Current Season

Back (again and again) by popular demand (previous appearances include Nov. 2022, Apr. 2018, Nov. 2016, and Nov. 2014), The Horszowski Trio has almost earned house band status with the BCMS. Giving performances that are “lithe, persuasive” (The New York Times), “eloquent and enthralling” (The Boston Globe), and described as “the most compelling American group to come on the scene” (The New Yorker), the Horszowski Trio has quickly become a vital force in the international chamber music world. Since their debut performance in New York City in 2011, they have toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, the Far East, and India, traversing the extensive oeuvre of traditional piano trio repertoire and introducing audiences to new music that they have commissioned and premiered. For their concert in Boise, we look forward to a terrific program, including Schubert’s magnum second Piano Trio No.2 in E-flat major D.929, op.100.

The Horszowski Trio have performed at the 92nd Street Y in New York City; the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia; Schubert Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota; Spivey Hall in Atlanta; Bowdoin Music Festival in Maine; UCLA in Los Angeles; venues in Boston, San Francisco, and Canada; London’s Wigmore Hall; at Dresden’s Moritzburg Festival and throughout Germany; and on several tours in Japan. Their recording of the complete piano trios by Robert Schumann on AVIE Records has received tremendous acclaim: “great care and affection” (BBC Radio); “intoxicating” (Gramophone); “exciting and deeply felt” (Strings); “fresh, supple and fantastic” (The Strad).

The Trio takes its inspiration from the musicianship, integrity, and humanity of the pre-eminent pianist Mieczysław Horszowski (1892–1993); the ensemble’s pianist, Rieko Aizawa, was Horszowski’s last pupil at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. The Trio has premiered, commissioned, championed, and recording works of a wide range of composers including Derek Bermel, Kenji Bunch, Paul Chihara, Morton Feldman, David Fulmer, Daron Hagen, John Harbison, Louis Karchin, Eric Moe, Andreia Pinto-Correia, Joan Tower, Charles Wuorinen. They premiered Wuorinen’s Piano Trio No. 2, written for them, at the Library of Congress in April 2025. The Trio’s violinist Jesse Mills, a two-time Grammy nominee who is also a composer and arranger, wrote Painted Shadow for the ensemble; the work was commissioned by and premiered at Bargemusic in Brooklyn, New York in January 2015.

Based in New York City, the Horszowski Trio is the Ensemble-in-Residence at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and of the Leschetizky Association in New York City.

We welcome cellist Peter Wiley back to the Recital Hall stage—if you’re lucky, you heard him here 25 years ago with the Guarneri Quartet. You may have heard him elsewhere with the Beaux Arts Trio, sometime between 1987 and ’98. Yes, I’m name-dropping and yes, he got an early start, entering Curtis at thirteen. But his is the third name in this eponymous trio. Let’s back up.

Pianist Anna Polonsky is widely in demand as a soloist and chamber musician. Ms. Polonsky has collaborated with the Guarneri, Orion, Juilliard, and Shanghai Quartets, and with such musicians as Mitsuko Uchida, Yo-Yo Ma, Richard Goode, and Emanuel Ax. She has given concerts in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Alice Tully Hall, and Carnegie Hall’s Stern, Weill, and Zankel Halls, and has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. A frequent guest at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she was a member of its Chamber Music Society Two during 2002-2004.

A Yale University faculty member since 1987, clarinetist David Shifrin is artistic director of Yale’s Chamber Music Society series and Yale in New York, a concert series at Carnegie Hall. He has performed with the Chamber Music Society since 1982. He has collaborated with the Guarneri, Tokyo, and Emerson quartets, and frequently performs with pianist André Watts. Winner of the Avery Fisher Prize, he is also the recipient of a Solo Recitalist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A top prize winner in competitions throughout the world, including Munich, Geneva, and San Francisco, he has held principal clarinet positions in The Cleveland Orchestra and the American Symphony under Leopold Stokowski. His recordings have received three Grammy nominations and his performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra was named Record of the Year by Stereo Review.

Can they play together? YES! The Polonsky-Shifrin-Wiley Trio made its debut at Dumbarton Oaks in February 2019. We look forward to a stunning concert of trios by Alexander Zemlinsky, Francis Poulenc, and Johannes Brahms (Op. 114). Highlights of their ongoing touring schedule include the Candlelight Concerts in Connecticut, Classic Chamber Concerts in Florida, the Chamber Music Societies in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Phoenix, the Fontana Chamber Music Society, at Yale and Clemson Universities, UCLA, and for the Market Square Concerts in Harrisburg. We are honored to join this list.

We finish our season with soon-to-be new friends, the Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) who formed in 2013 with an equal passion for the standard chamber music repertoire and contemporary, non-standard works alike. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet is a previous recipient of the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

The Telegraph Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan. They have performed across the United States and abroad, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Town Hall, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Music Tuesdays, Philharmonie de Paris, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Music in the Vineyards in Napa Valley, Interlochen Arts Festival, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. Prior to their residency at the University of Michigan, the Telegraph was the Quartet-in-Residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music between 2017-2024.

Notable collaborations include projects with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; vocalist Theo Bleckmann; composer and pianist Stephen Prutsman; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. During the 2026-27 season, Telegraph will perform with acclaimed pianist Awadagin Pratt.

A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet co-commissioned John Harbison’s String Quartet No. 6 and gave its West Coast premiere in the fall of 2017 on San Francisco State University’s Morrison Artists Series. The Telegraph Quartet premiered Richard Festinger’s third string quartet, Icarus in Flight, a musical representation of climate change data from the year 1880 to projected simulations of 2080. The Quartet gave the world premiere of Robert Sirota’s String Quartet No. 3, Wave Upon Wave, at Weill Recital Hall for their Carnegie Hall debut in 2018, sponsored by the Naumburg Foundation. In 2022, the Telegraph premiered Robert Sirota’s Contrapassos with soprano Abigail Fischer, featuring libretto by Stevan Cavalier and commissioned by Sierra Chamber Music Society. Also, in 2022, the Telegraph Quartet gave the world premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s octet, Ever Yours, with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Ever Yours was co-commissioned by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam, and the Clarice Smith Center at the University of Maryland at Columbia.