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The McCabe Larionoff Duo

Sunday, November 17, 2013 - 1:30pm
Robin McCabe and Maria Larionoff
Pianist Robin McCabe, left, and violinist Maria Larionoff (Photo: Joanne De Pue)

Maria Larionoff, violin, and Robin McCabe, piano, continue their traversal of the complete Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano, performing Sonata in A Major, Op. 30 No. 1; Sonata in E flat Major, Op. 12 No. 3; and Sonata in C Minor, Op. 30 No. 2. Music History Professor Stephen Rumph introduces the event with a pre-concert lecture.*

*Note: Paid admission to the 1:30 pm lecture includes admission to the 2 pm concert.

 ARTIST BIOS

Maria Larionoff, violin

Former Seattle Symphony concertmaster Maria Larionoff has appeared as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle, Yakima and Port Angeles symphonies, the Orquesta Sinfónica Carlos Chávez, and the University of Washington and San Francisco chamber orchestras.

Also versatile as a violist, she has collaborated in many chamber music festivals.

In May 2002, with her husband, University of Washington double bassist Barry Lieberman, she launched the immensely successful American String Project, a conductorless string orchestra comprised of concertmasters, professors and distinguished soloists from around the world.

She plays on a 1775 Guadagnini (the ex- Lorand) on loan from the family of Dr. Benum W. Fox of Chicago.

Robin McCabe, piano

Celebrated American pianist Robin McCabe has established herself as one of America’s most communicative and persuasive artists. McCabe’s involvement and musical sensibilities have delighted audiences across the United States, Europe, Canada, and in seven concert tours of the Far East. The United States Department of State sponsored her two South American tours, which were triumphs both artistically and diplomatically.

Her recordings have received universal acclaim. She was commissioned to record four albums for the award-winning company Grammofon AB BIS in Stockholm, which remain distributed internationally, including the CD “Robin McCabe Plays Liszt” (AB BIS No. 185).

In addition, McCabe is a dedicated arts ambassador and advocate for arts audience development, frequently addressing arts organizations across the country. With colleague Craig Sheppard, she has launched the highly successful Seattle Piano Institute, an intense summer “immersion experience” for gifted and aspiring classical pianists that enters its fourth season in July 2013.

The winner of numerous prizes and awards, including the International Concert Artists Guild Competition and a Rockefeller Foundation grant, McCabe was the subject of a lengthy New Yorker magazine profile, “Pianist’s Progress,” later expanded into a book of the same title.

In 2005, to celebrate its 100th year as an institution, The Juilliard School selected McCabe as one of 100 alumni from 20,000 currently living to be profiled in its centenary publication recognizing distinction and accomplishments in the international world of music, dance, and theater.

McCabe performs regularly throughout the United States, and in September of 2011 she made her first visit to South Korea.  She appears often as an invited jurist for international piano competitions, most recently in New Orleans, San Antonio, and Vancouver, Canada.

Stephen Rumph, Music History

Stephen Rumph teaches courses on Mozart, Beethoven, Fauré, Bach, Verdi, Wagner, music and politics, opera, rhetoric, and semiotics. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, writing a Beethoven dissertation with Joseph Kerman. He joined the UW School of Music faculty in 2002.

Rumph's book Beethoven After Napoleon: Political Romanticism in the Late Works (University of California Press, 2004) offers a political interpretation of late Beethoven illuminated by the writings of the German Romantics. A new book, Mozart and Enlightenment Semiotics, is in production with UC Press. It pioneers a "historically-informed" semiotics of music for Mozart, based upon eighteenth-century sign and language theory. His next project will be a study of Gabriel Fauré's melodies.

Rumph has published articles in the Journal of the Royal Music Association, Music and Letters, Beethoven Forum, 19th-Century Music, Eighteenth-Century Music, and The Journal of Musicology, as wells as reviews in JAMS, JRMA, Beethoven Forum, the Cambridge Opera Journal, and Journal of Musicological Research. He has given invited papers at Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, Duke, University of British Columbia, University of Nottingham, and various conferences and music festivals. He served as Reviews Editor for Beethoven Forum (2005-2008).

Rumph also sings professionally as a lyric tenor. He has sung with the Seattle Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Walla Walla Symphony, Northwest Sinfonietta, Tacoma Symphony Orchestra, Tacoma Opera, Skagit Valley Opera, Berkeley Opera, and other opera companies and orchestras through the Puget Sound and San Francisco Bay Area.  His resume can be found at http://northwestartists.org.

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