United States Violist Roger Tapping to Join the Juilliard String Quartet 9.10.2012
Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi announced today that violist Roger Tapping will join the Juilliard String Quartet beginning in September 2013. He also becomes a member of Juilliard’s viola faculty beginning with the fall 2013 semester. Mr. Tapping currently is a faculty member at New EnglandConservatory, and for a decade was a member of the Takács Quartet. Violist Samuel Rhodes, who has been a member of the Juilliard String Quartet since 1969, and a teacher at Juilliard, remains on the faculty at Juilliard as Chair of the Viola Department.
He celebrates his 44thand farewell season with the Quartet – whose other members are violinists Joseph Lin and Ronald Copes, and cellist Joel Krosnick – performing with them throughout this season and into July, for their traditional Ravinia Festival appearance.
In announcing Mr. Tapping’s appointment, President Polisi stated, “It is with great enthusiasm that the Juilliard community welcomes Roger Tapping as violist of the Juilliard String Quartet and to the faculty of the School, beginning next season. The JSQ has been one of the most important ensembles before the public since its creation in 1946, and has existed as the foundation for string chamber music studies at Juilliard for decades. Roger Tapping’s appointment continues this long tradition of excellence as our distinguished colleague Sam Rhodes steps down from his position with the ensemble. I wish to express my personal gratitude to Sam for his artistry and his leadership as a member of the Quartet and the Juilliard faculty, and look forward to his continuing presence as a viola teacher and chamber music coach at the School.”
The Juilliard String Quartet was founded 66 years ago as the School’s resident quartet by Juilliard President William Schuman. During that time, thirteen string players have had the honor of calling themselves members. (Chronological roster included at the end) The Quartet’s international career has encompassed performances throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. At Juilliard, the quartet is among the School’s most important studio teachers and chamber music coaches. The four current members perform in the U.S. and tour later in the season to Germany, Switzerland, China, Japan, and Taiwan.
The continuing members of the Quartet expressed their enthusiasm for their new colleague by saying, “We are pleased and excited to welcome Roger Tapping to the proudly shared tradition of the Juilliard Quartet. Roger is a passionate chamber musician and an inspiring teacher. It is a privilege to join with him in rehearsing and performing the great string quartet repertoire, and we look forward to many years of musical adventures.”
Born in England in 1960, Mr. Tapping moved to the U.S. in 1995 to join the Takács Quartet, an ensemble known for their virtuosity and innovative programming. His decade as their violist included performances in major cities throughout the world as well as award-winning recordings. Before coming to the U.S., Mr. Tapping played in, and recorded with, a number of London’s leading chamber ensembles before joining Britain’s longest established Allegri Quartet. He taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London, was principal viola of the London Mozart Players, a member of the English Chamber Orchestra, and a founding member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Mr. Tapping joined the faculty of New England Conservatory in 2005.
Mr. Tapping spoke about his new position with the Juilliard String Quartet, saying, “I can’t believe how fortunate I am to have the chance to play string quartets again, and, incredibly, in this quartet with its great curiosity and soul and its rich and distinguished history. I’m still pinching myself. Sam Rhodes is the most inspiring role model in every way – a beautiful player and a great example of warmth, intelligence and humility. I wish him a wonderful farewell season, and I will always have him in mind as I look forward to many happy years ahead with my new colleagues.”
Samuel Rhodes is celebrating his 44th year as a member of both the Juilliard String Quartet and the faculty of The Juilliard School, where he is chair of the viola department. He has served on the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center, and has been a participant in the Marlboro Festival since 1960. He has appeared as a guest artist with many ensembles including the Beaux Arts and Mannes trios, and Trio Cavatina; and with the Afiara, American, Arianna, Brentano, Chiara, Cleveland, Galimir, Guarneri, Mendelssohn, Pro Arte, Sequoia, and Shanghai string quartets. To commemorate his 40th year both in the Juilliard String Quartet and as a faculty member of The Juilliard School, he performed a recital featuring works composed especially for him – Babbitt’s Play It Again, Sam, Carter’s Figment IV, and Martino’s Three Sad Songs, as well as works by Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Hall Overton. Mr. Rhodes received his instrumental training from Sydney Beck and Walter Trampler. He has a B.A. from Queens College, New York and an M.F.A. from Princeton University where he studied composition with Roger Sessions and Earl Kim. As a composer, his String Quintet has been performed by the Blair, Composer’s, Galimir, Pro Arte and Sequoia Quartets. The Pro Arte recently recorded the quintet with the composer as guest artist.
