This season, Swedish pianist Per Tengstrand returns to Scandinavia House for the Music on Park Avenue concert series with a special presentation of all five of Beethoven’s Concerti, performed with musicians from Princeton chamber music group Opus 21.

This evening, Tengstrand and musicians Leland Ko (cello), Hana Mundiya (violin), Noah Pacis (viola), and Soyeong Park (violin) will be performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5. They will additionally be performing A. Dvorak’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81.

 

The Music on Park Avenue concert series is supported in part by a generous grant from The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation and in part by the Lynn Carter Fund of the ASF.

About Per Tengstrand

Per Tengstrand has firmly established himself as one of today’s most exciting pianists. He has been described by The Washington Post as “technically resplendent, powerful, intuitively secure,” and by The New York Times as “a superb Swedish pianist” whose recital “was rewarding, both for its unusual programming and for his eloquent, technically polished performances.”

Tengstrand is the subject of the acclaimed Swedish documentary The Soloist, directed by Magnus Gertten and Stefan Berg (Sweden, 2003), which was featured at the International Festival of Cinema and Technology in New York. In 2005 he was decorated by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden with the “Litteris et Artibus” Medal for outstanding service to the arts.

Tengstrand’s 2014-15 concert season included performances on both sides of the Atlantic: in Sweden he played Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 18 (1900-01), Johannes Brahms’ Concerto No. 2, Op. 83 (1878-81), and Igor Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1923-24); and the Tengstrand-Sun Piano Duo performed an adaptation of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913) before returning to the U.S., where he continues his Music on Park Avenue series at Scandinavia House in New York City. He was recently named artist-in-residence at the new Spira Concert House in Jönköping, Sweden.

About the Performers From Opus 21

Leland Ko began studying cello at the age of three. Born and raised in the Boston area, he studied with Ronald Lowry for many years at the Rivers School Conservatory. In 2011, he was admitted to the Perlman Music Program (PMP) in 2011, where, for the past six summers, he has studied with Ronald Leonard, teacher at the Colburn Conservatory of Music and former principal of the LA Philharmonic. PMP cultivated a deep love for chamber music for Leland. Additionally, through PMP, Leland was introduced Paul Katz, legendary cellist of the Cleveland Quartet, with whom he studied for four years at the New England Conservatory.

Hana Mundiya made her concerto debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 13 at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center. A prizewinner in the 9th Leopold Mozart Competition in Augsburg, Germany and second place winner in the 2016 Aspen Music Festival Concerto Competition, Hana has been a guest soloist for the New York Piano Society at Carnegie Hall, and performed with ThePianoGuys at Perelman Hall at Carnegie Hall and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. She will major in Comparative Literature. Her teachers include Naoko Tanaka and Donald Weilerstein, with whom she has been studying since attending The Juilliard School for one year and Juilliard Pre-College.

 

Noah Pacis is a sophomore who is planning on majoring in Chemistry. Raised in Irvine, California, Noah has played the viola for 8 years and has studied most recently under Sorah Myung. He has participated in several orchestras, including the All-National Orchestra, and has played as principal violist of the All-State Orchestra and Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra. Noah has also participated in the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, where he won the 2015 Concerto Competition and studied with violinist Chee-Yun Kim. He spent the past year with Chamber Music OC under Iryna Krechkovsky and Kevin Kwan Loucks of Trio Céleste, and has had masterclasses with Philip Setzer, Robert deMaine, and Julian Martin. In addition to Opus 21, Noah is a member of the Princeton University Orchestra and Princeton Camerata.

Soyeong is a junior originally from Seoul, Korea but currently living in the faraway town of Princeton Junction, NJ.  She currently plans to concentrate in the East Asian Studies department with a certificate in History and the Practice of Diplomacy.  Her mom handed her the violin when she was only 3 years old, and her pursuit of classical music took off at age 6, when her family moved to the U.S.  After a childhood packed with too many solo competitions, she later found a more loving relationship with music through various orchestral programs.  In 2013, she joined the NYO USA program in its inaugural season, and continued on to serve as its assistant concertmaster and its concertmaster.  Soyeong feels fortunate to have previously studied with Mei-Chen Liao-Barnes and Yayoi Numazawa, and currently studies with Anna Lim.  She joined the Princeton University Orchestra as a freshman, and serves as a SHARE peer on campus.

 

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Courtesy of Per Tengstrand

THU—March 28—7:30 PM
Pre-concert talk, 7 PM
$25 ($20 ASF Members)
Series Pass $110 ($90 ASF Members)