AT-HOME: Festival Finale: A Journey Into the Light

Artists

Brentano String Quartet String Quartet

Mark Steinberg, violin
Serena Canin, violin
Misha Amory, viola
Nina Lee, cello

With a career spanning over three decades, the Brentano Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. The New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism; and The Times (London) hails their “wonderful, selfless music-making.” Known for its unique sensibility, probing interpretive style, and original programming, the quartet has performed across five continents in the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals, thus establishing itself as one of the world’s preeminent ensembles.

Dedicated and highly sought after as educators, the quartet has served as Artists-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music for the past decade. They also lead the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and appear regularly at the Taos School of Music. Previously, the quartet served for fifteen years as Ensemble-in-Residence at Princeton University.

In the 2025-26 concert season, the quartet will tour throughout North America, including concerts in New York, Boston, Chicago, Vancouver, Detroit, San Francisco, and Denver. They will perform the complete Mozart quintets with violist Hsin-Yun Huang in Philadelphia. Further afield, they will tour Spain in November 2025 and elsewhere in Europe in March 2026.

Formed in 1992, The Brentano Quartet has received numerous accolades, including, in 1995, the prestigious Naumburg and Cleveland Quartet Awards. They have been privileged to collaborate with such artists as sopranos Jessye Norman and Dawn Upshaw; mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato; as well as pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss. The quartet has commissioned works from some of the most important composers of our time, including Bruce Adolphe, Matthew Aucoin, Gabriela Frank, Stephen Hartke, Vijay Iyer, Steven Mackey, Charles Wuorinen, Lei Liang, James MacMillan, and Melinda Wagner.

Notable recordings include Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 131 (Aeon) which was featured in the 2012 film, A Late Quartet, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken, and a 2017 live album with Joyce DiDonato, Into the Fire—Live from Wigmore Hall (Warner). Their most recent release features the K. 428 and K. 465 (“Dissonance”) quartets of Mozart for the Azica label.

The quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,”  the intended recipient of his famous love confession.

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Gloria Chien Piano & Artistic Director

Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. She was subsequently selected by The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, a position she held for the next decade.

In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became artistic directors at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon in 2020. They were named recipients of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Award for Extraordinary Service in 2021 for their efforts during the pandemic.

Most recently, Gloria was named Advisor of the newly launched Institute for Concert Artists at the New England Conservatory of Music. Gloria released two albums—her Gloria Chien LIVE from the Music@Menlo LIVE label and Here With You with acclaimed clarinetist Anthony McGill on Cedille Records.

Gloria received her bachelor, master’s, and doctoral degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She is Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and she is a Steinway Artist.

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Upcoming Concerts & Events

• EXCLUSIVE DONOR CONCERT: Emerson Quartet Farewell with Gloria Chien

Paul Watkins Cello

Acclaimed for his inspirational performances and eloquent musicianship, Paul Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as concerto soloist, chamber musician and conductor.

He is the Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit (since 2014), the cellist of the Emerson String Quartet (2013-2023) and Visiting Professor of Cello at Yale School of Music (since 2018). He took first prize in the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, and has held the positions of Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra.

As a cellist, Watkins has given regular concerto performances with prestigious orchestras across the globe. Also, a dedicated chamber musician, Watkins was a member of the Nash Ensemble (1997-2013) and the Emerson String Quartet (2013-2023). After 44 successful seasons, the quartet decided to retire, and undertook an extensive series farewell tours, culminating in their final performances in New York Lincoln Center in October 2023. This concert was filmed for a documentary by filmmaker Tristan Cook, and the release of their final recording of Berg, Chausson, Schoenberg, and Hindemith with prestigious guests soprano Barbara Hannigan and pianist Bertrand Chamayou.

As a conductor, Watkins has conducted all the major British orchestras and a wide range of international orchestras. In 2006 he made his opera debut conducting a critically praised new production of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine for Opera North.

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