Members of the Handel and Haydn Society present: On Beethoven’s Fortepiano: Viennese Chamber Music, 1780-1830.
This is the first of four concerts featurig Beethoven’s violin sonatas with additional works by his contemporaries, Haydn and Mozart, performed on period instruments featuring violinist Susanna Ogata, Assistant Concertmaster of the Handel and Haydn orchestra, and fortepianist Ian Watson, conductor and keyboardist. 7:30pm, Talk and 8pm, performance.
Susanna Ogata, violin
Susanna Ogata enjoys an active performance schedule in greater New England and beyond. She has been praised for “totally convincing, spontaneous and free-flowing playing” (The Berkshire Review) and her musical “sensitivity and fire” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). Dedicated to exploring music on historical instruments, Susanna has been a soloist and participant in concerts presented by the Handel and Haydn Society, Bach Ensemble led by Joshua Rifkin, Arcadia Players, Newton Baroque, Sarasa, Connecticut Early Music Festival, and Blue Hill Bach Festival. She has also performed on the Boston Early Music Festival series. Performances this season include appearances on the Cambridge Society for Early Music series and a residency at MIT. She is a founding member of several period instrument chamber ensembles: Boston Classical Trio, Copley String Quartet, and Coriolan String Quartet. Susanna has recorded for Nonesuch and Telarc and has been featured on WGBH radio broadcasts.
Ms. Ogata has recently embarked with fortepianist Ian Watson on “The Beethoven Project” to survey and record the complete Sonatas for Fortepiano and Violin of Beethoven on period instruments on the CORO label. The New York Times praised them for “elegant readings that are attentive to quicksilver changes in dynamics and articulation. Their performance of the Sonata No. 4 in A minor is darkly playful, their ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata brilliant and stormy.”
A tenured member of the Handel and Haydn Society, Ms. Ogata was appointed as Assistant Concertmaster of the orchestra in 2014.
Ms. Ogata’s teachers have included Charles Castleman and Laura Bossert. She studied Baroque violin with Dana Maiben. She also worked extensively with Malcom Bilson and Paul O’Dette while completing her undergraduate and graduate studies at the Eastman School of Music.
Ian Watson, fortepiano
Multi-talented Ian Watson has been described by The Times in London as a “world-class soloist” and a keyboard performer of “virtuosic panache” and by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “a conductor of formidable ability.” He is currently Artistic Director of Arcadia Players Period-Instrument Orchestra, Music Director of the Connecticut Early Music Festival, and was appointed Associate Conductor of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society in September 2016
Born in England in the Buckinghamshire village of Wooburn Common, Ian won a scholarship at age 14 to the Junior School of the Royal Academy of Music in London, later winning all the prizes for organ performance, including the coveted Recital Diploma. He completed his studies with Flor Peeters in Belgium. In 1993, in recognition of his services to music, he was honored with an Associateship of the Royal Academy of Music. Ian’s first major appointment was as Organist at St. Margaret's, Westminster Abbey, at the age of 19, a position he held for ten years. He also served as Music Director of the historic Christopher Wren church, St. James's Piccadilly.
Ian has appeared as soloist or conductor with the London Symphony, London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, the Scottish, English, Polish, Irish and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestras, Bremen Philharmonisches Gesellschaft, Rhein-Main Symphony, Colorado Symphony, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Handel and Haydn Society, English Baroque Soloists, and The Sixteen, among many others. He has also been featured on many recordings and film soundtracks including Amadeus, Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden, Restoration, Cry the Beloved Country, Voices from A Locked Room, and the BBC‘s production of David Copperfield.
Recent highlights include directing the North American premiere of the new edition of Bach's St. Mark Passion with the Bach Society Houston; recording Bach's four Lutheran Masses in London for Coro Records with Harry Christophers and The Sixteen; a major project with violinist Susanna Ogata, to record the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas using period-instrument; and conducting an outdoor performance, in Boston’s Copley Square, of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Handel and Haydn Society in honor of their 200th anniversary last July. The audience was estimated at 6,000 people.
Guy Fishman
Israeli-born cellist Guy Fishman is active as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and orchestral player. He is principal cellist of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, with which he made his Symphony Hall solo debut in 2005. Fishman is in demand as an early music specialist in the United States and abroad, having performed in recital and with Boston Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Les Violons du Roy, Emmanuel Music, Rockport Music, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Museum Trio, Arcadia Players, and El Mundo. He performs on standard cello with the Colorado Music Festival, Albany Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke's, among others. Recent appearances include the Dvorak concerto with the Reading Symphony Orchestra and a highly-praised survey of Bach suites in Boulder, Colorado. He has performed in recital with Dawn Upshaw, Gilbert Kalish, Eliot Fisk, Daniel Stepner, Lara St. John, Richard Egarr, and Mark Peskanov, and has toured and recorded with pop artist Natalie Merchant.
Guy Fishman has performed in chamber music recitals in Boston’s Jordan Hall and Sanders Theater, and Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, (le) Poisson Rouge, and BargeMusic in New York. He has appeared at the Tanglewood, Kneisel Hall, Chautauqua, Aston Magna, Connecticut Early Music, BBC Proms, and Musicorda festivals. He was a member of the New Fromm Players at Tanglewood, principal cellist of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. He has also appeared on NPR broadcasts. His playing has been praised as “plangent” by the Boston Globe, “electrifying” by the New York Times, and “beautiful … noble” by the Boston Herald. A critic for the Boston Musical Intelligencer, listening to Guy’s recent performance of Haydn’s C-major concerto, related that he “… heard greater depth in this work than I have in quite some time.”
Guy Fishman has recorded for the CORO, Telarc, Centaur, Titanic, and Newport Classics labels. Recordings of sonatas by Andrea Caporale (world premiere, Centaur) and duos for cello & bass (Centaur) were warmly received. Forthcoming releases include Vivaldi cello concerti with the Handel and Haydn Society and the cello sonatas of Beethoven.
Fishman started playing the cello at age 12, and at 16 began his Baccalaureate studies with David Soyer at the Manhattan School of Music. He subsequently worked with Peter Wiley, Julia Lichten, and Laurence Lesser, with whom he completed Doctoral studies at New England Conservatory. In addition, Fishman is a Fulbright Fellow, and spent his fellowship year in Amsterdam studying with the famed Dutch cellist Anner Bylsma. He is on the faculty at New England Conservatory and Bridgewater State University, and has given over a a dozen masterclasses in conservatories and universities across the country and abroad, including Boston University, Penn State, University of Toronto, and San Francisco Conservatory.
Fishman’s cello was made in Rome in 1704 by David Tecchler.
B.M. Manhattan School of Music; B.A. SUNY-Purchase; D.M.A. New England Conservatory. Studies with David Soyer, Peter Wiley, Julia Lichten, Laurence Lesser, Anner Bylsma. Recordings on CORO, Centaur, Telarc, Titanic.
