PREVIOUS PERFORMANCE
   

Program

Debussy Sonata for cello and piano
Messiaen From Quartet for the End of Time
Cassadó Suite for solo cello
Dvořák Waldersruhe
Brahms Sonata No. 2 in F major, Op. 99

View Program (pdf)

BIOGRAPHIES

Cicely Parnas, Cellist

20-year-old American cellist Cicely Parnas is recognized for bringing “velvety sound, articulate passagework and keen imagination” to her performances (The New York Times). As First Prize Winner of the 2012 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, she will be presented this season in debuts in New York in the Rhoda Walker Teagle Concert, and in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center. Ms. Parnas also gives recitals at the Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, the Jewish Community Alliance, the Buffalo Chamber Music Society, Vanguard Concerts, and the Washington Center for the Performing Arts, and appears as concerto soloist with the Long Bay Symphony, the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, and the Montreal Chamber Orchestra.

In 2012, Cicely Parnas made her Carnegie Hall debut performing the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto with the New York String Orchestra under the baton of Jaime Laredo. Other concerto engagements include the Elgar Cello Concerto with the Vermont Symphony under Jaime Laredo and a tour of France performing the Saint-Saëns Concerto with L’Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire under John Axelrod. Ms. Parnas performed in the 2013 Young Concert Artists Festivals in Tokyo, Japan, and in the cities of Beijing and Wuhan in China. Winning numerous prizes from the age of thirteen, she won the 2011 Artistic Excellence Award and First Prize in the Cello Concerto Competition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She has been heard as the inaugural Young Artist in Residence on NPR’s Performance Today Series.

Ms. Parnas frequently performs and records with her sister, violinist Madalyn Parnas, in duo parnas, which has also performed trios with pianist Peter Serkin. duo parnas has performed Saint-Saëns’s La Muse et le Poète with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic under Randall Fleisher, the El Paso Symphony Orchestra at the El Paso Pro-Musica Festival under Lawrence Loh, and the Albany Symphony Orchestra under David Alan Miller, with which they also played Vivaldi’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. duo parnas has recorded three albums on the Sheffield Lab label. Their most recent, duo parnas NOW! is due for release in Fall 2013 and includes 21st century works by Lera Auerbach, William Bolcom, Paul Moravec, and Charles Wuorinen, among others. In addition, they recently recorded composer Brian Fennelly’s double concerto Fantasia Concertante with the Indiana University New Music Ensemble under the artistic direction of David Dzubay for Albany Records. This live performance was included on Fennelly’s CD The Other Side of Time, and released in 2012. This season, the duo tours the United States and Canada, and performs at Tannery Pond Concerts, the ShortGrass Music Festival, and the Bravo Music Series in Montreal.

Granddaughter of the illustrious cellist Leslie Parnas, Cicely Parnas started playing the cello at age four and made her concerto debut at eleven with the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra. She has studied with cellists Sharon Robinson, Peter Wiley, and Ronald Feldman, and earned an Artist Diploma from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Ms. Parnas performs on a 1712 Giovanni Grancino cello.  

Represented by Young Concert Artists, Inc.

Read More at www.parnasmusic.com

Robert Koenig, Pianist

Photo credit: Tony Mastres and Randall Lamb

Pianist Robert Koenig has quickly established a reputation as a much sought-after collaborative pianist and chamber musician. He performs regularly in major centers throughout the world with many of this generation’s most renowned musicians. Recent engagements have included performances at Carnegie Hall in New York, The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, The Concertgebuow in Amsterdam, The Louvre Museum in Paris, and Royal Festival Hall in London. He has performed with many of today’s leading artists including Sarah Chang, Hilary Hahn, Pamela Frank, Augustin Hadelich, Zuill Bailey, Roberto Diaz, Elmar Oliveira, Aaron Rosand, The Miro String Quartet, and The St. Lawrence String Quartet.

Mr. Koenig has appeared at many festivals including Aspen, Ravinia, Banff, Saratoga, Caramoor, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the El Paso Pro Musica, Chamber Music Northwest, West Branch International Festival and Academy, the Campos do Jordao Festival in Brazil, and the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. He is frequently heard on radio and television including ABC’s “Good Morning America” and CBS “This Morning”. Mr. Koenig was staff pianist at both The Juilliard School and The Curtis Institute of Music, and from 2000-2007 he served as Professor of Piano and Piano Chamber Music at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. With the assistance of the University of Kansas Center for Research, Mr. Koenig commissioned renowned American Composer Lowell Liebermann to write a new trio for flute, cello and piano. In the fall of 2007, he assumed the position as Professor and Head of The Collaborative Piano Program at The University of California Santa Barbara.

Mr. Koenig has recorded for Artek, Ambassador, Biddulph, Cedille, CRI, Decca, Eroica, and Naxos. His CD of transcriptions for viola and piano by William Primrose on Naxos with violist Roberto Diaz was nominated for “Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra)” at the 49th annual Grammy Awards.

Born in Saskatchewan, Robert Koenig began his formal training at the Vancouver Academy of Music with Lee KumSing and Gwen Thompson and later studied at the Banff School of Fine Arts and the Academie Musicale di Chigiana in Siena, Italy. During this time he received several awards from the Canadian Government including a Canada Council Project Grant. He completed both his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Accompanying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with Dr. Vladimir Sokoloff and chamber music with Felix Galimir and Karen Tuttle.