Events

The Spring 2013 concert series at Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies continues on Wednesday, March 27 with a performance of violin sonatas by Ferruccio Busoni and Mozart. 

Rolf Schulte, whom The New Yorker has called “one of the most distinguished violinists of our day,” was born in Germany and started playing the violin at age five under his father’s tutelage. He later studied with Kurt Schäffer at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf, attended Yehudi Menuhin’s summer course in Gstaad, and studied with Franco Gulli in Siena before coming to the U.S. to study with Ivan Galamian at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. At age 15, he made his orchestral debut with the Philharmonica Hungarica in Cologne, playing Mendelssoh’s Concerto, and has since performed with the Berling Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, the Frankfurt Museums-Orchester, the Stuttgart State Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony, the Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice in Venice (in Stravinsky’s Concerto under Robert Craft), the RTE Irish National Symphony in Dublin, and the Radio Orchestras of Berlin, Cologne, and Stuttgart. In 1990 he performed Roger Sesssions’ Violin Concerto with the Radio Orchestra of the USSR in Moscow under the direction of Lukas Foss and presented other American music in recital.
Among the works Schulte has premiered are Donald Martino’s Violin Concerto, Tobias Picker’s Concerto with the American Composer’s Orchestra at Lincoln Center (recorded by CRI), Milton Babbitt’s “The Joy of More Sextets” at the Library of Congress (New World Records), Mario Davidovsky’s “Synchronisms No. 9” at MIT (Wergo), and Elliott Carter’s “Fantasy.” American premieres include Gyorgy Kurtag’s “Kafka Fragments” at Tanglewood, Poul Ruder’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (Bridge Records), and Elliott Carter’s “Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi.” He has appeared with the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center and has participated in the 1990 Kuhmo Music Festival in Finland. Schulte has performed the cycle of 10 Beethoven sonatas and the complete violin works of Stravinsky, has recorded Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto with the London Philharmonia, Schumann’s “Fantasiestuck,” “Romanzen,” “Marchenbilder”; and Elliott Carter’s “Duo and Riconoscenza” as well as his Violin Concerto. Schulte performs on a 1780 violin made by Lorenzo Storioni, Cremona. Recent recordings include Schoenberg’s “Phantasy Op. 47” and String Trio (Naxos), which was nominated for the 2011 Grammy Awards, and Carter’s Due Duetti (Bridge). During a three-year residency at Harvard he performed premieres of works by Carter, Martino, and Babbitt. 

James Winn, piano and composition professor at the University of Nevada, Reno since 1997, made his professional debut with the Denver Symphony at the age of thirteen, and has been performing widely in North America, Europe, and Japan ever since. With his duo-piano partner, Cameron Grant, he was a recipient of the top prize given in the two-piano category of the 1980 Munich Competition. Dr. Winn has been a solo pianist with the New York City Ballet, a member of the New York New Music Ensemble, and of Hexagon (woodwind quintet plus piano), as well as a frequent guest with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Speculum, the Washington Square Contemporary Music Series, the Chamber Music Society of Sacramento, the Group for Contemporary Music, and Bargemusic.
Well-known as a specialist in new music, he has been involved in numerous world premieres and premiere recordings by many renowned composers, among them 13 Pulitzer Prize winners (John Adams, Michael Colgrass, Mario Davidovsky, Norman Dello Joio, Jacob Druckman, Aaron Kernis, George Perle, Wayne Peterson, Mel Powell, Joseph Schwantner, Melinda Wagner, Charles Wuorinen, and Ellen Zwilich). He is currently a member of Argenta, UNR's resident chamber trio, the pianist of the Telluride Chamber Music Festival, and performs regularly in recital with internationally acclaimed New York based violinist Rolf Schulte.
An active recording artist, Winn is featured in more than three dozen CDs as soloist, chamber musician, and composer. Dr. Winn's compositions have been performed internationally. He has received the University of Nevada -Reno College of Liberal Arts' Mousel/Feltner award for creative activity, an Artist Fellowship Grant in composition from the Nevada Arts Council, the 2007 Award for Creative Activity from Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education, and the 2009 Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Press 

...Schulte joins Winn to perform sonatas by two endlessly intriguing composers...who restlessly combined elements of tradition and innovation in their immortal works."
from The New Yorker's coverage of the March 27 concert.
Read more: Original Web Page