The Russian-born violinist Alina Ibragimova in recent years has developed a following in Europe, especially in the U.K., where she studied and came of age. She appears poised to have a bigger following in New York, too, after her recent performances at the Mostly Mozart Festival and in the studio at WQXR. She came to the WQXR performance studio to present two pieces, starting with Eugène Ysaÿe's Sonata No. 3. Watch the video below and listen to the full segment at the top of this page. This past June, Ibragimova, 29, released a recording of Ysaÿe's six violin sonatas, known as some of the most treacherous solo works in the repertoire. They are portraits, of a sort, of six violinists whom the composer knew in the 1920s: Joseph Szigeti, Jacques Thibaud, Georges Enescu, Fritz Kreisler, Mathieu Crickboom and Manual Quiroga. "You hear the personalities," said Ibragimova. "They feel like proper little dedications." Ibragimova arrived at the station early one August morning after having performed a late-night (10 pm) recital at Lincoln Center's Kaplan Penthouse—one of at least two such performances this summer, another being at London's Royal Albert Hall in July. The violinist believes the late shift helps put audiences in a more contemplative mindset for listening. "I think the atmosphere changes for the time of day," she said. "People listen differently." For her second performance, Ibragimova offered the Largo from J.S. Bach's Solo Violin Sonata No. 3. Ibragimova's still-young career is notable for the sheer breadth of her repertoire interests. She has also formed an all-female string quartet called Chiaroscuro that uses period instruments, though she herself opts for an unorthodox approach to equipment, changing strings, pitch and bows on her (comparably modern) 1780 Anselmo Bellosio violin. "Whilst it works, I find it's not ideal," she said. "Now I'm going to try a different violin to use with the quartet just so I don't have to put my violin through this all the time." When she isn't touring, Ibragimova lives in Greenwich, England with her husband, the Guardian music critic Tom Service. The couple married in the spring, having first met when he interviewed her. She says it isn't difficult having a critic around who is constantly evaluating music. And there are perks: "There are so many books now at home. It's great. He knows all the opus numbers." Video: Kim Nowacki; Audio: Irene Trudel; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon; Text & Production: Brian Wise

Café Concerts

In-Studio: Alina Ibragimova Performs Bach and Ysaÿe

The cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Christopher O'Riley are quick to emphasize that their recent venture into Baroque period instruments isn't some fusty or antiquated pursuit. The duo's new album, "Beethoven, Period," was recorded at Skywalker Ranch, film director George Lucas's famous studio complex in Northern California. Instead of sheet music they played from iPads. Their Seattle launch concert took place at the Tractor Tavern, a rock club. The experience with very old instruments also forced them to rethink their approach to Beethoven's music. "All of the sudden, the relation between the cello and the piano is completely different," Haimovitz tells host Elliott Forrest. "No longer am I trying to project over the grandeur of a Steinway grand but I'm actually having to make room for the piano." "You have a lot more leeway in terms of expressivity and color, even in the sense of one note having a shape to it," added O'Riley. The album features Beethoven's complete works for cello and keyboard, with O'Riley playing on a fortepiano made in 1823 and Haimovitz outfitting his 1710 Goffriller cello with ox-gut strings, a rosewood tailpiece and a period bow. The duo's performance in the WQXR studio marked a return to (mostly) modern equipment – with a 1940's Steinway and a modern cello bow – but two movements from the Opus 102 No. 2 sonata had a lightness and transparency that suggested time diligently spent in the period-instrument camp. As Haimovitz notes, the Opus 102 sonatas "offer a window into Beethoven's late period where he's deconstructing all of the ideas of the enlightenment and what he inherited from Haydn and Mozart and really finding his own voice complete." Below is the third movement. O'Riley and Haimovitz have previously collaborated on "Shuffle. Play. Listen" (2012), an album of pieces by classical composers (Stravinsky, Janacek, Martinu) along pop acts (Radiohead, Cocteau Twins, Arcade Fire), among others. Both artists have sought to blur the lines between pop and classical over the past decade or more – since Haimovitz began playing Bach in bars and clubs in 2002 and O'Riley started arranging arty rock songs around the same time. Together the duo is planning a future project of pop songs given classical reworkings by contemporary composers. According to O'Riley, it will include John Corigliano's resettings of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs; Philip Glass arranging the Velvet Underground; and Gunther Schuller taking on the band Guided by Voices. A recording is expected to be out this fall. Haimovitz and O'Riley also don't shy away from lush, romantic works as well, as their final performance in the WQXR studio demonstrates: the Andante from Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata, Op. 19. Watch that below and listen to the full segment at the top of this page. Video: Kim Nowacki; Sound: Irene Trudel; Text & Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Elliott Forrest