(A full biography of Mr. Rhodes can be found on the Juilliard website at: juilliard.edu/newsroom/releases.)
Reflecting on the change and the start of his farewell season with the Quartet, Sam Rhodes said, “It is with mixed feelings of great regret and joyous anticipation of the future that I enter my last season with the JSQ. I am grateful for the privilege I have had to rehearse, debate, recreate and perform the most profound, intimate and sometimes heaven-storming music. The violist who has accepted my colleagues’ invitation to join them, Roger Tapping, has the artistry, experience and expertise to take part in carrying the quartet forward with the same spirit and ideals as it has had in the past. In recognition of my farewell and Roger’s welcome, we will be performing a few special programs that include my own string quintet and one of Mozart’s.”
One of those ‘special’ performances takes place in New Yorkat Alice Tully Hall on February 26, 2013, when the Juilliard String Quartet performs Beethoven, and Mr. Tapping joins them as guest violist for performances of Mozart’s Viola Quintet in D, K. 593 and Mr. Rhodes’s own Viola Quintet. The concert is the second of two free New Yorkappearances that are a regular part of Juilliard’s Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series. (The first, on November 26, features two Beethoven String Quartets – Op. 131 in C-sharp minor and Op. 132 in A minor.) Further information is available at events.juilliard.edu. Other ‘quintet’ performances take place in Philadelphia, on February 24; and at Ravinia, marking Mr. Rhodes’s last official concert as a JSQ member on July 10.
Roger Tapping’s career with the Takács Quartet included many Beethoven and Bartók cycles in major cities throughout the world. Their recordings for Decca/London, including the complete quartets of Bartók and Beethoven, placed them in Gramophone Magazine’s Hall of Fame, garnered them three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award and three more Grammy nominations, three Japan Record Academy Chamber Music Awards, the BBC Music Disc of the Year Award, and the Classical Brits Award for Ensemble Album of the Year. As a member of the Takács Quartet, Mr. Tapping taught regularly at the Aspen Festival, the Taos Quartet School, and London’s Guildhall School of Music. In addition to studio teaching at the New England Conservatory, Mr. Tapping directed their Chamber Music program. He also taught at the Longy School in Cambridge and Boston Conservatory, and has continued to play as a recitalist and chamber musician, performing frequently as a guest with quartets from the U.S. and Europe, and as a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society. During summers, Mr. Tapping serves on the faculties of Itzhak Perlman’s Chamber Music Workshop, the Tanglewood String Quartet Seminar, and the Yellow Barn Festival. He also gives viola and chamber music master classes at festivals and conservatories in the U.S. and Canada.
Mr. Tapping is a member of the Order of the Knight Cross of the Hungarian Republic, has an honorary doctorate from the University of Nottingham, and is a Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music in London. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge. His teachers were Margaret Major, of Britain’s famed Aeolian Quartet, and Bruno Giuranna in Berlin, and he has participated in master classes with William Primrose.
THE JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET
Since its inception in 1946, the Juilliard String Quartet has embodied the credo stated by founders Robert Mann and William Schuman to “play new works as if they were established masterpieces, and established masterpieces as if they were new.” The hallmarks of its distinctive sound – clarity of structure, beauty of sound, purity of line and an extraordinary unanimity of purpose – have been applied to virtually every era and genre in the literature, from Beethoven, Schubert and Bartók to Carter, Davidovsky, Babbitt and Wernick.
