Performers

From the Artistic Director:

"Some audience members have commented that they'd enjoy more woodwinds and brass instruments featured on RCMF programs. Last year, during the 20th anniversary season, we presented works featuring the oboe and French horn (not to mention clarinet, voice, harpsichord and harp, alongside our mainstay piano and strings). This season, we will feature the clarinet on three programs, each time in the capable hands of a different artist. Laura Ardan, principal clarinet of the Atlanta Symphony for many years, will be featured on Opening Night in works by Spohr, Schubert and Beethoven. The Spohr and Schubert are both scored for soprano (Elizabeth Printy), clarinet and piano (Will Ransom, another Atlantan), and the Beethoven Trio Op.38 is the composer's own transcription of his ever popular Septet, Op.20. Then, on Fathers' Day, Ethan Sloane, a veteran of the Marlboro Festival and chamber player par excellence, will perform the two most well known pieces for clarinet, cello and piano: Beethoven's fun and entertaining Trio, Op.11 and the masterful, profound and lyrical Brahms trio, Op.114. Ethan's colleagues will be perennial RCMF favorite Victor Rosenbaum, and BSO principal cello, Jules Eskin. Perhaps the world's most famous clarinetist, Richard Stoltzman, will return on June 21 for an American program that includes original works and transcriptions by Copland, Bernstein, Gershwin and others. He'll be joined by wife Lucy (violin) and son Peter John (composer-jazz piano) and yours truly. These three artists, and their three very different programs, should present the clarinet in multifaceted and most interesting ways.

"RCMF debutants this year are many, and brilliant. Peter Serkin, piano (June 7) is one of the world's most original and compelling interpreters. Jennifer Frautschi, violin, has won the Naumburg Award and an Avery Fisher prize, and is featured on June 13. Ken Noda (June 13), William Ransom (June 6 and 9), and Max Levinson, first-prize winner of the Dublin International Competition (solo recital, June 23) are our other 'new' pianists for 2002. The dazzling young Vega Quartet from China made their Festival debut on April 6 in a pre-season concert at the Unitarian Universalist Church, and will come back for a residency in June when they will perform two evening concerts, an open rehearsal, and the annual family concert."

All performers and programs are subject to change.