Classical Café Series

Lysander Piano Trio

Wednesday, January 22, 2025 | 2 p.m.

The Lysander Piano Trio has been praised by The Strad for its “incredible ensemble, passionate playing, articulate and imaginative ideas and wide palette of colors” and by The Washington Post for “an uncommon degree of heart-on-the-sleeve emotional frankness” and “vivid engagement carried by soaring, ripely Romantic playing.”

The group has developed a reputation for exciting programming, finding creative ways to connect well-known masterworks with pieces by lesser-known and underrepresented composers, discovering common threads across cultures and times. The Trio’s debut recording After A Dream (CAG Records) was acclaimed by The New York Times for its “polished and spirited interpretations.” Its most recent album, Mirrors, featuring world-premiere recordings of six works the ensemble has commissioned or premiered, was released in early 2021 by First Hand Records. 

• Official Website

Calidore String Quartet

Wednesday, February 19, 2025 | 2 p.m.

The Calidore String Quartet was founded at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2010. Within two years, the quartet won grand prizes in virtually all the major US chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs competitions, and it captured top prizes at the 2012 ARD International Music Competition in Munich and the International Chamber Music Competition Hamburg.

The Quartet first made international headlines as the winner of the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition and was the first and only North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. The Calidore was also named a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and in 2018, was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant, having won the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award a year prior. The Calidore is currently in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.

• Official Website

The Kouzov Duo, cello & piano

Wednesday, March 12, 2025 | 2 p.m.

The Kouzov Duo Cellist Dmitry Kouzov has been praised as “a true artist” by Maestro Mstislav Rostropovich, and as a young cellist won the First Prize at the International Beethoven Competition and the New York Cello Society “Rising Star” Award. He is a two-time laureate of Russia’s International “Virtuosi of the Year” Festival-Competition.

Mr. Kouzov has performed at such prestigious venues as Lincoln Center, the 92^nd Street Y, (New York City), Sala São Paulo (Brazil), and at the most important venues in his native Russia. Mr. Kouzov’s chamber music collaborators include Joshua Bell, Yuri Bashmet, Krzysztof Penderecki, Ilya Gringolts, Shmuel Ashkenasi, pianist Peter Laul, and major string quartets. Special programs include the complete Brahms and Beethoven sonata cycles and the Bach suites for unaccompanied cello. He is also the cellist of the Manhattan Piano Trio.

Pianist Yulia Kouzova is known for her passionate and musical interpretations and impressive technical facility. Throughout her career, Yulia has received many awards, including a special prize at Jurmala International Piano Competition, Latvia, and the Grand Prix and First Prize at the International “Coast of Hope” Competition in Bulgaria.

Yulia’s piano duo with Tatiana Brizhaneva gave numerous successful and critically acclaimed performances in St. Petersburg, Dusseldorf, and Munich, gave the Russian premiere of Germaine Tailleferre’s Jeux de plein air in 2008, and won 1st prize at the Maria Yudina Piano Duo Competition in St. Petersburg and 2nd prize at the Bahchiev National Piano Duo Competition in Vologda, Russia.

Dmitry Kouzov and Yulia Kouzova are both on faculty at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

• Official Website

Zlata Chochieva

Wednesday, March 26 2025 | 2 p.m.

Writing in Gramophone of Zlata Chochieva's sensational recording of the Chopin Etudes, being included in Gramophone’s list of 10 greatest Chopin recordings, critic Jeremy Nicholas exclaimed, “it is certainly one of the most consistently inspired, masterfully executed and beautiful-sounding versions I can recall.” 

At only four years old, Zlata made her first stage appearance and just three years later, gave her debut with orchestra performing a Mozart Concerto at Grand Hall of Moscow State 

Conservatory. Since then, she has given concerts in Herkulessaal Munich, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Philharmonie de Paris, Wigmore Hall, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Konzerthaus Berlin, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Victoria Hall in Geneva, Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen, Casa da Música Porto, the Grand Hall of Moscow Conservatory, and Taiwan’s National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts.

She has performed with numerous major orchestras, including Russian National Orchestra, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice. Conductors Zlata has enjoyed working with include Mikhail Pletnev, Simon Gaudenz, Terje Mikkelsen and Tugan Sokhiev. 

 Along with an orchestral repertoire of over 50 concerti, Zlata Chochieva is a devoted chamber music performer having worked with Stephen Kovacevic, Lynn Harrell, Gilles Apap, and Jacquelyn Wagner, among others. 

• Official Website