In-Studio: Matt Haimovitz & Christopher O'Riley Play Beethoven & Rachmaninoff

Blame it on Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring or perhaps the ridiculous virtuosity that is characteristic of so much bluegrass playing. In the past decade, growing numbers of classical musicians have been mixing it up with fiddlers, banjo players and mandolin pluckers. Yo-Yo Ma has worked with bluegrass players in the Goat Rodeo Sessions; mandolin wizard Chris Thile has played his own concerto with several American orchestras and released an album of Bach partitas. The latest group to explore this hybrid is the Jake Schepps Quintet, a string band whose members are steeped in bluegrass spontaneity but whose repertoire – yes, repertoire – is by composers from the modern classical tradition. They include Matt McBane, Marc Mellits, Gyan Riley, and Matt Flinner. Led by Schepps, a Colorado-based banjoist, the group came to WQXR to play three pieces from "Entwined," their debut album. "Most of the instruments in the string band aren't foreign" to classical composers, said Schepps, in an interview with host Terrance McKnight. "Most classical composers have written for violin, guitar, and bass, and a mandolin is tuned like a violin so it's familiar territory." The quintet's set began with Flatiron VII: Planetary Tuners by Mellits, a Chicago-based composer whose works have been performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Kronos Quartet, among other groups. Schepps has been at the forefront of melding bluegrass with other genres for several years. He previously recorded an album of Béla Bartok's music arranged for a string band, "An Evening In The Village," and says he wants to play the music of Henry Purcell for a future project. "I fell in love with his three and four-part fantasias," he said. "I love Baroque music and Bach. I'm always curious for places that I can take string band instruments into new terrain." Schepps added that it's a "lateral step" to transfer pieces from Purcell's viola da gambas to the five-string banjo. The quintet's next selection is the album's title track, by Matt McBane, a Brooklyn violinist and composer who directs the Carlsbad Music Festival in California and whose music has been played by a number of new-music groups. Flinner, who plays mandolin in the quintet, composed the last selection in the set, called Migrations. He tells McKnight that his challenge "was trying, as a bluegrass musician, to write across that line in a long-form manner. Classical music goes so many different directions these days. One thing that we could use more of is more American roots elements added to that. Bluegrass is a uniquely American art form. It feels like it's getting more respect." Schepps added: "My hope is that a classical audience will come to find something interesting about bluegrass." Listen to the full interview and performances at the top of this page. Jake Schepps Quintet Personnel: Jake Schepps: five-string banjoMatt Flinner: mandolinRyan Drickey: violinJordan Tice: acoustic guitarAndrew Small: double bass Videos: Kim Nowacki; Audio: Irene Trudel; Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Terrance McKnight; Production Assistance: Rebecca Stein

The Jake Schepps Quintet's Classical Hoedown

Successful sibling duos in music are rare. The stress of rehearsing and being constantly on the road together can derail the happiest collaboration. The best-known sibling partnership in musical history – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his sister Nannerl – didn't last long. He went off to Paris, Vienna and Prague; Nannerl settled down into marriage. The Swiss cellists Thomas and Patrick Demenga appear to take their collaboration with a more easy-going attitude. Some 35 years since graduating from Juilliard and the Bern Conservatory, respectively, they are still going strong, and performed together in December at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. "We can go on stage and close our eyes and start without even looking at each other," Patrick Demenga told host Jeff Spurgeon. "We are so close in a way musically that we trust – it's one of the most exciting experiences that you can have on stage." The two cellists, who also have active solo careers, came to the WQXR Café to perform as both a duo and as a trio with the Slovenian accordionist Luka Juhart. Their program combined the music of Bach with two modern works. First up was a transcription of Bach's Sonata in G minor for Gamba and Harpsichord (first movement), with Juhart playing the harpsichord part. "Normally if you play with harpsichord and continuo," said Thomas Demenga, "you have a very thin sound and you have to be very careful as a cellist not to overpower the harpsichord. In this combination with accordion you have a really full range because he can sustain the lines so you have the full polyphony."   Juhart met the Demenga brothers through a composer friend, which led to some festival dates in Europe. At an appearance in Austria last year, David Finckel, the artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, heard the trio and booked them on his series. Although the accordion is a relative outsider in U.S. chamber music circles, Juhart estimates that there are 30 or 40 college-level training programs in Europe where one can major in the instrument (he teaches at the academy in Ljubljana, Slovenia). Below, Juhart performs Vinko Globokar’s theatrical solo piece, Dialog über Luft.While Juhart has sought to explore the outer boundaries of the modernist accordion sound, he has also taken up Baroque works by Rameau, Handel, Scarlatti and Frescobaldi. The Demenga brothers, meanwhile, have been equally versatile, as seen in the last work on their program, an excerpt from Thomas Demenga's Solo per due, which features all manner of bowed and plucked techniques. "It's a bit jazzy but not really because I don't like classical musicians who try to play jazz," said Thomas Demenga. He notes that one of his classmates and friends at Juilliard was the violinist Nigel Kennedy, known for a freewheeling forays into popular styles. "We played on the streets [of New York] to make money," Demenga recalls. The two musicians also played frisbee in the halls of Juilliard. "People hated us," he said with a laugh. Video: Kim Nowacki; Audio: Chase Culpon; Production & Text: Brian Wise

