Gilbert Kalish is a distinguished pianist renowned for his exceptional artistry and collaborative performances. With a rich background in classical music, he has made significant contributions to the world of chamber music and song interpretation. One of his notable past performances includes collaborating with acclaimed baritone Randall Scarlata in a rendition of Franz Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, a work celebrated for its emotional depth and lyrical beauty. Kalish's ability to enhance the storytelling through his piano accompaniment has garnered praise from critics and audiences alike. His performances are characterized by a profound understanding of the music and a commitment to bringing the composer's intentions to life. As he continues to evolve as an artist, Kalish remains dedicated to exploring new repertoire and engaging in innovative projects. His upcoming endeavors promise to further showcase his talent and passion for music, solidifying his status as a leading figure in the classical music community. With a career spanning decades, Gilbert Kalish's contributions to the art form continue to inspire both fellow musicians and music lovers around the world.

Pianist

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Master Class: Gilbert Kalish

Samuel B. & David Rose Building

Join us for an exclusive master class featuring the renowned pianist Gilbert Kalish, presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. This special event is set to take place on Friday, November 15, 2024, at 11:00 am, in the intimate setting of the Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio at CMS. Spanning 2 hours with no intermission, attendees will have the unique opportunity to gain an insider's perspective on the art of interpretation and the nuances of technique, as shared by CMS artists and the esteemed Gilbert Kalish himself.

Gilbert Kalish's profound influence as both an educator and pianist in a wide array of performances and recordings has solidified his status as a pivotal figure in American music-making. This season, he graces stages with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, performs at the Ojai Music Festival, and enjoys a residency at the San Francisco Conservatory. His illustrious career includes a 30-year tenure as the pianist of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and a founding membership in the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, a group dedicated to the support of new music during the 1960s and 70s. Kalish's collaborations with artists such as mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani, soprano Dawn Upshaw, and cellists Timothy Eddy and Joel Krosnik highlight his versatile and rich musical partnerships. His dedication to music education and performance is further evidenced by his significant role at SUNY Stony Brook and his longstanding involvement with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2006.

This master class is not just an event but an exploration into the depths of chamber music, led by one of its most distinguished proponents. Whether you're a seasoned musician, an aspiring artist, or simply a lover of chamber music, this master class with Gilbert Kalish promises to be an enlightening and unforgettable experience.

Tickets are not yet on sale, but be sure to mark your calendar and stay tuned for more information on how you can secure your spot at this not-to-be-missed event.

Gilbert Kalish, piano

Sonic Spectrum I

Anchored by one ensemble and one instrument, Trios and Trumpets gathers music from Austria, Hungary, and France. The piano trio is represented by W. A. Mozart and Cécile Chaminade, the first woman composer to receive the Légion d’honneur. Two lighthearted works with trumpet balance the trios: in Bohuslav Martinů’s fanciful La revue de cuisine, the instruments depict kitchen utensils, with the mirth vividly reflected in Camille Saint-Saëns’s jocular septet.

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Concert Program Iv Trios And Trumpets (livestream)

Online

Anchored by one ensemble and one instrument, Trios and Trumpets gathers music from Austria, Hungary, and France. The piano trio is represented by W. A. Mozart and Cécile Chaminade, the first woman composer to receive the Legion d’honneur. Two lighthearted works with trumpet balance the trios: in Bohuslav Martinů’s fanciful La revue de cuisine, the instruments depict kitchen utensils, with the mirth vividly reflected in Camille Saint-Saëns’s jocular septet.

Concert Program Iv Trios And Trumpets

Menlo School Campus

Music@Menlo’s Overture Concert presents the fruits of artistic collaboration between world-renowned festival artists and the exciting young International Program artists. Fresh new perspectives on chamber music emerge as seasoned performers share their expertise with rising stars of the stage.

