Diva label with sonatas by Beethoven, Janáček, and Liszt. With violinist Benjamin Sung, he presented the complete works of Beethoven for piano and violin in four concerts.
Kalhous’ interest in 20th century and new music has resulted in close collaboration with many European and American composers who have written works expressly for him. He has performed with and under the auspices of the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble, Ensemble Konvergence, Florida State University New Music Ensemble, Florida State University Chamber Winds, Fonema Consort, and Texas Tech University New Music Ensemble. His solo piano project, Piano Music from Prague, features newly commissioned works by eight leading Czech composers.
Kalhous began his professional studies at the Prague Conservatory as a student of Jaroslav Čermák. His attended such institutions as Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna, the Academy of Arts in Prague, the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel-Aviv University and Yale University, and studied with Paul Badura Skoda, Emil Leichner, Victor Derevianko, David Northington, and Peter Frankl. Kalhous holds a Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University, where he studied with Ursula Oppens. He also worked with Jerome Lowenthal at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, and with Paul Lewis at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival as a Gilmore Fellow.