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Andrei Ioniţă & Yekwon Sunwoo

Cello and Piano

Sunday Concerts

Music Room

Tickets are $40, $20 for members and students with ID; museum admission for that day is included. Advance reservations are strongly recommended.

Members: please sign in to receive member discount, which will be applied at checkout.

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Program

Romanian cellist Andrei Ioniţă won first prize in the cello section of the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition, confirming his status as one of the leading cellists of his generation. He has appeared in many important European concert venues in recitals and has recently made debuts with the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester in Berlin and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He is joined by South Korean pianist Yekwon Sunwoo, an established soloist and chamber musician. This recital includes five major works for cello and piano, including one of Beethoven’s late cello sonatas, Schubert’s sonata originally composed for the arpeggione, and contrasting masterpieces by Brahms and Debussy, ending with a welcome rarity: Martinů’s Variations on a Theme by Rossini.

PROGRAM:

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 4 in C Major, Op. 102/1 (1815)
     Andante – Allegro vivace
     Adagio – Allegro vivace

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)
Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in a minor, D. 821 (1824)
     Allegro moderato
     Adagio
     Allegretto

Intermission

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 in e minor, Op. 38 (1862)
     Allegro non troppo
     Allegretto quasi Menuetto
     Allegro

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Sonata for Cello and Piano in d minor (1915)
     Prologue: Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto
     Sérénade: Modérément animé
     Final: Animé, léger et nerveux

BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ   (1890-1959)
Variations on a Theme by Rossini, H. 290 (1942)

About the Artists

Cellist Andrei Ioniţă, born in 1994 in Bucharest, began taking piano lessons at the age of five and received his first cello lesson three years later. He studied under Ani-Marie Paladi at the Music School ‘Iosif Sava’ in Bucharest and is currently studying under Professor Jens Peter Maintz at the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Ioniţă is a prizewinner of many international competitions. In June 2013, he was awarded First Prize at the Aram Khachaturian International Competition; in September 2014, he won Second Prize and the Special Prize for the interpretation of a commissioned composition at the International ARD Music Competition in Munich. He received Second Prize at the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann 2014 in Berlin two months later. Ioniţă won international recognition in June 2015 as a winner of the First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Andrei Ioniţă made his UK debut with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra in Cadogan Hall in October 2015, after which Anna Picard described him in The Times as ‘one of the most exciting cellists to have emerged for a decade … whose reading of Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C major coupled an intense beauty of tone with articulation of startling wit and playfulness’.   Other engagements in the 2015/16 season include the Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Filarmonica di Bologna and the Filarmonica ‘George Enescu’ in Bucharest. In addition, he has been invited by Maestro Gergiev to tour with him to London, Munich, Baden Baden and St. Petersburg.

In June 2014, he collaborated with Gidon Kremer and Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy’s Festival, ‘Chamber Music Connects the World’. In the past few years, Andrei Ioniţă has been heard in such venues as the Kammermusiksaal of the Philharmonie in Berlin, Herkulessaal in Munich, Stadtcasino in Basel and Atheneum in Bucharest.

Andrei Ioniţă is a scholarship recipient of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and performs on a violoncello made by Giovanni Battista Rogeri from Brescia in 1671, generously on loan from the foundation

Praised by the Examiner for “the soft caressing touches in quiet passages and his total command over the instrument,” pianist Yekwon Sunwoo won First Prize at the 2015 International German Piano Award in Frankfurt and First Prize at the 2014 Vendome Prize held at the prestigious Verbier Festival. He has performed extensively as a soloist with numerous orchestras including The Juilliard Orchestra under Itzhak Perlman at Avery Fisher Hall, The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop, Orchestre National de Belgique at Palais des Beaux-Arts, the Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra, Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Maroc, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, and Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie. His past recital appearances include Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Hamarikyu Asahi Hall in Tokyo, Wigmore Hall in London, Radio France and Salle Cortot in Paris, and Kumho Art Hall in Seoul. He has performed at various chamber music festivals such as the Summit Music Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Toronto Summer Music Academy and Festival, Music from Angel Fire, and Chamber Music Northwest. In 2014 the Fontec label released his first album, featuring works by Schubert, Liszt, Rachmaninov, and Ravel. Born in Anyang, South Korea, Mr. Sunwoo began his studies with Min-ja Shin and Sun-wha Kim in Korea. From 2005, he studied with Seymour Lipkin at The Curtis Institute of Music. He later studied with Robert McDonald and earned his master’s degree at The Juilliard School. He also studied with Richard Goode at Mannes College.

Watch & Listen

Watch & Listen