September 26, 2011

Recent uploads.  The Italian pianist Davide Polovineo has an unusual and diverse background.  Born in 1970, he graduated with honors in 1992 from Istituto Superiore di Musica "Gaetano Braga” in the city of Teramo both as a pianist specializing in Romantic repertoire and a chamber musician. He also received a degree in theology and psychology, specializing in cultural anthropology, from the Pontifical University “San Anselmo” in Rome and Lincoln University.  He studied piano and chamber music with late Russian piano virtuoso Lazar Berman, the violinist Felix Ayo and other musicians. Since 1997 Davide has been performing as a piano soloist, playing most of the concert halls of Italy and giving recitals in Europe.  He has recorded for the European Institute of Music, where he also teaches and is now the Director.  We’ll hear him play Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in A Major, L. 391.

The young American cellist Nathan Vickery currently studies with Peter Wile at the Curtis Institute.  He has won prizes at several competitions, appeared on NPR’s From the Top and has been a soloist with many orchestras across the US.  As a chamber musician, he has toured with Curtis on Tour and has collaborated with Joshua Bell, Jonathan Biss, and the contemporary music ensemble Eight Blackbird.  Here he performs Ludwig van Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 4 in C Major, Op. 102, No. 1.  Nathan is accompanied by pianist Kwan Yi.

Two young baritones, Michael Kelly and Jonathan Beyer, met this summer at the Steans Institute in Ravinia, where they studied (the singers’ faculty includes such luminaries as Sylvia McNair) and also performed.  Michael Kelly, who holds a master’s degree from the Juilliard School, won this year’s Joy of Singing Competition and was featured in Handel’s Acis and Galatea with Boston Early Music Festival, in recital at New York’s Trinity Church, in John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versaille in Aspen, and in Schubert’s Winterreise in Houston.  We’ll hear him perform Le cygne (The swan), from the wonderful song cycle Histoires naturelles by Maurice Ravel (click here). Jonathan Ware is on the piano. 

Jonathan Beyer performed internationally in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Hong Kong, as well as with numerous companies around the U.S. He was a national finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Competition and won first place at the Marian Anderson Prize for Emerging Classical Artists, among many other competition successes. He has a degree from the Curtis Institute and the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.  He’s singing At the River, from Old American Songs.  Listen to it here.