Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, Viola
Adam Golka, Piano
Sunday, September 15, 2024
3 pm
Memorial Hall, OTR
Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, has performed in recitals and chamber music concerts throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia, including an acclaimed 2011 debut recital at London’s Wigmore Hall. The founding violist of the Dover Quartet, she played in the group from 2008–2022. During that time, the Dover Quartet was the First Prize-winner and recipient of every special award at the Banff International String Quartet Competition 2013, and winner of the Gold Medal and Grand Prize in the 2010 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt’s numerous awards also include First Prize of the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and top prizes at the the Sphinx Competition and the Tokyo International Viola Competition.
A violin student of Sergiu Schwartz and Melissa Pierson-Barrett for several years, she began studying viola with Michael Klotz at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 2005. Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Roberto Diaz, Michael Tree, Misha Amory, and Joseph de Pasquale. She then received her Master's Degree in String Quartet with the Dover Quartet at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, as a student of James Dunham.
While in the Dover Quartet, Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt was on the faculty at The Curtis Institute of Music and Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and a part of the Quartet in Residence of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. She is now a member of the newly formed piano quartet “Espressivo!” along with acclaimed artists Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, and Anna Polonsky.
![Milena Pajaro van de Stadt, viola](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_auto,q_glossy,ret_img/https://matineemusicalecincinnati.org/wp-content/uploads/brizy/imgs/Milena-Pajaro-van-de-Stadt-credit-Roy-Cox-1280x853-1-493x328x55x0x438x328x1714090649.png)
VIDEOS
Adam Golka, Piano
![Adam Golka, piano](https://sp-ao.shortpixel.ai/client/to_auto,q_glossy,ret_img/https://matineemusicalecincinnati.org/wp-content/uploads/brizy/imgs/adam-golka_0-194x259x2x0x192x259x1718647907.jpg)
Polish-American pianist Adam Golka (born 1987) first performed all of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas when he was 18 years-old, and in 2020-2021 Adam Golka performed the cycle of Beethoven's 32 Sonatas at the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park (Florida) and at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue (NYC), in socially-distanced and live-stream formats. Adam's performances of each Sonata were complemented by 32 short films he created, known as 32@32 (available on YouTube), documenting his preparation for climbing the Everest of piano literature and featuring an amalgam of distinguished guests, from an astrophysicist to Alfred Brendel.
Adam Golka's principal teachers have been José Feghali, with whom he studied at Texas Christian University, and Leon Fleisher, at the Peabody Conservatory. Since finishing his formal studies, Adam has continued to develop his artistry through mentorship from Alfred Brendel, Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, Mitsuko Uchida, Evelyne Crochet, Ferenc Rados, Rita Wagner, and Sir András Schiff, who invited Adam to give recitals at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr and Tonhalle Zürich, for the "Sir András Schiff Selects" concert series. Adam has also given solo recitals in Tokyo's Musashino Hall, New York's Alice Tully Hall (presented by the Musicians Emergency Fund), and Amsterdam's Kleine Zaal in Het Concertgebouw.
Adam's professional life began when he was awarded the first prize and audience prize at the 2nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition. In 2009, he won the Max I. Allen Fellowship from American Pianists Association. As a pedagogue, he acted as Artist-in-Residence for six school years at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Adam has recorded works by Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms for London-based First Hand Records and he has premiered works composed for him by Richard Danielpour, Michael Brown, and Jarosław Gołębiowski.
PROGRAM
Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 120, no. 2 in E-flat Major.........Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Sonata for Viola and Piano in F, Op 11, no 4 .............Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
-INTERMISSION-
“Where things weigh nothing at all”..........Michelle Ross (1987 - )
Sonata for Viola and Piano.....................Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)
PROGRAM NOTES
“Where things weigh nothing at all” by Michelle Ross
This piece begins and ends in a dream state. The viola and piano weave in and out of each other’s awareness, and along with the listener, travel between the interior or exterior worlds. This is represented in improvisational gestures, expressive rubato and conversational elements between the two voices. After the introduction, there is a moment which signifies our emergence from memory and from this anchor, the music spins out into extremely luscious, harmonically bright and rich conversational themes between the duo. Momentum builds towards two peaks, from which we recede back towards the anchor of “time,” which, instead of feeling concrete, has transformed into a memory.
The title is a line from my favorite Milan Kunera novel – The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. This is one of many allusions that weave in and out of the subconscious of this piece, such as a fragment of a Gregorian Chant that hung above my piano where I composed the work. Implicit meaning guided my compositional process: instead of attempting to transcribe the Gregorian Chant, I allowed it to swirl along with my other ideas and imprint itself into this piece, as I followed along as it unfolded. The beginning of the score indicates to the performers: “walking together, unknowingly,” as if they are singing the same fragments of this chant across different realms, different times – mirroring the mysteries of the compositional process itself.