(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – Husband-and-wife piano duo Soyeon Kate Lee and Ran Dank will perform a holiday-themed concert at the Mahaiwe on Saturday, December 12, at 6pm, as part of the Close Encounters With Music chamber music series. Works on the two- and four-handed program include Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite,” Debussy’s Preludes, Barber’s “Souvenirs,” Mozart’s Four Hand Variations in G Major K. 501, and Scriabin’s mystical Fantasy in B minor.

CEWM artistic director Yehuda Hanani says of the upcoming performance:  “This is a throwback to the golden age of live music, when the piano was the king of instruments and at the center of every self-respecting household, before it was replaced by the media room. Kate and Ran perform in the tradition of important husband-wife piano teams – Rosina and Josef Lhevinne, Gaby and Robert Casadesus, Vronsky and Babin – and dazzle alone or in combination.”

First prize winner of the 2010 Naumburg International Piano Competition and the 2004 Concert Artist Guild International Competition, Korean-American pianist Soyeon Kate Lee has been lauded by the New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style,” and by the Washington Post for her “stunning command of the keyboard.” She has performed as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional in the Dominican Republic, Orquesta de Valencia, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, and Naples Philharmonic. In recent seasons, she has given recitals at New York’s Zankel, Alice Tully, and Merkin halls; Kennedy Center, Ravinia Festival, Madrid’s National Auditorium, and San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. A Naxos artist, she records a double CD of Scriabin piano works this season following the Scarlatti and Liszt albums released earlier. Second prize and Mozart Prize winner of the Cleveland International Piano Competition and a laureate of the Santander International Piano Competition in Spain, she has worked extensively with Richard Goode, Robert McDonald, Ursula Oppens, and Jerome Lowenthal. Ms. Lee is the co-founder and artistic director of Music by the Glass, a concert series dedicated to bringing together young professionals in New York City. A Yamaha Artist, Ms. Lee is an assistant professor of piano at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music.

Technically dazzling and intellectually probing artistry exemplify pianist Ran Dank’s 2015 summer festival appearances which included a world premiere for piano by Alexander Goehre at Santa Fe; the Schumann Piano Quintet with the Shanghai String Quartet at Maverick Concerts in Woodstock; and solo and chamber pieces at the Great Lakes Festival in Michigan. A favorite with New York audiences, he was recently presented by Peoples Symphony at Town Hall and soloed with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Alice Tully Hall. In 2013 he and pianist Soyeon Kate Lee performed the world premiere of Fredric Rzewski’s “Four Hands” at Le Poisson Rouge. Mr. Dank is assistant professor and director of piano studies at the College of Charleston and serves as artistic director of the college’s International Piano Series. He completed his doctoral studies with Ursula Oppens and Richard Goode at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York as a Chancellor’s Fellow, having previously received a bachelor’s degree from the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University in his native Israel and a master’s degree and artist diploma from Juilliard. Among recent and upcoming highlights are appearances with the Jerusalem Symphony, the Asheville Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony and the Charleston Symphony. In recital, he has been presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society at Kennedy Center, the Chopin Festival in Warsaw, Finland’s Mantta Festival, and Seattle Chamber Music Festival. The recipient of numerous honors, Ran Dank won a coveted place on the Young Concert Artists roster in 2009 and was a laureate of the Cleveland International Competition, and the Naumburg and Sydney International Piano Competition and first prize winner of the Hilton Head International Piano Competition.

Lee and Dank live in Cincinnati with their one-year-old son, Noah.

 

“Dually” Noted:  Music for Four Hands

Saturday, December 12, 6 PM

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center

Tickets: $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony)