Expert-led trips to the musical capitals of Europe

In a time where there seem to be dozens of up-and-coming virtuoso violinists, Mayuka Kamio stands out. The Japanese musician follows in the long list of great musicians from her country, including Seiji Ozawa, Midori, and Shinichi Suzuki.

Mayuko was born in Osaka in 1986 and began to play violin at the age of four. Her earliest teachers were some of Japan’s finest violinists, and she studied at the Toho Gakuen School of Music. Like many other young violinists, she continued her education in the United States, studying at the Aspen Music Festival and the pre-college division of The Juilliard School. Zurich, Switzerland is her current home where she balances an international performing career with advanced studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater.

On TV at Age 10

The Japanese virtuoso showed her talent at a young age. Kamio made her concerto debut in Tokyo at the age of ten under the baton of Charles Dutoit, and this was broadcast on NHK television. The following year, she was the youngest violinist ever to win a prize in the Menuhin International Violin Competition and performed with the Orchestra National de Lille under Lord Menuhin’s direction.

Mayuko was also active in the United States. When she was thirteen, Mayuko won First Prize in the 2000 Young Concert Artists International Auditions.  In 2001, she was the youngest artist ever to be presented in the Young Concert Artists Series at the Kennedy Center. Two years later, she made her New York concerto debut with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Alice Tully Hall and gave a recital at the 92nd Street Y.

Tchaikovsky Competition Winner

On the European stage, she won Gold Medals at the Monte Carlo Violin Masters and at the International David Oistrakh Violin Competition in Ukraine. But her most notable award came in 2007 when she captured First Prize in International Tchaikovsky Competition. This competition, held every four years, has been won by such notables as Van Cliburn, Gidon Kremer, and Viktoria Mulllova.

Of course, these incredible successes have made Kamio in great demand as a soloist with orchestras throughout the world. To date, she has performed with the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich with Mstislav Rostropovich, the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, the Russian National Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Spivakov, and the Prague Philharmonic, the BBC Philharmonic, the Oviedo Symphony Orchestra in Spain, and many others. And, proving that she plays more than just the classics, she has soloed with the Boston Pops conducted by Keith Lockhart.

Mayuko’s Compact Disks

Fans of virtuoso artists love to buy their compact disks. To date, Kayuko has released four CD’s:  the Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev Concerti; another recording with orchestra of Bach, Waxman, and Chausson; a violin and piano recital with Stravinsky, Szymanowski, and others; and Paganini’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin. When she signed with SONY BMG Masterworks, the head of the company said, “Mayuko just won the Tchaikovsky Competition and performed in Munich with Zubin Mehta, where I was delighted to witness a unanimous standing ovation for her performance. She will undoubtedly be one of the most inspired and gifted violinists on the international concert circuit.”

The New York Times described her 2008 recital as “distinguished by her warmly luxurious, buttery tone and long, seamless phrases.” Kamio plays a Stradivari violin from 1727 that was once owned by the 19^th-century virtuoso Joseph Joachim.

Mayuko Kamio soloed with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra in November 2012. This article appeared in Greensboro, North Carolina’s News and Record on October 28, 2012.

Emanuel Ax

Pianist Emanuel (Manny) Ax is a wonderful piano player who has toured the world, recorded a huge amount of repertoire, and has collaborated with the finest musicians and orchestras. Manny, it turns out, is far from your run of the mill piano virtuoso.

In his 1977 expose on the professional golf tour, Dave Hill compared the personalities and interests of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Palmer, Hill said, would always talk about golf – the latest clubs, the courses he had recently played, nothing but golf. In contrast, Nicklaus likes to discuss many things like fine wines, interesting places to travel, even the marching band of his alma mater Ohio State University where he once dotted the “i” in their script Ohio. In the world of world-class pianists, Emanuel Ax is more like Nicklaus.

A Polish Violinist to a Juilliard Pianist

Perhaps Manny learned flexibility and openness from his parents who had to adapt for both to survive the holocaust.  Then the youngster did not start on piano; he started on violin, eventually studying keyboard with his father who coached in an opera house in Lwow, Poland. It was not until after living in Warsaw and Winnepeg, Canada that the family settled in New York and young Ax began to study at The Juilliard School, just like any other future virtuoso.

Yo Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax

Now that Ax has made a name for himself as one of a handful of the world’s top pianists, one might think he would stick to a short list of tried-and-true composers  like Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and maybe one or two others. But Manny (just like Jack Nicklaus) would never allow himself to live in such a small world. Although he loves these great composers, he strongly believes a 21^st Century musician should also play music from today’s composers. To this end, he has not only played a great deal of music written in the last 50 years, but has asked composers to write new pieces just for him. Pianists in the next 100 years will thank Ax for extending their repertoire.

A Chamber Musician Par Excellence

Although many established pianists are content to live as a soloist, either playing solo recitals or concertos with orchestras, Ax loves to play chamber music and is considered and an outstanding chamber musician. One of his best friends and musical collaborators is the cellist Yo Yo Ma. Together, the two have received three Grammy Awards for Best Chamber Music Performance. Ax has four other Grammys as well.

Emanuel Ax in front of the Chicago skyline.

With his expertise in so many facets of music, one would think music was all that Emanuel Ax did. This is certainly not the case with his chameleon-like interests. Studying at Juilliard and honing his keyboard skills probably took all of his time. Well, no. At the same time, he earned a degree in French at Columbia!

An Emmy for a Holocaust Documentary

And there is more (think Nicklaus). While most pianists are content to spend their lives sitting at a Steinway grand piano, Ax was so interested in a 2004 BBC documentary on the Holocaust that he was one of the musical contributors. Add an International Emmy Award to his collection of Grammys.

So what has this remarkable musician has added to his rich life recently? Blogging on his site (emanuelax.wordpress.com). His recent posts on how and when audiences applaud – and don’t applaud – are creating some waves in the world of classical music. They are definitely worth reading.

This article was written in 2009 before Emanuel Ax’s performance with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra.

Although Dvořák was greatly influenced by Czech folk music, he is often considered more of a “universal” composer than a primarily “nationalistic” one such as Smetana. He wrote significant works for all genres, and some consider him the most important composer – from any country – in the period following Brahms’s death.

That said, the melodies in the Eighth Symphony are easily heard as coming from the Bohemian folk music that was so important to the composer. Within a rather stormy first movement, Dvořák gives us a “bird call” melody in the flutes, again, reminiscent of his time in the Czech countryside. Another interesting feature of the symphony is in the third movement. Most orchestra minuets or waltzes end with the same character as they began, but here Dvořák concludes the movement with a faster dance.

The Eighth Symphony was completed in a relatively short period of 77 days in August through November, 1889. Dvořák dedicated it to Emperor Franz Joseph and the Bohemian Academy for the Encouragement of Arts and Literature to which the composer had recently been elected.

Dvořák’s 8th Symphony appeared on the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra’s concerts in November, 2011.

Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto had a very problematic beginning. In 1939, a Philadelphia businessman named Samuel Fels asked Barber to write a concerto for the violinist Iso Briselli. Barber started working on the first two movements in Switzerland, but had to return to the U.S. because of the war. He continued his compositional work in the Pocono Mountains.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

Then the problems began. Barber gave the first two movements to Briselli. The violinist liked the music, but when he showed them to Albert Meiff, his violin coach in New York, Meiff thought they were poorly written and needed many changes. The New York violinist actually wrote to Fels and documented all the problems he saw in the piece.

In the meantime, Barber had finished the third movement and arranged for a reading of the movement at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia to be sure that was he was giving Briselli was technically feasible. Those who heard this private performance including Gian Carlo Menotti thought the movement was playable and was very high quality music.

But now it was Briselli who did not like it. Briselli felt it was too lightweight in comparison to the first two movements. After all of this, Barber did not change his piece, but Briselli did not premier it either. Despite the controversy which continues even today, the Violin Concerto has become one of the most frequently performed 20^th-century concerti.

David Nelson is indebted to Marc Mostovoy, founder of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and a representative of the Briselli family, for his help in the preparation of this post.