Café Concert: The Demenga Brothers and Luka Juhart

The American Boychoir has had an eventful 2014 that's included an appearance in a Hollywood feature film, a visit to the Toronto Film Festival and a December East Coast tour that has the group singing Christmas music in seven different languages. Eleven members of the choir, led by music director Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, visited the WQXR studios early this month to present a selection of carols and songs. The ensemble began with "Mary Had a Baby" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Based in Plainsboro, NJ, the American Boychoir is one of two accredited boychoir boarding schools the United States, the other being the Saint Thomas Choir School in Manhattan. The group, which marked its 75th anniversary last year, is characterized by a unique sound and facility in a wide range of styles. Specifically, unlike the famous Vienna Boychoir, on which it was originally patterned, the American Boychoir uses so-called voices-in-transition. "That's what distinguishes us from almost any other boychoir in the world," said Malvar-Ruiz. "It's the fact that we have changing voices still singing with us. It's adding that new color that makes our sound so unique." This allows the ensemble to fill out SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) choral arrangements (and beyond), as we hear below in these performances. But as 12-year-old chorister Douglas Butler explains, the choir's sound is also the product of hard work, with a school day that stretches from 8 am to 6 pm. "We've tacked an extra three hours at the end of every day for a rehearsal," he says. "We have to learn a lot of music and a lot of times we have to do it quickly" – and by memory. Below: Bach's Domine Deus: The American Boychoir is the centerpiece of a forthcoming film called "Boychoir." Directed by Academy Award-winning film director Francois Girard, it stars Dustin Hoffman and Kathy Bates in a feel-good tale about a troubled boy from Texas who attends the American Boychoir School. Due for national release in 2015, it garnered raves at its Sept. 6 premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. "We did three weeks of filming and a few more weeks of recording the soundtrack," said Malvar-Ruiz. The film was shot at Connecticut’s Fairfield University and in New York, but the American Boychoir School's uniforms, logo and identity are to be used. This is just the latest Hollywood encounter for a choir whose performances have been featured in numerous films and commercials since its founding in Columbus, Ohio in 1937. The choir has been steeped in holiday music throughout its history – at least since its first appearance in a national television broadcast of Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, in 1951. Among its performances this month is an appearance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Dec. 16. Watch their fourth WQXR performance below and listen to the full segment, with host Terrance McKnight's interview, at the top of this page. Video: Kim Nowacki; Audio: Irene Trudel; Production & Text: Brian Wise

