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The Heath Quartet, which plays with “a winsome blend of impetuosity and discipline” (The Washington Post), has just completed a stint as Middlebury College‘s first-ever string-quartet-in-residence.

The residency featured the Heath performing the six Bartók quartets (which they also perform at Wigmore Hall in May 2016), works by Tchaikovsky, Haydn and Beethoven, and many other activities including coaching music students, visits with local elementary schools, and community pop-up concerts.

This winter they also returned to Wigmore Hall for a concert with pianist James Baillieu and for the Bartók cycle; won accolades for a last-moment substitution, performing a concert for the Club Musical de Quebec (read a review here); and performed a lively “house concert” at the Colbert offices during the January conferences.

These dates followed the December 2015 release of the five string quartets of Sir Michael Tippett, recorded live at a Wigmore Hall retrospective of the composer’s works:

“Finally came Tippett’s great Third Quartet, which can surely stand beside Britten’s quartets, or anybody else’s. Its wonderful slow movement was sustained by the Heath Quartet with amazing, rapt intensity, and the pinpoint focus and swinging energy they brought to the final fugue was simply dazzling.”

– Ivan Hewett, THE TELEGRAPH, Dec. 6, 2013

Watch a beautiful preview of the album, and the Heath’s work preparing the repertoire, in the video below.

In 2016, the Heath begin a new relationship with Harmonia Mundi, with a Summer release of the Tchaikovsky Quartets Nos. 1 and 3 (recorded at Milton Court in December 2015). They record the Bartók Quartets live at Wigmore Hall next Spring, to be released in May 2017 in conjunction with an appearance at the Berlin Konzerthaus.

This weekend, pianist Ran Dank offers two recital programs for San Miguel de Allende. Program 1 includes Chopin, Liszt, Scriabin, and Beethoven; Program 2 is (wholly different) works by Beethoven, Liszt and Rachmaninoff.

Watch Dank perform the Liszt Reminiscences of Norma here.

Pianist Ursula Oppens strolls the red carpet at the 2016 GRAMMY Awards with her artistic and personal partner Jerome Lowenthal.  Oppens was nominated for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for the Cedille Records release featuring her recording of Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” (which Oppens premiered, and also recorded in an earlier version for Vanguard Records, which also received a GRAMMY nomination). Oppens and Lowenthal’s world-premiere recording of a new Rzewski work, Four Hands, a duet commissioned by and written for the pair, is also on the album.

Shortly before the GRAMMY ceremony, Oppens performed the solo version of “The People United…” at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center:

“It is probably safe to say that no single performer has done more for the cause of American piano music than Ursula Oppens…The ease with which Oppens accomplishes all this stems, on one hand, from the depth of her musicality and, on the other, from the sheer courage of her convictions.”
– THE WASHINGTON POST, Feb. 5, 2016

With mounting success in both symphonic and operatic repertoire, Jayce Ogren is building a reputation as one of the finest young conductors to emerge from the United States in recent seasons.

Ogren is enjoying a busy winter, leading the Dallas Symphony in subscription performances (a special Valentine’s presentation of the film West Side Story with orchestra) and with the Colorado Symphony, in a program featuring works by Sibelius, Khachaturian, and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

The Colorado Symphony is offering a new pilot-test of live-streamed concerts; enjoy Ogren’s full concert with the CSO on their SoundCloud page, below.

Looking forward, Ogren leads performances with the Edmonton Symphony, and a special festival of contemporary and genre-bending music with the Indianapolis Symphony, the InFusion Music Fest. He also leads the world premiere of Shalimar the Clown in June 2016 with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

Last week Marc-André Hamelinperformed a solo recital at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, with a program featuring works by Mozart, Ravel, Busoni, himself, and Liszt.

“Mr. Hamelin, having spent much of his early career exploring pianistic showpieces on the fringes of the repertory, has a commanding technique. But there was no sense of slumming or condescension. As in his brilliant recordings of Haydn sonatas for Hyperion, Mr. Hamelin approached the relative simplicities [of Mozart’s Sonata in C Major, K.545]  with warmth and affection.
From there, he upped the ante repeatedly… Much the same could be said of Liszt’s punishing B minor Sonata. Mr. Hamelin, summoning tremendous power, played it magisterially, without ever losing sight of the fine thread connecting its various episodes.”
– James R. Oestreich, The New York Times, Jan. 21, 2016