YoungStars09

Trinity Presbyterian Church (Map)
5500 Morriss Road, Flower Mound TX 75028
(Just south of Marcus HS, on the other side of the road.)

Alison Chiang was born in Rochester, New York on May 4th 1992, and began playing piano at age 5. At 7, she won first prize in the 1999 St. Charles Illinois State Music Competition. Alison moved with her family in 2000 to Cleveland, Ohio, where she studied piano with Miss Olga Radosavljevich and music theory with Ms. Adeline Huss, both at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She played as a program opener for the 2000 season of the Urbana-Champaign Symphony Orchestra.

On February 17, 2002, Alison won first prize in the Northeast Ohio Piano Competition for age group 9-12. She, at age 13, performed Mozart's Piano Concerto in C, K467 No. 21 with the Lakeside Symphony, conducted by Mr. Robert Cronquist, in August 2005. On May 6, 2007, Alison performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto in B-flat, Op.19 No. 2 with the Cleveland Women's Orchestra at Severance Hall, with a second performance on August 24, 2007 with the Lakeside Symphony, conducted by Mr. Cronquist.

Alison was a Grand Prize winner in the Lewisville Lake Symphony's Vernell Gregg Young Artists' Competition and performed the first movement of Saint-Saens G Minor Concerto with our orchestra in February 2008.

She had been an honored recipient of the Olga Radosavljevich Scholarship from the Cleveland Institute of Music from 2001 to 2007. In July 2007, she moved with her family to Plano, Texas. She presently studies piano with Dr. Pamela Mia Paul at University of North Texas. Now 15, she is a 10th grader at Shepton High School in Plano, Texas.

Laura Liu is 16 years old and attends Spring Creek Academy. She began her study of violin at the age of 8, and currently studies with Jan Mark Sloman. Laura was the Grand Prize winner in the junior concerto division of the Dallas Symphonic Festival in 2006. She had her soloist debut at the age of 13 with the Meadows Symphony.

She was broadcasted on the National Public Radio show "From the Top" in the fall of 2006. Laura was also the 2nd place winner of the Hubbard Chamber Music Young Artists Competition in 2007. She was the 1st place winner in the junior sonata division of the Dallas Symphonic Festival in 2007 as well.

She also won a distinguished award for the 2008 Juanita Miller Competition. Laura was a semi-finalist in the ASTA (American String Teacher Association) in 2006 as well as the National 3rd Place winner at the MTNA Competition in 2008 (Music Teacher National Association). Laura has recently won Grand Prize in the senior concerto division of the Dallas Symphonic Festival in 2008.

She has regularly participated in TIFS (The Institute for Strings), a summer program run by her violin teacher. Laura attended the Heifetz International Music Institute in New Hampshire for 2 years, another summer program for dedicated musicians. She has played in a master class for Ida Kavafian and Ani Kavafian.

Laura won the National Soloist Award at the 2007 Texas Bluebonnet Festival. She was also invited to perform as the "Rising Star" opening artist at the Basically Beethoven Festival in the summer of 2007. Recently, she has performed with the Meadows Symphony and also the Houston Civic Symphony, both in 2008. She was accepted into the Meadowmount School of Music under the tutelage of Sally Thomas. She plans on attending the Great Wall Academy in Beijing, China, this summer, where she will also perform with the Beijing Symphony in the Forbidden City.

Wyndham Tsai, at age 13, as the winner and the youngest entrant of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s first Young Artist Competition, was invited to perform with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Miguel Harth-Bedoya at the opening performance of the Garden Concert series in June 2006. According to the Star-Telegram Review, the crowd of almost 2,000 gave him a standing ovation after listening to him play Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto.

In 2006, Wyndham also won First Prize in Lewisville Lake Symphony Young Artists’ Competition and Grand Prize of Collin County's Plano Symphony Orchestra. The Plano concert, under the baton of Hector Guzman was broadcast on WRR, Classical 101.1. In 2003, he won the Grand Prize of the North Texas Youth Music Competition and the First Prize of the Dallas Symphonic Festival in 2003.

Since 2005, Wyndham has served as Principal Cellist of the Youth Orchestra of Greater Fort Worth and of The Oakridge School Advanced String Program.

