NEW YORK – Violinist Monica Huggett leads Juilliard’s period-instrument ensemble Juilliard415 in “The Prodigies: Music of Mendelssohn and Mozart” on Monday, February 8, 2016, at 7:30pm in Alice Tully Hall.
More details from Juilliard (www.juilliard.com)
The program features Mendelssohn’s String Symphony No. 13 in C Minor (“Sinfoniesatz”); Violin Concerto in D Minor with Juilliard violinist Augusta McKay Lodge; String Symphony No. 6 in E-flat Major; and Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550.
About the program, which features Mendelssohn’s music paired with Mozart, Monica Huggett writes in her Juilliard Journal article: “It’s no accident that disciples of Historical Performance are interested in Mendelssohn. For one thing, he was the reason for the revival of the interest in Bach. His grandmother Bella Salomon gave him the score of the all-but-forgotten Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and in 1829, he conducted the first performance of it in something like 100 years. In his lifetime Mendelssohn was considered a conservative composer-Liszt was somewhat his antithesis-but like Brahms would be, he was a Romantic composer whose compositions incorporate Baroque idioms.” She continues: “Mendelssohn is a natural composer to pair with Mozart, not just because of their shared youthful genius, but because there is a lightness and clarity about his compositions that’s very similar to Mozart’s.”
Tickets for $20 are available at events.juilliard.edu or at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard students with valid ID may purchase tickets for $10.
Juilliard’s full-scholarship Historical Performance program was established and endowed in 2009 by the generous support of Bruce and Suzie Kovner.
About Monica Huggett
Monica Huggett is artist-in-residence and artistic advisor of Juilliard Historical Performance and has been with Juilliard Historical Performance since its inception. She also is artistic director of the Portland (Oregon) Baroque Orchestra and the Irish Baroque Orchestra based in Dublin. Ms. Huggett is a member of the Benvenue Fortepiano Trio with cellist Tanya Tompkins and fortepianist Eric Zivian; the ensemble specializes in the historical performance of Classical and Romantic repertoire.
During the past four decades, she has co-founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra with Ton Koopman; founded her own London-based ensemble Sonnerie; worked with Christopher Hogwood at the Academy of Ancient Music; worked with Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert; toured the United States in concert with James Galway; and in 2004, co-founded the Montana Baroque Festival. She has served as guest director of the Arion Baroque Orchestra, Montreal; Tafelmusik, Toronto; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Philharmonia Baroque, San Francisco; the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra; the Seville Baroque Orchestra; Concerto Copenhagen; and has been guest soloist with ensembles Helicon and Galatea; Mercury Baroque, Houston; and the Early Music Festival, Utrecht.
Ms. Huggett’s recordings have won numerous prizes, and her CD Flights of Fantasy was named by Alex Ross in his New Yorker review, the 2010 CD of the Year. Ms. Huggett holds an honorary fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
About Augusta McKay Lodge
Oberlin, Ohio, native Augusta McKay Lodge, 23, holds a Bachelor of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, from which she graduated with honors (Pi Kappa Lambda) at age 19, and a Master of Music from Indiana University’s Jacobs School. Ms. Lodge is currently a Graduate Diploma candidate in Juilliard’s Historical Performance program, under the tutelage of Cynthia Roberts, Robert Mealy, and Monica Huggett. She is a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship.
The winner of Juilliard’s Historical Performance Concerto Competition, Ms. Lodge has been praised as “the real thing, a true virtuoso” and “an exceptional violinist” ( Seen and Heard International). She recently also won the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra Concerto Competition and placed as a semifinalist in the International Musica Antiqua Competition (Belgium). Ms. Lodge performs regularly as an apprentice with Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. She has performed in venues such as Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), and Severance Hall (Cleveland). Recent performances include a solo appearance for Bach’s A-minor Violin Concerto with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra.
An avid orchestral and chamber musician, Ms. Lodge has toured throughout Europe as assistant concertmaster with the Nederlands Studenten Orkest, and was principal second violin of the Sweelinck Baroque Orchestra (Amsterdam). She has performed with members of Tafelmusik during its winter institute, and as concertmaster of Juilliard415. As a member of Oberlin’s Contemporary Music Ensemble she can be heard on its recording A place toward other places. Ms. Lodge plays a 2014 Jason Viseltear Baroque violin.
About Juilliard415
Since its founding in 2009, Juilliard415, the school’s principal period-instrument ensemble, has made significant contributions to musical life in New York and beyond, bringing major figures in the field of early music to lead performances of both rare and canonical works of the 17th and 18th centuries. Among the many distinguished guests who have led Juilliard415 are Masaaki Suzuki, Ton Koopman, Harry Bicket, Nicholas McGegan, the late Christopher Hogwood, and Monica Huggett. In 2011, the ensemble made its Carnegie Hall debut in a concert that was cited as one of the ten best of the season by The New York Times. A 2012 performance of Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo under the baton of William Christie earned this same distinction.
Juilliard415 tours extensively in the U.S. and abroad, with notable appearances at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Leipzig Bachfest, and the Utrecht Early Music Festival, where Juilliard was the first-ever conservatory-in-residence. With its frequent musical collaborator, the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Juilliard415 has performed throughout Italy, Japan, Southeast Asia, and the United Kingdom.
Other recent milestones include a fully staged production of Handel’s Radamisto; a tour of Charpentier’s Actéon with William Christie; concerts in New York and Miami of incidental music to Shakespeare plays in collaboration with the Juilliard Drama Division, conducted by Jordi Savall; and the rare opportunity to hear both Bach Passions in successive months.
Members of Juilliard415 have been to Germany for concerts in Augsburg and Munich with the Leopold-Mozart-Zentrum, and they maintain a keynote presence at William Christie’s annual summer festival Rencontres musicales en Vendée, where the ensemble has appeared since the festival’s founding in 2012.
The 2014-15 season brought return visits from William Christie for Handel’s La resurrezione, Robert Mealy in a program of virtuoso Italian Baroque music, Monica Huggett in an all-Beethoven program, and Jordi Savall directing a themed concert called Amid the Charms of Nature, as well as debuts from Kristian Bezuidenhout and British violinist Rachel Podger, and a historic collaboration among the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Program, Juilliard’s Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, and Juilliard415 for performances of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide, Jane Glover conducting.
During the 2015-16 season, Juilliard415 gives concerts in Vancouver and the Bay Area with Nicholas McGegan; in Portland, Oregon and New Haven with Yale Schola Cantorum, David Hill conducting; welcomes Lars Ulrik Mortensen for his Juilliard debut; collaborates with the Marcus Institute in a staged production of Cavalli’s La Calisto; expands its repertoire by playing Mendelssohn with Monica Huggett (on this concert); features Juilliard dancers in a concert entitled Terpsichore, led by Robert Mealy; and celebrates the holidays with Bach’s Magnificat and conductor Richard Egarr. Other esteemed guests include William Christie, Jordi Savall, and Masaaki Suzuki.