Watch: American Boychoir Presents Songs of the Season

Bach's austerely beautiful Art of Fugue has long fascinated musicians who have a taste for the modern and esoteric. The piece, left incomplete at the composer's death, reduced complex counterpoint to its bare essentials – so much that the composer didn't even indicate the instrument (or instruments) for which it was composed. In fact, most scholars agree that Bach probably intended the piece for the harpsichord, but a few string quartets have made their case for the work too. The New York-based Mivos Quartet recently brought the Contrapunctus XIX from The Art of Fugue to the WQXR Café as part of the station's month-long Bachstock festival. In an arrangement by Patrick Higgins, it dramatically calls attention to Bach's advanced sense of time and musical architecture. Formed in 2008 at the Manhattan School of Music, the Mivos Quartet has put much of its focus and resources into contemporary string quartet repertoire. But early-vintage works also turn up on their programs. "Maybe it seems random," says violist Victor Lowrie, "but when there's a program of new music, there's often much older music too – skipping the Classical and Romantic periods." Lowrie adds that, when compared to an exacting living composer, there's a great freedom when it comes to interpreting early music. Like the famous Arditti Quartet before them, Mivos's members are especially drawn to some of the knottier, more abstruse corners of the contemporary repertoire. Their touring calendar presents a who's-who of avant-garde presenters – from Darmstadt to Roulette and seemingly every modern art museum in between. (The quartet appears at Columbia University's Miller Theater on Dec. 9.) And their programs span established names like Kurtag and Ligeti to relative up-and-comers including Kate Soper and Missy Mazzoli.  But the Mivos musicians say they're hardly dogmatic about styles or genres. Cellist Mariel Roberts recalled a recent, eye-opening tour in Brazil, where she encountered idioms far removed from American or European traditions (more samba than serialism). It made for an amusing clash of cultures: "On the last night we were there, one composer was like, 'I don't understand why you guys have all of this weird music with no rhythm. In Brazil that's not something you do. Why would you take the soul out of music?' "I was like 'well, I never thought about it like that.'" Listen to the full concert above, which also features the fourth movement from Taylor Brook's quartet, El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan (also below), plus commentary from cellist Mariel Roberts and violist Victor Lowrie. Video: Kim Nowacki; Sound: Edward Haber; Production and Text: Brian Wise

Café Concert: Mivos Quartet

The four members of the Dublin Guitar Quartet do not specialize in bouncy jigs and reels. Nor do they play in Guinness-soaked pubs. But while the ensemble is certainly connected to its Irish heritage, its repertoire goes further afield, to minimalist and post-minimalist composers including Philip Glass, Arvo Part and Michael Nyman, as well as modern masters like Igor Stravinsky and György Ligeti. Quartet member Brian Bulger says that the group chose to focus on modern repertoire – frequently in arrangements – as a way to distinguish itself and emphasize its unanimity of sound. "Guitar quartets traditionally tend to be a collection of soloists," he said. "They sit in a straight line and there would be a lot of virtuosity. We thought it would be a great idea to create a quartet that was the equivalent of a string quartet, sitting in a semi-circle and concentrating on string quartet repertoire and choir repertoire as opposed to the standard repertoire." The ensemble's Café Concert highlighted this in two pieces by Glass, starting with an arrangement of his String Quartet No. 2, subtitled "Company."   Earlier this year, the Dublin Guitar Quartet released its latest album, a collection of Glass arrangements, which Q2 Music named an Album of the Week. In his review, Daniel Stephen Johnson praised for its "flawless rhythmic unison and tonal blend makes the four instruments sound like one." Of course, arranging piano or string quartets for guitar can be a logistical stretch: there are questions of how to adjust to the guitar's range and articulations. The Dubliners perform with three six-string instruments along with an eight-string guitar with an extra high string and an extra low string, all designed by Bert Kwakkle, a Dutch guitar maker. When it comes to capturing the intricate rhythmic churn of Glass's scores, the guitarists say it simply comes with time and hard work. The group was formed in 2001 at the Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama, and in recent years, they have toured frequently in North America, Europe and South America. Composers are also writing new works for the ensemble. The guitarists say their next frontier lies in electric guitar quartet repertoire, both through existing pieces like those of the composer Steve Reich, and in a commissioned work by the New York composer Michael Gordon, due to premiere in March 2015. Watch the quartet's performance of Glass's Quartet No. 3, "Mishima," below. Video: Amy Pearl/Kim Nowacki; Audio: George Wellington; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon; Text/Production: Brian Wise