The Juilliard String Quartet continues its vibrant tradition of music-making and teaching in the 2012/13 season, with performances at Ravinia and for the chamber music societies of Detroit, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, and Cleveland, among
many other dates. In New York City, the Quartet appears in its two annual Juilliard School concerts at Alice Tully Hall. In addition to its educational work throughout the season at The Juilliard School, the Quartet returns to Arizona State University’s School of Music for a three-part residency, where they will present master classes, coaching and performances. In May 2012 they host eight quartets from around the world at their week-long Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, held annualy at Juilliard. juilliard.edu/jsqseminar
Internationally, the Quartet tours to Taiwan, Japan, Switzerland, and Germany, where they will play the five late quartets of Beethoven (repertoire that is a particular focus throughout the season). They have also been invited to join other international musical luminaries for the opening celebrations of a major new performing arts center in Wroclaw, Poland, in June 2013.
In 2011, the JSQ was the subject of the film “Keeping Beethoven Contemporary” produced by Michael Blackwood Productions, which showed the Quartet in a rehearsal and performance of Beethoven’s Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130, in its original form with the Grosse Fuge as the last movement.
In recent seasons, the Quartet has performed at the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the International Beethoven Festival in Bonn, the Palacio Real in Madrid, the Cité de la musique in Paris, the Miyazaki Festival in Japan, the Moscow International Performing Arts Centre, London’s Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Musica Viva Chamber Music Festival in Australia, and the Israel Festival in Jerusalem. In the United States, they have appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Festival, the Kennedy Center, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Los Angeles’ Disney Hall, and San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre.
During the course of its history, the Juilliard String Quartet has performed more than 500 works, including the premieres of more than 60 pieces by American composers, with works by the country’s finest jazz musicians among them. They were the first ensemble to play all six Bartók quartets in the United States, and its performances of Schoenberg’s quartets helped establish the works as cornerstones of the modern string quartet catalog.
The Quartet has carried the banner of the United States and The Juilliard School throughout the world, contributing to the reputation of the school as one of the world’s foremost conservatories. The Juilliard String Quartet was Quartet-in- Residence at the Library of Congress for more than 40 years and held a residency at Michigan State University for more than a decade. The members of the Quartet have taught master classes and seminars worldwide, and have appeared many times as guest artists and lecturers at the Conservatoire de Paris. Through its legendary annual Juilliard School String Quartet Seminar, and its work with a variety of graduate quartets-in-residence, the Quartet has been instrumental in the formation of numerous ensembles, among them the Afiara, Alexander, American, Brentano, Calder, Cassatt, Chiara, Colorado, Emerson, Lark, Shanghai, St. Lawrence, and Tokyo string quartets.
With more than 100 releases to its credit, the JSQ is one of the most widely recorded string quartets of our time. The Quartet’s recordings of the complete Bartók quartets, the late Beethoven quartets, the complete Schoenberg quartets, and Debussy and Ravel quartets have all received Grammy Awards. Inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1986 for its first recording of the complete Bartók quartets, the Juilliard String Quartet was awarded the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Prize in 1993 for Lifetime Achievement in the recording industry. In 2011, the Juilliard String Quartet became the first classical music ensemble to be honored by The Recording Academy with its Lifetime Achievement Award. www.juilliardquartet.org
Joseph Lin, Violin
An active solo and chamber musician, Joseph Lin was a founding member of the Formosa Quartet, winner of the 2006 London International String Quartet Competition. He was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and has won numerous awards, including the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, the Pro Musicis International Award and First Prize at the inaugural Michael Hill World Violin Competition in New Zealand. His recordings include the music of Korngold and Busoni on the Naxos label, the unaccompanied works of Bach and Ysaÿe on the N&F label, and the Formosa Quartet’s debut CD released by EMI. Mr. Lin has appeared as a soloist with the New Japan Philharmonic, the Sapporo Symphony, the Taiwan National Symphony, the Auckland Philharmonia, the Ukraine National Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony.
After graduating from Harvard in 2000, he began an extended exploration of China in 2002, and studied Chinese music in Beijing as a Fulbright Scholar in 2004. From 2007 to 2011, Mr. Lin was an Assistant Professor at Cornell University, where he organized the inaugural Chinese Musicians Residency. Joseph Lin’s violin teachers have included Mary Canberg, Shirley Givens, and Lynn Chang.
