ESPRESSIVO! PIANO QUARTET
Anna Polonsky, piano
Jaime Laredo, violin
Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt
Sharon Robinson, cello
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Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor: "After six decades on the concert stage, Jaime Laredo can still make his violin sing with both sweetness and sinew...Cellist Sharon Robinson spun the principal theme of the Andante, one of Brahms’ most beautiful melodies, in amber tones with a singing line"
— South Florida Classical Review
"In the opening movement [Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major] Laredo and Robinson’s sound took on the sweetness of Viennese cafe players."
— South Florida Classical Review
"Ms. Polonsky ably dispatched the brilliant passagework and nicely captured the music's audacious spirit... with sweep, color and authority, and the entire performance was vibrant and exciting."
— The New York Times
Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt, who played...the many featured viola sections with strength, beauty, and a remarkable sense of personality.
— Santa Fe New Mexican
JAIME LAREDO violin
For over six decades, Jaime Laredo has excelled in the roles of soloist, conductor, recitalist, pedagogue, and chamber musician. Since his orchestral debut at the age of eleven with the San Francisco Symphony, he has won the admiration and respect of audiences, critics and fellow musicians with passionate and polished performances. At seventeen, Bolivian-born Laredo won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, launching his rise to international prominence.
In addition to championing many new works throughout his career, conducting and performing highlights include the Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco, London and BBC symphonies, Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras.
Laredo has recorded nearly one hundred discs, including a Grammy Award-winning disc of Brahms Piano Quartets with Emanuel Ax, Isaac Stern and Yo-Yo Ma. His recordings range from collaborations with Glenn Gould, to double concertos with violinist Jennifer Koh and cellist Sharon Robinson plus award-winning recordings with the beloved Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, with whom he toured for 45 years. A 23-CD Box Set on Sony Classical celebrates Laredo's extraordinary recorded legacy.
Laredo’s stewardship of the New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall and the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis are beloved educational pillars of the musical community. He served for decades as Music Director of the Vermont Symphony and as Artistic Director of the Chamber Music at the Y in New York. 2023 marks Laredo’s 12th year at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Born in Bolivia, Laredo resides in Guilford, Vermont, and Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife, Sharon Robinson.
MILENA PÁJARO-VAN DE STADT viola
Praised by Strad magazine as having "lyricism that stood out...a silky tone and beautiful, supple lines," violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt has established herself as one of the most sought-after violists of her generation. In addition to appearances as soloist with the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Jacksonville Symphony, and the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, she has performed in recitals and chamber-music concerts throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia, including an acclaimed 2011 debut recital at London’s Wigmore Hall, which was described in Strad as being "fleet and energetic...powerful and focused".
Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt was the founding violist of the Dover Quartet, and played in the group from 2008-2022. During her time in the group, the Dover Quartet was the First Prize-winner and recipient of every special award at the Banff International String Quartet Competition 2013, and winner of the Gold Medal and Grand Prize in the 2010 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Her numerous awards also include First Prize of the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and top prizes at the the Sphinx Competition and the Tokyo International Viola Competition. While in the Dover Quartet, Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt was on the faculty at The Curtis Institute of Music and Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and a part of the Quartet in Residence of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
A violin student of Sergiu Schwartz and Melissa Pierson-Barrett for several years, she began studying viola with Michael Klotz at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 2005. Ms. Pajaro-van de Stadt graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Roberto Diaz, Michael Tree, Misha Amory, and Joseph de Pasquale. She then received her Master's Degree in String Quartet with the Dover Quartet at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, as a student of James Dunham.
SHARON ROBINSON cello
Winner of the Avery Fisher Recital Award, Piatigorsky Memorial Award, Pro Musicis Award and a GRAMMY nominee, cellist Sharon Robinson is recognized worldwide as a consummate artist and one of the most outstanding musicians of our time. Whether as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra or member of the world‐famous Kalichstein‐Laredo‐Robinson Trio, critics, audiences and fellow musicians respond to what the Indianapolis Star has called “a cellist who has simply been given the soul of Caruso.” Her guest appearances with orchestras include the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, National, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and San Francisco symphonies; and in Europe, the London Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Zürich’s Tonhalle Orchestra and the English, Scottish and Franz Lizst chamber orchestras.
Recipient of the 2012 Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts from the state of Vermont, Robinson divides her time between teaching, solo engagements, performing with her husband, violinist and conductor Jaime Laredo, and is much in demand as a chamber player. She is co-artistic director of the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati and of the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle at Bard College. As of fall 2012, she began teaching on the renowned instrumental and chamber music faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. She previously was a full professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and has an Honorary Doctorate from Marlboro College. In 2015, Robinson established the Cleveland Chapter of Music for Food, which raises funds for food assistance for hungry families in NE Ohio. Highly sought after for her dynamic master classes, she brings insight to her teaching from the rare combination of her lifetime experiences as member of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Ciompi String Quartet of Duke University, 45 years with the Kalichstein‐Laredo‐Robinson Trio, plus countless solo recitals and concerto performances.
Committed to the music of our time, Robinson works closely with many of today’s leading composers, including Ned Rorem, Leon Kirchner, Arvo Pärt, Stanley Silverman, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Joan Tower, David Ludwig, Katherine Hoover, Richard Danielpour and André Previn. She is admired for consortium building, putting together multiple presenters as co‐commissioners of both chamber music works and concertos with orchestra. This season, she gathered ten presenters to co-commission Nokuthula Ngwenyama’s Elegy for Piano Quartet which was written as a response to the tragic events and social reckoning of 2020. Currently, Robinson is in the midst of putting together a consortium to commission Shawn Okpebholo’s Wind Quintet, which mourns racial inequity.
ANNA POLONSKY piano
Anna Polonsky is widely in demand as a soloist and chamber musician. She has appeared with the Moscow Virtuosi, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, the Memphis Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, and many others. Ms. Polonsky has collaborated with the Guarneri, Orion, Daedalus, and Shanghai Quartets, and with such musicians as Mitsuko Uchida, Yo-Yo Ma, David Shifrin, Richard Goode, Emanuel Ax, Arnold Steinhardt, Peter Wiley, and Jaime Laredo. She has performed chamber music at festivals such as Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, Seattle, Music@Menlo, Cartagena, Bard, and Caramoor, as well as at Bargemusic in New York City. Ms. Polonsky 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 the Chamber Music Society Two during 2002-2004. In 2006 she took a part in the European Broadcasting Union's project to record and broadcast all of Mozart's keyboard sonatas, and in the spring of 2007 she performed a solo recital at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium to inaugurate the Emerson Quartet’s Perspectives Series. She is a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award.
Anna Polonsky made her solo piano debut at the age of seven at the Special Central Music School in Moscow, Russia. She emigrated to the United States in 1990, and attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. She received her Bachelor of Music diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music under the tutelage of the renowned pianist Peter Serkin, and continued her studies with Jerome Lowenthal, earning her Master's Degree from the Juilliard School. In addition to performing, she serves on the piano faculty of Vassar College, and in the summer at the Marlboro and Kneisel Hall chamber music festivals.
Together with violinist Jaime Laredo, violist Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Sharon Robinson, Polonsky is a member of the Espressivo! Piano Quartet. With the clarinetist David Shifrin and cellist Peter Wiley, she performs with the Polonsky-Shifrin-Wiley Trio.
Ms. Polonsky is a Steinway Artist.