Café Concert: Dublin Guitar Quartet

The classical guitarist Pablo Villegas has made his home in New York City for a decade, but his performances have a strong sense of his roots in La Rioja, a region in the north of Spain celebrated for its complex red wines as well as its earthy, indigenous folk music. That includes the Spanish Jota, a folk dance that is normally played with mandolins and guitars, singers and dancers. Performing solo, Villegas featured the colorfully virtuosic dance in a Café Concert performance of Tarrega's Gran Jota de Concierto, which featured a variety of strumming and percussive effects. Villegas came to WQXR on the cusp of a busy season. He's making debuts this year with seven U.S. orchestras, including the Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Oregon Symphonies. For six of those seven he'll be playing Rodrigo’s soulful and challenging Concierto de Aranjuez. He also has a new album due out in early 2015, called "Americano." But as Villegas stated at several points during his visit, "music is a journey" and for him, it began at age six when he saw the celebrated Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia performing on television. "I was really touched by it and I told my parents I wanted to learn guitar," he recalled. Villegas's parents enrolled him in a music school and at age seven he gave his first public performance. "Music is a social tool and as a musician I assume the responsibility of connecting to the audience in a way that I can make them feel things that perhaps they've never felt before." Villegas went on to study in conservatories in Madrid and Weimar, Germany, before becoming "attracted by the multicultural nature of New York." In 2004, he began postgraduate studies with professor David Starobin at the Manhattan School of Music. Villegas paid homage to Segovia in this performance of the Prelude No. 1 by Villa-Lobos, who wrote this piece for the guitar legend. Villegas's own career took off after winning the Andrés Segovia Award at age 15. He went on to receive many more prizes, while making debuts with a number of American and European orchestras. Currently, he is a cultural ambassador to the Vivanco Foundation in Spain, which combines a winery and museum of wine culture. "Wine, art – we used the same words to lexicon to express what we are feeling," he noted. "It's about emotions, it's about getting inspired by it." For this last piece, Tarrega's Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra), Villegas suggests pairing it with a Reserva, a red wine. "It's more calm and mature," he said. "It does go deeper into your emotions." Video: Amy Pearl; Audio: Edward Haber; Text and production: Brian Wise; Interview: Naomi Lewin

Café Concert: Pablo Villegas

VIDEO: Zuill Bailey Plays Selections from Bach's Cello Suite No. 3"Playing Bach – and I don't jokingly say this – is like public therapy," said the cellist Zuill Bailey, just after finishing several movements from Bach's Cello Suites in the WQXR Café. "You're feeling unbelievable one moment and you're feeling very insecure in the next. "When you play Bach well, or you feel that it's going well, there is no greater feeling, because it's a completion of your work and your emotions." If the wavy-haired Bailey seemed to be particularly Zen-like on this steamy July morning, he believes it may have been an after-effect of his recent time in Alaska, where since 2011 he has been the artistic director of the Sitka Summer Music Festival. "Alaska is like Bach," Bailey noted. "It makes you feel grounded and complete. It's oxygen for the soul." Despite his relaxed manner, Bailey also an exceedingly busy artist with a wide-ranging resume. Among its highlights are nearly three-dozen recordings, from the big standard concertos (Dvorak, Elgar, Tchaikovsky) to an upcoming album pairing Bloch's Schlomo with Nico Muhly's Cello Concerto, of which he gave the U.S. premiere in 2013. The cellist frequently tries to pair well-known works with rarities in an effort to challenge audiences, albeit in modest doses. Bailey, who is based in El Paso, TX, travels with a 1693 Matteo Gofriller, an instrument formerly owned by Mischa Schneider of the Budapest String Quartet. He becomes effusive when describing the cello, which is noticeably large and features a rose carved on top under the fingerboard. "It has a very unique sound," said Bailey. "It's very broad and bass-y and yet has the singing ability to play solo lines up top as well." In our interview, attention eventually turned to Bailey's most unusual calling-card: his acting stint as a murderous cellist on the HBO prison series "Oz" between 1997 and 2003. Over a decade later, he believes it was important that he set the parameters of his character – who was imprisoned after stabbing a violinist with the endpin of his cello. "They had me saying really horrible things on the show," Bailey said of the original script. "I said, 'my audience would not understand that this is fake and they would see me as that person. And I can't be that person if I'm playing a performing cellist. So my dialogue was cut down to a bare minimum." Bailey also stipulated that he be able to choose his own music, which included bits of Bach and Paganini. Does Bailey have any more acting in his future? "I hope not," he said, laughing. "I love the idea of bringing the cello to new audiences but I'm not searching those things out." Video: Kim Nowacki; Audio: Edward Haber; Text & Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Naomi Lewin 