Overture Concert Beethoven, Saint-saëns, Mendelssohn

Vienna and Paris have long been cultural powerhouses, from the visual to the literary to the musical. Joseph Haydn, the founder of the Classical style, and W. A. Mozart, who refined and augmented it, are represented in this program by beloved works for traditional chamber ensembles. After the intermission, French composers offer their different, effervescent perspectives on mixed ensembles and the piano trio.

Concert Program II: Vienna to Paris (Livestream)

Concert Program II: Vienna to Paris

Join us for a sublime celebration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's timeless genius with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's "Totally Mozart." This special event, set to close the season, promises an immersive experience into Mozart's unparalleled beauty, craft, and invention. The performances are scheduled for Saturday, May 18, and Sunday, May 19, 2024, at the prestigious Alice Tully Hall, promising an enchanting evening of classical music spanning 2 hours, including an intermission.

The program features a selection of Mozart's masterpieces, showcasing his profound impact on the chamber music genre. Audiences will be treated to performances of the Sonata in E minor for Violin and Piano, K. 304; the Quartet in F major for Oboe, Violin, Viola, and Cello, K. 370; the Trio in G major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, K. 564; along with several of his Church Sonatas and the Grande Sestetto Concertante for String Sextet after the Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364.

An impressive lineup of artists will bring these compositions to life, including pianist Gilbert Kalish, known for his profound influence on American music-making; Paolo Bordignon on the portative organ; violinists Stella Chen and Cho-Liang Lin; violists Misha Amory and Paul Neubauer; cellists Nicholas Canellakis and David Requiro; and oboist Stephen Taylor.

This event not only celebrates Mozart's legacy but also showcases the exceptional talent and artistry of the performers. Whether you are a lifelong classical music enthusiast or new to the genre, "Totally Mozart" offers a perfect opportunity to experience the enduring power and magic of Mozart's works.

Tickets are not yet on sale but keep an eye out for updates as this is a must-attend event for anyone passionate about classical music. Join us at Alice Tully Hall for a memorable journey through the works of one of the greatest composers of all time.

Totally Mozart

Lincoln Center

Baritone Randall Scarlata has been praised by the New York Times as "an intelligent and communicative singer" with a "compelling desire to bring texts to life." He has also been acclaimed for his "extraordinary vocal range and colour palette" and "ability to traverse so many different singing styles" (MusicWeb International). The Daily Telegraph (London) adds "Randall Scarlata sings with the assurance of one with nothing to prove."

Randall Scarlata and Gil Kalish: Franz Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin

Swarthmore College

Gilbert Kalish leads a musical life of unusual variety and breadth. As educator he is Leading Professor and Head of Performance Activities at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. From 1968-1997 he was a faculty member of the Tanglewood Music Center and served as the "Chairman of the Faculty" at Tanglewood from 1985-1997. He often serves as guest faculty at distinguished music institutions such as the Banff Centre and the Steans Institute at Ravinia, and is renowned for his master class presentations.

David L. Abell Piano Masters Series featuring Gilbert Kalish

UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music

Each weekday of the festival at 11:00 a.m., our “Mornings@Menlo” sessions feature either a master class with the Chamber Music Institute’s young artists, or a Café Conversation. The Institute’s master classes offer visitors the opportunity to witness the exchange between artist and apprentice, and culminate in the festival’s series of Prelude Performances and Koret Young Performers Concerts

Master Class With Gilbert Kalish

The artistic, political, and social explosions that began at the start of the twentieth century presaged one hundred years of turmoil, and composers realized that musical rules were no more. Variety abounded; no musical style dominated, and anyone could become an artist. This eclectic sampling of music from the most changeable era in world history was foreshadowed by Beethoven, whose creativity and artistic independence remained unmatched.

CONCERT PROGRAM V: The Turbulent Century

 The Overture Concerts feature International Program performers in collaboration with festival main-stage artists, providing a unique experience for audience members and musicians alike. This summer, International Program artists will perform across two concert programs side by side with violinists Paul Huang and Arnaud Sussmann, violists Matthew Lipman and Paul Neubauer, cellist Mihai Marica, oboist James Austin Smith, clarinetist David Shifrin, and pianists Gilbert Kalish and Wu Han.

