AT-HOME: Radovan Vlatković: Transcendent Horn Trios—with Soovin Kim & Gloria Chien
As one of the most celebrated musicians of the 21st century whose voice seems to speak through his instrument, Radovan Vlatković’s performances are enjoyed across the globe as deeply moving and utterly memorable. German newspapers call him “the Croatian messenger of the gods of the valve horn,” and say that “under his breath, it unfolds in all subjects.” Playing with Artistic Directors Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim, the horn with piano and violin will soar and storytell an exquisite evening away into a miraculously beautiful, and very special encounter.
Premieres on CMNW.org beginning Thursday, December 2 @ 7:30 PM (PT) and can be accessed through Thursday, December 9 at midnight. Concert is available to view for one week.
”…the Quintet in E flat for Horn, Violin, Two Violas and Cello (K. 407) was ostensibly a showcase for Radovan Vlatković, the admired French-horn player, and Mr. Vlatković’s work was exemplary.”
— The New York Times
Learn more about Radovan Vlatković
Learn more about Gloria Chien
Learn more about Soovin Kim
Online Virtual Concert
Thursday, 12/2 • 7:30 pm PT
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Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- PROGRAM NOTES: Learn About the Music in the Transcendent Horn Trios concert
Radovan Vlatković: Transcendent Horn Trios—with Soovin Kim & Gloria Chien
In 1800, Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his first symphony, with its famous “wrong key” opening. The following year he published his six Op. 18 string quartets; these displayed his undisputed mastery of Classical quartet form. With the symphony and Op. 18 quartets, along with several piano sonatas, Beethoven established himself as an up-and-coming composer of exciting potential.
In the spring of 1800, Beethoven also wrote his Sonata for Horn and Piano. Biographer Ferdinand Ries described its genesis: “The composition of most of the works that Beethoven had to have finished by a certain time he almost always put off until the last minute. He had promised to compose a sonata for piano and horn for the famous hornist Punto, for example, and to play it in Punto’s concert with him; the concert with the sonata was announced, but it had not yet been started. On the day before the performance Beethoven began working, and it was finished by the time of the concert.”
If Ries’ account is true (19th century biographers had a tendency to exaggerate), it may explain Op. 17’s more conventional sound. It also says something about the musicianship of Giovanni Punto, since he would have been essentially sight-reading his part in the concert. Written as a vehicle for Punto’s extraordinary facility with the notoriously difficult natural horn, this sonata showcases every aspect of the horn’s capabilities: by turns lyrical, agile, and powerfully authoritative.
Maurice Ravel’s music underwent a radical metamorphosis in the years after WWI. Those who associate Ravel with the refined melancholy of Pavane for a Dead Princess and the childlike delight of the Mother Goose Suite will find little in common, on first listening, with the sparse, occasionally discordant sounds of the Violin Sonata in G Major. Ravel’s final chamber composition demonstrates just how far he had traveled, musically speaking, from his earlier works, how receptive he was to musical styles of the 1920s, and how, despite all these changes, the music is still unmistakably Ravel’s.Ravel began writing the sonata in 1923 for his friend and colleague Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. “It won’t be very difficult and it won’t sprain your wrist,” he assured her. A fine violinist, Jourdan-Morhange was Ravel’s technical advisor for several of his violin pieces, including Tzigane (1924). Working with Jourdan-Morhange awakened Ravel’s awareness of the essential differences between his instrument and hers. When he embarked on her sonata, Ravel decided to make those differences the structural focus of the work. “It was this independence I was aiming at when I wrote a sonata for violin and piano,” he later explained, “two incompatible instruments whose incompatibility is emphasized here, without any attempt being made to reconcile their contrasted characters.”
Despite Ravel’s tongue-in-cheek promise, the sonata turned out to be a challenge for both performer and composer. Jourdan-Morhange, who suffered from arthritis, was ultimately unable to give the premiere, while Ravel, who often completed his compositions quickly, took four years to finish it. “What a lot of trouble your confounded sonata has given me,” griped Ravel in a letter to Jourdan-Morhange.
The two outer movements spotlight the uncompromising differences between violin and piano, while the central Blues makes the then-new sound of jazz its central focus. All this talk of incompatible instruments suggests music at odds with itself. Ravel’s genius lies in creating music that is both spare, even austere, and simultaneously, startlingly, expressive.
Johannes Brahms had a lifelong fondness for the sound of the horn, particularly the old-fashioned “natural” (i.e., valveless) instrument known as the Waldhorn (forest horn). Brahms’ father taught him the instrument, and as a youth, Brahms played first horn in the Detmold orchestra. In 1865, Brahms wrote his Trio in E-flat Major for Horn, Violin, and Piano, stipulating the Waldhorn in the score. Valved horns were the standard by this time, and the valves allowed for virtuosic chromatic writing, but Brahms preferred the warmer, rounder sound of the Waldhorn. Brahms also noted in the score that the horn part could be played by cello, another warm, rich-toned instrument.
