The Phillips Camerata

Program

The Phillips Camerata begins the 2014/2015 season of Sunday Concerts with a program celebrating Neo-Impressionism and the Dream of Realities: Painting, Poetry, Music. During the Neo-Impressionist period, artists gathered in Brussels at Les XX exhibitions for performances featuring the music of Chausson, Duparc, D’Indy, Franck, and Fauré. These salon concerts spurred stimulating discussions of art. The Phillips Camerata performs works by Fauré and Franck, stylistically contrasted by the String Quartet by Germaine Taillefaire, the sole woman composer of Les Six.

Program

Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)
Theme and Variations for piano, Op. 73

Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983)
String Quartet

Intermission

César Franck (1822–1890)
String Quartet in D Major, FWV 9

About the Artists

Formed of a flexible roster of leading instrumentalists from the DC., New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore area, The Phillips Camerata carries the Phillips extraordinary musical history into the concert circuit. 

Olivia Hajioff, a Fulbright scholar, received a BBC Young Musician of the Year Award and was also a prizewinner in the European Violin competition. In her native England she has performed chamber music at the Dartington International Festival with David Owen Norris and Stephen Bishop Kovacevich. She has performed throughout Europe and the US notably in London’s Wigmore Hall, the South Bank, Cheltenham Festival, Paderewski Hall in Switzerland, and the Kennedy Center. Arnold Steinhardt (Guarneri Quartet) described her as a “compelling performer.”

Steven Honigberg is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music where he studied with Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins. Hired under the leadership of Mstislav Rostropovich, he is currently a member of the National Symphony Orchestra and is also founder and member of the Potomac String Quartet. In Washington he has appeared as soloist with the National Chamber, McLean, Alexandria, Amadeus, Mount Vernon, Washington Conservatory, Washington University, Virginia, and JCC Symphony Orchestras. 

As a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician Karen Johnson’s playing has been applauded for its “intimacy and warmth of tone” (Santa Barbara Independent) and her performances hailed as “virtuosically energized and broadly lyrical” (Richmond Times-Dispatch). In a review of a solo CD (Brioso Records) with pianist Joanne Kong, the American Record Guide stated, “It is a real pleasure to discover a violinist of the caliber of Karen Johnson… Her tone is broad and pure, her attacks are flawlessly incisive, her vibrato nicely modulated, and her intonation infallible…”

Johnson has performed in concerts throughout the United States and Europe and has worked with a variety of renowned conductors and musicians, such as James DePriest, Sergiu Commissiona, Yuri Temirkanov, Victor Yampolsky, Gerard Schwarz, and Joseph Silverstein. From 2002-2010, Karen was Concertmaster of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra.

Irina Nuzova has appeared in recital as a soloist and as a chamber musician in the United States, Europe, and South America. In Europe, she has performed as part of the Amici della Musica concert series in Florence, at Hermitage State Museum in St. Petersburg; the Moscow Conservatory, and in the Netherlands. In the US she has played at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Gardner Museum in Boston, Music in the Parks Series in St. Paul. Nuzova appears regularly in with The Phillips Camerata in Washington, DC. 

Marc Ramirez has concertized throughout Europe and North America, performing at such halls as the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow, Carnegie Recital Hall, and the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. His recitals have been broadcast on many radio stations, including those in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Among his awards are First Prizes in the Henryk Szeryng Competition, the Parisot-Friedman International Competition, and the Cavallaro International Competition for a two-year Fellowship to Yale University. From 1983-1986,he was invited by Henryk Szeryng to study and tour with him, visiting many European cities. The Washington Post has described his playing as “intensely beautiful.”