Café Concert: Zuill Bailey

Within the last month, the string trio Time for Three has had the unusual distinction of being covered by the Today Show, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, The Strad and yes, WQXR. The reason? Violinists Zachary De Pue and Nicolas Kendall were told they couldn’t take their violins inside the cabin on a US Airways flight from North Carolina to Arkansas. It was at that point that De Pue began playing J.S. Bach's Partita No. 3 on the tarmac while Kendall, recording the incident on his phone, shows the pair being ignored by various US Airways personnel. The musicians’ video of the incident was posted on YouTube, which quickly set off a social media storm. (US Airways later described it as a misunderstanding of carry-on rules between its employees and the musicians.) Even as Time For Three came on a wider public's radar (and its Facebook feeds) with the incident, the trio has been active for over a decade, appearing everywhere from symphony halls to jazz clubs to football games and even the Indianapolis 500 auto race. The musicians first met and began jamming together in 1999 while classmates at the Curtis Institute of Music. They got their first formal gig in 2001 and soon the sideline became a more serious pursuit. “Our common ground is classical music and each one of us brought a different genre to the table,” Double bassist Ranaan Meyer said in an interview with WQXR host Naomi Lewin. Kendall’s interests included gypsy jazz, hip-hop and R&B; De Pue specialized in Texas fiddling and folk music; Meyer played jazz. “What was really unique was we were able to teach each other some of the influences from those other genres, respectively. In the WQXR Café, the group played two selections for their new, self-titled album on Universal Classics, starting with "Roundabouts," an intimate piece by Kendall that features a round structure. Since 2009, Time for Three has been in residency with the Indianapolis Symphony, where De Pue is the concertmaster. The trio's next song, “Banjo Love,” by Meyer, gives a hint of the American fiddling tradition that has become a part of its musical DNA. It also pays homage to the noted banjo player Béla Fleck, who is a musical hero of the group. The trio’s final song in the café is a cover version of Coldplay’s "UFO." While it attests to the strong pop influences on Time for Three, the musicians are quick to call attention to their classical credits. Along with appearing at Carnegie Hall and other major venues, they have commissioned high-profile composers including Jennifer Higdon, William Bolcom and Chris Brubeck to write works for the group and are currently developing a new piece with the Portland, OR-based composer Kenji Bunch. “When people ask us what we are we have no idea,” noted Meyer, laughing. “We're a marketing nightmare for most record companies. The fact that we're actually signed with Universal is a major pat on the back for us. When we're getting together, frankly it's not a purist thing." Video: Amy Pearl; Audio: Edward Haber; Text & Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Naomi Lewin

Café Concert: Time for Three

Anne Akiko Meyers plays a centuries-old Guarneri del Gesu violin once used by Itzhak Perlman, Henri Vieuxtemps and Yehudi Menuhin, but it doesn’t reveal its beauty easily. "It definitely doesn’t play itself,” Meyers said. “When you have such a powerful instrument you want to dig in deeper and soak in the juice. But with this instrument, almost less is more. It’s counterintuitive. “You have to really finesse it in a certain way,” she added, noting how she is learning how to find the sweet spots and bring them out. The 1741 Guarneri, known as the Vieuxtemps, was sold in 2012 for what was reported to be more than $16 million and its anonymous owner has loaned it to Meyers for life. She recently put the instrument to the test with a recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the English Chamber Orchestra. Days after the album's release she brought the instrument to the WQXR Café to offer repertoire in a somewhat more unusual vein. The internationally known Meyers, who is performing this spring with the Chicago Symphony and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, demonstrated its lyrical qualities with an arrangement of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.” One of the salient features of the Vieuxtemps is its enormous, rich sound, which Meyers attributes to its excellent state of preservation. “It doesn’t have one crack on it and it doesn’t even have the normal sound post patch, which almost every violin has,” Meyers explained. “And it’s a muse for so many violin makers and violinists because nobody knows why it’s in such pristine condition. And this condition has helped the sound of the violin just soar.” For one thing, the wood inside the violin was thicker, owing to the fact that previous owners did not alter it in a (misguided) attempt to draw out a deeper sound. Meyers added that the instrument had been mostly sitting under a bed for the past 50 years and as a result, “Even now, it’s still growing.” A Japanese folk tune arrangement revealed its tone in more virtuosic passagework. Certainly, there has been ongoing debate over the relative merits of old and modern violins, and whether Guarneri and Stradivarius models are really better than the new ones. Blind tests have even suggested that experts couldn’t tell the difference between the two. Meyers notes, however, that contemporary makers still look to the centuries-old instruments for inspiration and guidance. “There was one Monet, there was one Picasso, there was one Guarneri del Gesu," she said. "We try to emulate these incredible makers but they were artists that were transcendent. It’s so important to cherish these instruments as much as we can.” Below: Meyers introduces and performs the "Star-Spangled Banner." Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: Norko Okabe; Text & Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon

Café Concert: Anne Akiko Meyers

An upright piano may not seem like the desired tool of a keyboard purist but Jenny Lin needed little rationalization for playing Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite on the upright in the WQXR Café. Stravinsky himself was said to compose not at a concert grand, but "at a tacky-sounding and usually out-of-tune upright piano that has been muted and dampened with felt,” according to a onetime description by his wife, Vera Stravinsky. What’s more, Stravinsky’s teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, advocated using uprights in orchestra works, arguing for their tinny, delicate sounds over thick, chordal opulence. The instrument may have also underscored the Russian folk sounds that characterize many of Stravinsky's early works. The Taiwan-born, New York-based Lin also plays Stravinsky on the big grands, something she has been doing a lot lately. Her newest album is a collection of a dozen of the composer's solo piano works, and while many of them aren’t so well known – perhaps lacking the surging passions or flamboyant calisthenics employed by other Russian composers – she believes they have much to admire and enjoy. "We really should know more about Stravinsky as a piano music composer because he composed a lot of the orchestra music on piano, and he was a very good pianist himself,” said Lin. Along with original solo piano pieces like the Sonata and the Serenade, there are some finger-twisting arrangements, notably Guido Agosti’s transcription of the Firebird Suite. Here Lin plays work’s the Danse infernale: Lin discovered Agosti’s Firebird transcription while studying in Italy as a teenager and that got her hooked on Stravinsky's work. “He's clever as a composer,” she noted. “He knows what gets an audience and can trigger the adrenaline.” While Lin’s concert repertoire includes the hefty concertos of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff, her discography tells of a more eclectic sensibility, spanning "InsomniMania," a collection of pieces inspired by nighttime dreams and anxieties, and "The Eleventh Finger,” devoted to complex modernists like Gyorgy Ligeti, Elliott Sharp and others. In the WQXR Café she also performed a selection from "Get Happy: Virtuoso Show Tunes for Piano.” The 2012 album featured arrangements of Broadway songs by such noted pianist-composers as André Previn, Stephen Hough, Marc-André Hamelin and Alexis Weissenberg. “One should not take these pieces very lightly,” said Lin. “I have to say, I thought that doing the Broadway arrangement project would easy because of the tunes but it was the hardest thing I’ve had to do, because every pianist just took the tune and went off with it.” Below is Lin’s performance of Gershwin’s Embraceable You, in an arrangement by the late Earl Wild: Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: Edward Haber; Text & Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon

Café Concert: Jenny Lin

When Alisa Weilerstein came to the WQXR Café, it was during the epic cold blast that gripped New York, sending residents scurrying indoors while impairing string instruments with wayward pitch. Yet after a thorough warm-up, the cellist launched into soulful renditions of solo works by Osvaldo Golijov and J.S. Bach and the icy temps may have receded into memory. Weilerstein, who is a 2011 recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" grant and a busy touring artist, performed what she described as "one of the most beloved pieces for cello," the Gigue from Bach's Cello Suite No. 3: Thoughts about the weather were further put aside when Weilerstein brought up her latest recording, an all-Dvorak affair that includes the Cello Concerto along with several miniatures (read more and get a free download here). She recorded the concerto last summer in Prague with the Czech Philharmonic. "There’s a kind of warmth and depth to their playing which I found very unique,” she said of the orchestra's sound. Weilerstein spent a day at Dvorak’s 18th-century house on the outskirts of Prague where she performed beneath a portrait of Josefina Čermakova, the composer’s sister-in-law who died at any early age. The composer dedicated the third movement of his Cello Concerto to Čermakova, with whom he fell in love (it was not returned though and he eventually married her younger sister). Weilerstein then stayed for a photo shoot in the adjacent woods – that portrayed in his work From the Bohemian Forest. The Dvorak Concerto has another significance for Weilerstein. In February 2009 she played the piece as part of an audition for Gustavo Dudamel. Ten months later, she was invited to play it with the conductor's Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Caracas. The performance was a hit, and led to a spontaneous invitation to join the orchestra on a Venezuelan tour. There she encountered Rafael Payare, a young conductor who also played French horn in the ensemble. A relationship emerged and, last August, Weilerstein and Payare got married at the Caramoor Center in Katonah, NY. Their wedding, which was featured in the New York Times, came just two months after her trip to Prague. The couple appear to be developing a professional relationship too: this week, Weilerstein and Payare are performing the Brahms Double Concerto together in Hamburg, Germany (Weilerstein is scheduled to perform the Dvorak Concerto in December with the New York Philharmonic). Below, Weilerstein performs Osvaldo Golijov’s Omaramor, a fantasia inspired by the legendary tango singer Carlos Gardel. “The cello is supposed to be walking through the streets of Buenos Aires," Weilerstein explained in lightly accented English. "Sometimes it’s melancholic, sometimes it’s very rough, sometimes very reflective. It’s a piece that I’ve played a lot over the past eight years and one that’s really important to be in the core cello repertoire." Video: Amy Pearl; Audio: George Wellington; Text & Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon

Café Concert: Alisa Weilerstein

Say Leipzig and classical music listeners may think of old, blue-chip institutions like the St. Thomas Boys Choir, the Gewandhaus Orchestra or the Bach-Archiv, which carries on the legacy of the German city’s most famous composer. Most may not think of a young a capella quintet that covers Irish airs and folk songs, jazz tunes and pop hits by Michael Jackson, Sting and Freddie Mercury. But the Leipzig-based Calmus Ensemble has developed such versatility, with a repertoire that also reaches back to composers from Purcell and Bach to Mendelssohn and Debussy. “The pop songs today have the same role as the madrigals centuries ago,” Ludwig Böhme, the ensemble's baritone told host Jeff Spurgeon (listen to the full interview and performance above). Formed in 1999 by six male graduates of the Thomas Church Choir School, the group's personnel shifted early on and the gleaming soprano voice of Anja Lipfert was added in 2001 (the lineup today also includes countertenor Sebastian Krause, tenor Tobias Pöche and bass Joe Roesler). Calmus's members cite the King's Singers as a formative influence, and some critics have drawn (perhaps more unusual) comparisons to mixed-voice a cappella groups like the Swingle Singers. Calmus stopped by the WQXR Café a day after their debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to perform a holiday-focused program. They began with "Nova Nova," an ancient song given a modern twist in an arrangement by choral singer and composer Bob Chilcott. The Calmus musicians carry a distinctly German identity and they don't avoid the music of their hometown composers. But baritone Böhme insists that versatility is the group's ultimate calling card. "Our classical background is clear," he said. "When we sing pop arrangements we don't sound like pop singers. Everybody will hear our classical education. We always love the variety. There are many possibilities of where we can sing." The Calmus musicians showed their cheekier side with a performance of "Jingle Bells." In Böhme's arrangement, it is combined with "Suesser die Glocken nie klingen" ("Sweeter the Bells Never Sound"),a German carol from the 1850s. Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: Edward Haber; Production & Text: Brian Wise

Café Concert: Calmus Ensemble

VIDEO: The Pacifica Quartet & Anthony McGill Play Mozart When a long-established string quartet brings in a fifth collaborator, questions inevitably arise: how will the four players interact with the newcomer? Who will call the shots in rehearsals, and how does the group dynamic change? When the Pacifica Quartet gave a performance of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet in the WQXR Café, that fifth member was Anthony McGill, the principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He recently recorded the clarinet quintets of Brahms and Mozart with the Pacifica, for an album due out next spring. "It's great to have that influx of new energy and new thoughts," Pacifica violist Masumi Per Rostad told host Jeff Spurgeon. "It changes our rehearsal process. It changes the way we interact with each other when it's just the four of us." McGill joked that the group puts on its polite company face when he enters the room. "What's kind of funny about that, especially with a string quartet, is that most of the time, you’re really welcome, because they spend a lot of time with each other,” said McGill. "Every group has its own specific dynamic and it’s really fascinating to be able to feel that." Along with his job at the Met, McGill is active as a chamber musician and soloist. He encounters a lot of Mozart, be it his chamber music or operas like Cosi fan tutte. "The way he captures the overtones and the sweetest part of the instrument is better than any other composer," McGill said of his clarinet writing. "The part of the instrument that sounds like the human voice – that’s the part that he zeroes in on and uses to the best of his abilities." The Pacifica's Cafe Concert came one day after the quartet appeared at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall to perform with another notable artist, pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, in the rarely-heard Leo Ornstein Piano Quintet. Next year, the ensemble will mark its 20th anniversary with the premieres of commissioned works by Shulamit Ran and Julia Wolfe, the latter of which will be a string quintet with cellist Johannes Moser. The Pacifica has seen other changes lately too. Last year, the group left the University of Illinois after nearly a decade as the resident quartet to join the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. It is the first quartet-in-residence at a school with a long string pedagogy tradition but much less of a chamber music bent. The quartet now teaches some 35 ensembles. Does the name “Pacifica” – a holdover from the group’s founding in Los Angeles – ever seem strange given their Midwestern orientation now? “It’s a nice name and we’ve been happy with it," said Rostad. "Our students like to joke that they could call us the Cornfield-ica.” Video: Amy Pearl; Sound: Noriko Okabe; Text & Production: Brian Wise

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Café Concerts

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