The opening Andante recalls the Waldhorn’s origins as a hunting horn. Its lyrical melodies contrast with the rippling piano accompaniment. The contrasting Scherzo alternates legato phrases with episodes of ebullient high spirits, offset by a melancholy central trio. The Adagio mesto is Brahms at his most mysterious: against a background of unusual keys, the horn’s haunting sound expresses an ineffable sadness. In the closing Allegro con brio, Brahms once again changes moods. All three instruments respond with playful good humor in a joyous romp to the end.
© Elizabeth Schwartz
- BEETHOVEN Horn Sonata in F Major, Op. 17
- MAURICE RAVEL Violin Sonata No. 2, M. 77
MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937) Violin Sonata No. 2, M. 77 (17’)
I. Allegretto
II. Blues. Moderato
III. Perpetuum mobile. AllegroMaurice Ravel’s music underwent a radical metamorphosis in the years after World War I. Those who associate Ravel with the refined melancholy of Pavane for a Dead Princess and the childlike delight of the Mother Goose Suite will find little in common, on first listening, with the sparse, occasionally discordant sounds of the Violin Sonata in G Major. Ravel’s final chamber composition demonstrates just how far he had traveled, musically speaking, from his earlier works, how receptive he was to musical styles of the 1920s, and how, despite all these changes, the music is still unmistakably Ravel’s.
Ravel began writing the sonata in 1923 for his friend and colleague Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. “It won’t be very difficult and it won’t sprain your wrist,” he assured her. A fine violinist, Jourdan-Morhange was Ravel’s technical advisor for several of his violin pieces, including Tzigane (1924). Working with Jourdan-Morhange awakened Ravel’s awareness of the essential differences between his instrument and hers. When he embarked on her sonata, Ravel decided to make those differences the structural focus of the work. “It was this independence I was aiming at when I wrote a sonata for violin and piano,” he later explained, “two incompatible instruments whose incompatibility is emphasized here, without any attempt being made to reconcile their contrasted characters.”
Despite Ravel’s tongue-in-cheek promise, the sonata turned out to be a challenge for both performer and composer. Jourdan-Morhange, who suffered from arthritis, was ultimately unable to give the premiere, while Ravel, who often completed his compositions quickly, took four years to finish it. “What a lot of trouble your confounded sonata has given me,” griped Ravel in a letter to Jourdan-Morhange.
The two outer movements spotlight the uncompromising differences between violin and piano, while the central Blues makes the then-new sound of jazz its central focus. All this talk of incompatible instruments suggests music at odds with itself. Ravel’s genius lies in creating music that is both spare, even austere, and simultaneously, startlingly, expressive.
—© Elizabeth Schwartz
- BRAHMS Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op.40
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Artists
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Radovan Vlatković
Horn
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Born in Zagreb in 1962, Radovan Vlatković completed his studies with Professor Prerad Detiček at the Zagreb Academy of Music and Professor Michael Höltzel at the Music Academy in Detmold, Germany. He is the recipient of many first prizes in national and international competitions, including the Premio Ancona in 1979 and the ARD Competition in Munich in 1983—the first to be awarded to a horn player in fourteen years. This led to numerous invitations to music festivals throughout Europe including Salzburg, Vienna, Edinburgh, and Dubrovnik to name but a few, the Americas, Australia, Israel, and Korea, as well as regular appearances in Japan.
In 1998, he became Horn Professor at the renowned Mozarteum in Salzburg. Since 2000, he holds the Horn Chair “Canon” at the “Queen Sofia” School in Madrid.
Radovan Vlatković has appeared as soloist with many distinguished symphony and chamber orchestras including the Bavarian Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Munich Chamber Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, Mozarteum Orchestra, Camerata Academica Salzburg, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Santa Cecilia Orchestra Rome, Rotterdam Philharmonie, the orchestras of Berne, Basel, and Zürich, the Lyon and Strassbourg Orchestras, NHK Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan and Yomiuri Orchestras, and Adelaide and Melbourne Orchestras.
Very much in demand as a chamber musician, he has performed at Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus, Svyatoslav Richter’s December Evenings in Moscow, Oleg Kagan and Natalia Gutman’s Kreuth, Rudolf Serkin’s Marlboro, András Schiff’s Mondsee, Vicenza and Ittingen Festivals, as well as Kuhmo, Prussia Cove, and Casals Festival in Prades.
In 2014, Vlatković was awarded an Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music (Hon RAM), an honor bestowed upon only 300 distinguished musicians worldwide.
Radovan Vlatković plays a full double horn Model 20 M by Paxman of London.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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Soovin Kim
2025 YAI Faculty, Violin & Artistic Director
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Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart, and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. When he was 20 years old, Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition. He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the 1st violinist of the Johannes Quartet. Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works that were released in 2022.
Kim is the founder and artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all 3rd through 5th grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin. The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an Honorary Doctorate upon him in 2015. In 2020, he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became artistic directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. He, with Chien, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. Kim devotes much of his time to his passion for teaching at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Yale School of Music in New Haven.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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Gloria Chien
Piano & Artistic Director
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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.
Upcoming Concerts & Events