Overseas Guest Artists Announced

We’re thrilled to announce the engagement of overseas guests for our 2013 Adam Chamber Music Festival.

 Penderecki String Quartet

Penderecki-String-Quartet-Adam-Chamber-Music-FestivalThe Penderecki String Quartet, approaching the third decade of an extraordinary career, has become one of the most celebrated chamber ensembles of their generation. These four musicians from Poland, Canada, and the USA bring their varied yet collective experience to create performances that demonstrate their “remarkable range of technical excellence and emotional sweep” (Toronto, Globe and Mail). Their recent schedule has included concerts in New York (Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall), Amsterdam (Concertgebouw), Los Angeles (REDCAT at Disney Hall), St. Petersburg, Paris, Prague, Berlin, Rome, Belgrade, Zagreb, Atlanta, as well as appearances at international festivals in Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Venezuela, Brazil, and China. The PSQ champions music of our time, performing a wide range of repertoire from Haydn to Zappa as well as premiering over 100 new works to date. Described by Fanfare Magazine as “an ensemble of formidable power and keen musical sensitivity”, the PSQ’s diverse discography includes the chamber music of Brahms and Shostakovich (Eclectra and Marquis labels) and their recently released Bartok cycle. They enter their 20th year as Quartet-in-Residence at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

Péter Nagy

Peter Nagy NZ with the  NZ String QuartetPéter Nagy, the first prizewinner in the 1979 Hungarian Radio Competition, is one of the youngest representatives of what has internationally become known as the brilliant new generation of Hungarian pianists. Displaying outstanding musical gifts in his early childhood, he was admitted at the age of eight to the Special School for Young Talents of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, where his teachers were Ferenc Rados and Klára Máthé. At the age of eleven he won the second prize of the International Concours in Usti nad Labem (Czechoslovakia) in 1971. In 1975 he became a regular student of the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, while in addition attending the master-classes of Amadeus Webersinke in Weimar in 1975 and 1976, as well as the course of Malcolm Bilson held in Budapest in 1979. In the same year he won the top prize in the Hungarian Radio Piano Competition.

Graduating with distinction from the class of Kornél Zempléni at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in 1981, his international career began in 1977, with successful performances in Finland, Yugoslavia and Salzburg in 1979. In the previous years he made extensive tours in the German Democratic Republic and in the Soviet Union. His participation in the Menton Festival in 1979 marked his début in France. In 1980 he was acclaimed at the Bordeaux Festival of Young Soloists and on the Bratislava International Rostrum for Young Interpreters. Between 1984 and 1987 he undertook further study with György Sebök in Bloomington, Indiana.

Péter Nagy’s world-wide concert tours have included recitals in Australia at the Sydney Opera House, in the Louvre Auditorium in Paris, in Tokyo, Yokohama, Sapporo and other cities in Japan. He has also appeared as soloist with such ensembles as the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra, the Thessaloniki State Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra and the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a chamber musician he has performed at major festivals, including Aix-en-Provence, Athens, Bastad, Blonay, Davos, Divonne, Llandaff, Kilkenny, Edinburgh, Turku, Joensuu, Kuhmo, Moritzburg, Stockholm, Helsinki, Ojai and the Adam Chamber Music Festival in 2007.