As an active chamber music player, Wyndham has joined since 2003, the playing and performances at TIFS (The Institute For Strings) Summer Music Camp conducted by Violinist Jan Mark Sloman (SMU, Dallas) He played in the master classes to Yuri Anshelevich (a direct pupil of Mstistlav Rostropovich), at TIFS, 2004, 2006, and 2008. He also performed at the Cello Fest directed by Jesus Castro-Balbi the master classes to Aldo Parisot and Bion Tsang; For the chamber music, he played in the master classes to Jan Mark Sloman, Barbara Sudweeks, Pamela Mia Paul, Eugene Osadchy, and Ani Kavafian.

In February, 2008, he played the Schubert Cello Quintet and the Schumann Piano Quintet at Shreveport, Louisiana, and in the Lewisville Lake International Chamber Series sponsored by Lewisville Lake Symphony and the University of North Texas School of Music.

Wyndham was invited in March 2008 to play for Cellists Jérôme Pernoo, Michel Strauss, Eric-Maria Couturier in Paris, and play for Richard Aaron at Northeast of USA in early June, 2008. In the summer of 2008, he is going to the Meadowmount School of Music in New York and study with Hans Jørgen Jensen.

Wyndham now is 15 and has been studying cello since 2007 with Mr. Michael Coren, cellist of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and adjunct professor at SMU. His previous teacher of year 2002 ~ 2007, was Mrs. Jungshin Lim Lewis, Artist of Chamber Music International at Dallas and Principal Cellist of Richardson Symphony Orchestra. Wyndham began his first cello lesson at the age of 6 with Myrna Trent at TCU Suzuki Program in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Piano Quartet in G minor, written for violin, viola, cello and piano, was completed in 1861 and first performed by Clara Schumann. This was a period of intense study for Brahms. When many of his contemporaries were exploring the possibilities of programme music, Brahms gave much study to the music of his forbearers and was devoted to the idea of absolute music. His harmony and the use of displaced rhythms made him one of the most important composers of his era.

The first movement of the work opens with the statement of a simple melody by the three string players and piano in unison. This, along with the second, more lyrical theme are developed and expanded in a variety of ways. In this, Brahms owes much to the music of Beethoven. They both had the ability to vary a simple idea brilliantly to create some memorable melodies, not to mention the countermelodies and harmony to go with them.

In the second movement muted strings, a rippling piano part and the use of duple and triple time, so characteristic of Brahms, are used to great effect. Then a more animated trio follows. The third movement begins with a broad melody which eventually evolves into a martial mid-section reminiscent of Beethoven (such as the Turkish march from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony). The wild gypsy Rondo alla Zingarese with its three bar rhythms, virtuoso parts and a very orchestral ending make for a very lively finale. Brahms biographer Ivor Keys wrote of it, “It was obviously designed to bring down the house, and it did.”

Brahms was born in Hamburg, the son of a double bass player. He received an early grounding in the classics - especially Bach - from his teacher, Eduard Marxsen, who was the dedicatee of his second piano concerto. Another formative aspect of his youth was playing in dives and bordellos in order to bring in extra money for the family. Brahms later acknowledged that this early contact with the opposite sex from such a strange vantage point contributed to his ultimately remaining a lifelong bachelor.

The great love of his life was what was most probably a platonic friendship with Clara Schumann, although there have certainly been speculations to the contrary. Brahms became close to the Schumanns when Robert championed his work, and Brahms consoled Clara during the anguish of Robert's disease. A lasting love ultimately developed for the great artist who was fourteen years her junior. Although their complex relationship had its difficulties, especially when Brahms at one point developed an interest in one of Clara's daughters, they stayed lifelong friends and it was often Clara to whom the tremendously self critical Brahms first sent his works.

Brahms was intensely aware of the weight of the tradition he was trying to uphold. It is estimated the chamber music we have is only one quarter of what he actually wrote. He ruthlessly destroyed anything that he considered unworthy, and thus, we have nothing comparable to Beethoven's sketch books to understand him by. He was certainly a slow and meticulous worker and did not complete his First Symphony until he was forty-three and after eleven years of work, not to mention two orchestral serenades and the First Piano Concerto in preparation for the act.

"You have no idea what it is to hear the tromp of a genius over your shoulder," he said referring to the daunting legacy of Beethoven's symphonies. When the similarity of the great last movement theme to Beethoven's Ninth was pointed out, Brahms response was, "any fool can see that."

Brahms was famously brusque and prickly on the surface, although friends knew this was to guard a very sensitive and vulnerable soul. This might be said to describe the music itself. Much of the power and attraction of Brahms' music is the great warmth and generosity of a romantic spirit held in check by the most rigorous intellect.