Overture Concert II: Suk & Elgar

Overture Concert I: Mozart, Brahms, Fauré

A straight line leads from Bach, the musical monarch of the Baroque, to Beethoven, the composer who would reinvent the art in its entirety. Along the way, many composers made weighty contributions: Bach’s sons attained fame with more populist music; Haydn invented the symphony and string quartet; and virtually everything that Mozart created was of unearthly beauty. Riding on all this momentum, a youthful Beethoven broke from the starting gate, stunning the musical establishment with works of unimagined daring, invention, and excitement. 

Concert Program II: Bach To Beethoven

Music from the Baroque era stimulates the senses, lifts the spirits, and inspires faith in all things good. The evolution of everything in music—from the art of counterpoint to the invention of new forms—transformed Baroque composers into unstoppable creators as they experimented with new musical styles and combinations of instruments. In this opening concert, we’ll experience six trailblazing composers showing their skills in a colorful collection of instruments and ensembles.

Concert Program I: Baroque Splendor

The timeless art of the recital is perpetuated in the hands of present-day masters of the genre. Experience the musical journeys crafted by these thrilling performers in the intimate Rose Studio.

Art of the Recital: Gilbert Kalish

Rose Studio

Small string ensembles by the mature Mozart. The "Kegelstatt" Trio from 1786 and the beautiful Quintet form 1787.

Rose Studio: Mozart

Late Night Rose: Mozart

Like a shooting star, Franz Schubert blazed across music's sky for a brief 31 years, leaving behind over 1,000 works that transformed the Classical into the Romantic age.
Four programs spanning Schubert's creative career and variety of compositions offer a rich journey into one of music's most ethereal worlds. A fifth concert explores how the legacy of Schubert and composers in the two centuries following his death have re-worked and been inspired by his compositions.

Winter Festival: Grand Statements

Great works have been inspired not only by lofty ideals, but also by the colorful music composers heard played as entertainment outside the concert hall. Among the most mesmerizing performers heard by composers such as Joseph Haydn and Johannes Brahms were the itinerant Roma, whose musical skills combined almost supernatural virtuosity with visceral excitement. Later, before tragically perishing in a Nazi prison, Erwin Schulhoff composed stunning, eclectic music that drew on idioms from folk to jazz, and the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate provided violinists with ideal vehicles for simply showing off. Music@Menlo’s twentieth season appropriately closes with Brahms’s first piano quartet, its Rondo alla Zingarese finale, perhaps the greatest chamber music crowd-pleaser of them all.

This concert is preceded by a free afternoon Koret Young Performers Concert (KYPC) at 12:30 p.m. by the 2022 Young Performers Program artists. KYPC programs will be announced in May.

CONCERT PROGRAM VIII Folk Spirit

A Little Fun celebrates music’s power to express the depths of profundity and the height of absurdity in a program that unashamedly combines the sublime with the ridiculous. Well-behaved all the way to its conclusion, Joseph Haydn’s quartet nick-named The Joke plays a cunning prank on the audience, not to be revealed in advance! Jumping centuries, Charles Ives’s only piano trio combines transcendental serenity in its outer movements with the self-proclaimed outrageousness of its scherzo, titled TSIAJ (This Scherzo is a Joke). The twentieth-century Russians Alfred Schnittke and Dmitry Shostakovich supply potent doses of ironic humor, and Haydn gets the last word with a clever arrangement for chamber ensemble of his Surprise Symphony, so nicknamed on account of a single, outrageous note.

This concert is preceded by a free afternoon Prelude Performance at 5 p.m. by the 2022 International Program artists. Prelude programs will be announced in May.

CONCERT PROGRAM VI A Little Fun

Bestowing possibly the greatest music review in history, Joseph Haydn remarked to Leopold Mozart in 1785, “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.” In this program, you will hear the exact quartet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that inspired these words, preceded by one of Haydn’s finest works that inspired Mozart to dedicate quartets to the elder master. French composers Reynaldo Hahn, Paul Dukas, Vincent D’Indy, and Charles-Marie Widor contribute colorful homages to Haydn, for solo piano, written on the hundredth anniversary of his death. Concluding the concert is a bracing juxtaposition of the defining giants of Impressionism, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, bringing their mutual respect—and perhaps even rivalry—to life on stage.

