InterHarmony International Music Festival, which has been taking place in various European and American cities for the past 12 summers, will present a series of three concerts at Weill Recital Hall studded with an array of musical highlights from the Festival. The first performance takes place October 25, with additional concerts taking place January 25 and March 21, 2013.

Curated by InterHarmony Founder and Music Director, award-winning cellist Misha Quint, the performance features Quint, violinist Andrzej Grabiec and pianist Svetlana Gorokhovich. The October 25 program includes two contemporary works: Jennifer Higdon’s Piano Trio (2003) and the New York premiere of Thomas Fortmann’s Prolitheus Suite for Violin, Piano and Cello (2010), as well as Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor for Violin, Cello and Piano (1892) and Antonín Dvořák’s beloved Piano trio No. 4 in E minor, “Dumky,” Op. 90 (1891).

2010 Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Higdon, whose reputation has been rising with leaps and bounds since she began composing at 21, has always been fascinated by the connection between painting and music. “Can music reflect colors and can colors be reflected in music?” is a question she asks herself. For Higdon, melodies, harmonies and the instruments themselves are the composer’s paint and canvas. Piano Trio, originally commissioned by the Vail Valley Music Festival, embodies this fascination.

Swiss-born and now living in Italy, Thomas Fortmann began his musical career as a song writer, writing his first “hit” at 16 followed by over 100 titles released in more than 27 countries and sung by rock stars throughout Europe. Abandoning his pop music career at 26 to commit himself to “serious” studies in composition and instrumentation, Fortmann went on to receive fellowships and commissions from major European houses as well as from the University of Houston in the United States. His Prolitheus Suite for Violin, Piano and Cello, written as an unlikely suite of contrasting musical forms, incorporates twelve tone composition (1st movement); Scriabin’s mystic chord that the composer used in his Prometheus (2nd movement); blues to commemorate the section having been written as a tribute to the American South (3rd movement); a play with 12 tones (4th movement); inspiration from the vaudeville song “From Heaven Comes Hell” (5th movement) and finally, the finale or 6th movement.  Reflecting his attitude toward music and most likely his own rigorously constructed compositions, Fortmann says: “Music that is purely mathematical is non-sensual.  But music without mathematics is nonsense.”

Written when Rachmaninoff was only 19 years old and still a student, Trio élégiaque, unlike most piano trios, has only one movement, which was created in the classical form of a sonata. Dvořák’s much-celebrated Piano Trio No. 4, whose six sections range from gloomy to light-hearted, has been considered a benchmark in the composer’s career.

Ticket Information

Tickets for the October 25 performance are $35, and can be purchased by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800; at the Carnegie Hall box office located at West 57th and Seventh Avenue or online at www.carnegiehall.org.

Artist Bios

MISHA QUINT, who graduated from the Leningrad Special School for the Gifted and the Leningrad State Conservatory, made his orchestral debut at the age of 13 after winning first place in the Boccherini Competition in St. Petersburg.  Many other prizes and awards followed before he immigrated from Russia to the United States in 1989. Quint has appeared with such celebrated orchestras as the Orquestra Sinfônica do Teatro Nacional do Brasilia, Metropolitan Symphony, the New York Chamber Orchestra, National Irish Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, New York Chamber Symphony and the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Leningrad State Orchestra, Orchestra of Classical and Contemporary Music as well as with the Symphony Orchestras of Latvia and Georgia. He has worked with an equally illustrious group of conductors including Maxim Shostakovich, Paul Lustig Dunkel, Colman Pierce, Sidney Harth, Ravil Martinov, Camilla Kolchinsky, Yakov Bergman, and Ira Levin. Misha Quint began to create music festivals in Europe in 1997 (the International Cello Festival in Blonay, Switzerland) followed by the Soesterberg International Music Festival  in Holland (1998-2007). The InterHarmony Music Festival, which Quint first established in Geneva, Switzerland in 2000, has subsequently taken place in San Francisco, CA (2009), the Berkshires, MA (2007 & 2008), Schwarzwald, Germany (2008-2011) Sulzbach-Rosenberg (2005-present), and Arcidosso, Tuscany, Italy (2012 to present). Quint is on the faculty of the Mannes School of Music in Manhattan.   www.interharmony.com   www.srimf.com   www.mishaquint.com  SVETLANA GOROKHOVICH has performed in international music festivals in Holland, Germany, Italy and New York.  She has worked with Misha Quint and violinist Andrzej Grabiec since 2005.  Her latest performances include recitals in Zankel Hall, Weill Recital Hall and Ridotto Music Series. Ms. Gorokhovich received her music training in the Kazan State Conservatory and Ph.D. from St. Petersburg State Conservatory, studying with distinguished professor Tatiana Kravchenko. She immigrated to USA in 1989. Ms. Gorokhovich was the 1997 winner of International Bartok-Kabalevsky Piano Competition at Radford University and the 1999 IBLA International Competition in Italy.  Her solo recital in Carnegie Hall in 2000 was highly acclaimed by the New York Concert Review. Her most recent recording, “One Piano Four Hands,” was released in 2012 by SMH Records. She toured world-wide with violinist Dmitri Berlinsky from 1991-1996. Their recording, Souvenir D’un Lieu Cher (Helicon), released in 1997, received enthusiastic reviews. Ms. Gorokhovich is on the piano faculty of the Music Conservatory of Westchester, in White Plains, New York. ANDRZEJ GRABIEC was a prizewinner at the Fifth International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poland (1967) and the International Jacques Thibaud Violin Competition in Paris, France (1969). An honored graduate and later professor at the Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland in 1972, Grabiec immediately became a soloist and Concertmaster of the Polish National Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra and leader of Capella per Musica da Camera. He has been Concertmaster of the Pueblo Symphony Orchestra, the Wichita Symphony Orchestra in Kansas, and Music Director of the Mozart Festival Chamber Orchestra.  Since moving to Houston in 1995, Mr. Grabiec became Professor of Violin at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, and joined the Western Arts Trio. He performed with the Houston Symphony in 1999 and is a founder and Artistic Co-Director of the Virtuosi of Houston. He served as Artistic Director of an extensive Olympic Arts Tour throughout Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific islands as a soloist and conductor in 1999. In 2002 Grabiec performed the world premiere of Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Peter Lieuwen, dedicated to Andrzej Grabiec. He performed under such conductors as Pierre Boulez, Erich Leinsdorf, Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutoslawski, Kazimierz Kord, Mark Elder, Erich Bergel, and taught and performed at many summer festivals around the world.

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Front photo by David Milkis.