Ronald Copes, Violin
Praised by audiences and critics alike for his insightful artistry, violinist Ronald Copes has toured extensively with Music From Marlboro ensembles, the Los Angeles and Dunsmuir Piano Quartets, and with the Juilliard String Quartet. During the 2012-13 seasons, he and pianist Seymour Lipkin will perform cycles of the complete Beethoven Sonatas for Piano and Violin at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival and The Juilliard School.
Mr. Copes has recorded numerous solo and chamber music works for radio and television broadcast as well as for Sony Classical, Orion, CRI, Klavier, Bridge, New World Records, ECM, and the Musical Heritage Society. He has worked closely with composers including Stephen Hartke and Donald Crockett, and has garnered prizes in the Artists’ Advisory Council International Competition, the Merriweather Post Competition, and the Concours International d’Exécution Musicale in Geneva. During the summer, he is on faculty of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival. For two decades, he served as Professor of Violin at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in 1997, where he serves as chair of the violin department.
Joel Krosnick, Cello
Joel Krosnick has performed as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician around the world. As the cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet since 1974, Joel Krosnick has performed the great quartet literature throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. With his sonata partner of more than 30 years, pianist Gilbert Kalish, Mr. Krosnick has performed recitals throughout the U. S. and Europe. The duo have recorded the complete sonatas and variations of Beethoven and the sonatas of Brahms as well as works by Poulenc, Prokofiev, Carter, Hindemith, Debussy, Janáček, and Cowell for the Arabesque label. Mr. Krosnick’s recording of the Sonata for Solo Cello by Artur Schnabel appears on the CP2 label, and his CD of Roger Sessions’ Six Pieces for Solo Cello is available on Koch Classics.
Mr. Krosnick is chair of the cello department of The Juilliard School and is on faculty of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival. A recipient of the Chevalier du Violoncelle Award from the Eva Janzer Memorial Cello Center at the Indiana University School of Music, Mr. Krosnick completed his Bachelor of Arts degree at Columbia University and holds honorary doctoral degrees from Michigan State University, Jacksonville University, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Juilliard String Quartet Personnel
1946 – 2012, updated 10/05/12
| 1946-1955 | Robert Mann, Violin I Robert Koff, Violin II Raphael Hillyer, Viola Arthur Winograd, ‘Cello | 1969-1974 | Robert Mann, Violin I Earl Carlyss, Violin II Samuel Rhodes, Viola Claus Adam, ‘Cello | 2009-2011 | Nick Eanet, Violin I Ronald Copes, Violin II Samuel Rhodes, Viola Joel Krosnick, ‘Cello |
| 1955-1958 | Robert Mann, Violin I Robert Koff, Violin II Raphael Hillyer, Viola Claus Adam, ‘Cello | 1974-1986 | Robert Mann, Violin I Earl Carlyss, Violin II Samuel Rhodes, Viola Joel Krosnick, ‘Cello | 2011-2013 | Joseph Lin, Violin I Ronald Copes, Violin II Samuel Rhodes, Viola Joel Krosnick, ‘Cello |
| 1958-1966 | Robert Mann, Violin I Isidore Cohen, Violin II Raphael Hillyer, Viola Claus Adam, ‘Cello | 1986-1997 | Robert Mann, Violin I Joel Smirnoff, Violin II Samuel Rhodes, Viola Joel Krosnick, ‘Cello | 2013- | Joseph Lin, Violin I Ronald Copes, Violin II Roger Tapping, Viola Joel Krosnick, ‘Cello |
| 1966-1969 | Robert Mann, Violin I Earl Carlyss, Violin II Raphael Hillyer, Viola Claus Adam, ‘Cello | 1997- 2009 | Joel Smirnoff, Violin I Ronald Copes, Violin II Samuel Rhodes, Viola Joel Krosnick, ‘Cello |