This concert is preceded by a free afternoon Prelude Performance at 5 p.m. by the 2022 International Program artists. Prelude programs will be announced in May.

CONCERT PROGRAM V Admiration

During the eighteenth century, divertimentos and serenades lived up to their names as pleasant “diversions” and musical gestures of affection. Often performed outdoors, the clear timbres of wind instruments could be perfectly heard. Inspired by the examples of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composers that followed evolved a colorful tradition of chamber music for winds. Ludwig van Beethoven’s ingratiating Serenade, written for a unique ensemble combination, is essential listening for fans of the flute, and Béla Bartók’s bracing Contrasts, composed for the legendary bandleader Benny Goodman, thrills classical and jazz aficionados alike.

CONCERT PROGRAM II Wind Variations

During the eighteenth century, divertimentos and serenades lived up to their names as pleasant “diversions” and musical gestures of affection. Often performed outdoors, the clear timbres of wind instruments could be perfectly heard. Inspired by the examples of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composers that followed evolved a colorful tradition of chamber music for winds. Ludwig van Beethoven’s ingratiating Serenade, written for a unique ensemble combination, is essential listening for fans of the flute, and Béla Bartók’s bracing Contrasts, composed for the legendary bandleader Benny Goodman, thrills classical and jazz aficionados alike.

This concert is preceded by a free afternoon Prelude Performance at 5 p.m. by the 2022 International Program artists. Prelude programs will be announced in May.

Wind Variations 

The festival begins on a celebratory note, connecting Joseph Haydn, the father of the Classical style, with the Baroque era’s greatest master, Johann Sebastian Bach. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, son of Johann Sebastian, composed his dashing A major Cello Concerto only three years after his father’s death, setting a new standard of instrumental brilliance. In Haydn’s dramatic cantata, the heroine Ariadne is abandoned during the night on the island of Naxos by her lover Theseus, whom she had saved from the Minotaur. Haydn’s ever popular C major Violin Concerto follows, and the evening closes with Johann Sebastian Bach’s secular cantata Be still, stop chattering (in essence, a short comic opera), which tells the humorous, cautionary tale of a young woman addicted to coffee.

CONCERT PROGRAM I Concertos and Cantatas

Though rightfully regarded as the father of the piano trio, string quartet, and symphony, Joseph Haydn remains under-recognized for his contribution to the solo keyboard literature. Yet Haydn also excelled in this arena, producing over four dozen sonatas among other solo keyboard works. The 2022 festival season’s Carte Blanche Concert series begins with a recital program by Music@Menlo luminary and longtime Haydn specialist Gilbert Kalish, who offers four of Haydn’s finest sonatas that span two decades of the composer’s life.

Carte Blanche Concert I

Gilbert Kalish, Piano 

Concert Program II brings together three works that contrast brooding tempers with light, lyricism, and optimism. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, the first significant work of its kind, would inaugurate a rich repertoire tradition, nurtured in subsequent generations by Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvorák, and many others. Franz Schubert’s sublime Fantasy in F minor likewise adopts a genre closely associated with Mozart–four-hand piano–but which the Prince of Song makes unmistakably his own. The program concludes with the mesmerizing Piano Trio in F-sharp minor by the twentieth-century Armenian composer Arno Babajanian.

Gilbert Kalish

Pianist

Events

Upcoming events

May 15, 2025

Beethoven and Onslow · Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Past events

Nov 15, 2024

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Master Class: Gilbert Kalish · The Juilliard School

Nov 15, 2024

Gilbert Kalish, piano · Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Future and recently performed repertoire

Piano in Die Schöne Müllerin by Schubert

Swarthmore College Department of Music and Dance

About

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