Faculty pianist Robin McCabe joins forces with guest artist Maria Larionoff in an evening of high octane duos for violin and piano. On the launch pad: Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, Beethoven’s Sonata in G major, Opus 96, and Faure’s impassioned Sonata in A Major.
Biographies
Maria Larionoff
Violinist Maria Larionoff is artistic director of the Missoula, Montana-based String Orchestra of the Rockies and former concert master of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. She has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the symphonies of Seattle, Yakima, Port Angeles and Oakland, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, the Seattle Collaborative Orchestra and the Orquestra Sinfonica in Mexico City. Ms. Larionoff has toured Germany and Austria with the New European Strings and has performed on tour in Japan with the Mostly Mozart Orchestra.
A Loomis Scholarship Award winner at the Juilliard School, Ms. Larionoff was a student of Dorothy DeLay. Additional teachers included Stuart Canin, Sally Thomas, Paul Doktor, Joel Krosnik and Felix Galimir. Upon graduating, Ms. Larionoff was invited by the esteemed Maestro Carlo Maria Giulini to join the violin section of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Ms. Larionoff moved to Seattle in 1990 and served as Associate Concertmaster of the Symphony and was then appointed Concertmaster, where she was featured as soloist and leader on numerous occasions, including her critically acclaimed solo performances in the 2011 Naxos release of Scheherazade. In 2012 her performance of the Vasks violin concerto Distant Light received praise from the New York Times: “the elegant violinist Maria Larionoff was stunning, incisive and radiant.”
Ms. Larionoff’s versatility as a violist as well as a violinist has led to invitations at many chamber music festivals, including the Seattle Chamber Music Society, the Seattle International Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Marrowstone Music Festival, Chautauqua and the Vetta series in Vancouver, BC. She has collaborated in chamber music concerts with many distinguished artists including Emanuel Ax, Lynn Harrell, Steven Staryk, Jamie Laredo, and Glenn Dicterow.
In 2001, Ms. Larionoff and her husband, double bassist Barry Lieberman, founded The American String Project, a conductorless string orchestra made up of Concertmasters and soloists from around the world. The group received great critical acclaim both for their annual performances at Benaroya Hall, as well as for their numerous recordings.
Ms. Larionoff plays on a 1678 Nicolo Amati violin and contemporary American bows by Paul Siefried. When not playing the violin, she enjoys tennis and long walks with Barry and their rescue golden retriever, Pamina.
Celebrated 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 nine 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.
As noted by the New York Times, “What Ms. McCabe has that raises her playing to such a special level is a strong lyric instinct and confidence in its ability to reach and touch the listener.” The Tokyo Press declared her a “pianistic powerhouse,” and a reviewer in Prague declared, “Her musicianship is a magnet for the listener.” Richard Dyer, the eminent critic of the Boston Globe: ‘Her brilliant, natural piano playing shows as much independence of mind as of fingers.”
Her recordings have received universal acclaim. Her debut album for Vanguard Records featured the premiere recording of Guido Agosti transcription of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Critics praised it as “mightily impressive.” Stereo Review described her disc of Bartok as “all that we have come to expect from this artist, a first-rate performance!” 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).
McCabe earned her bachelor of music degree summa cum laude at the University of Washington School of Music, where she studied with Béla Siki, and her master’s and doctorate degrees at the Juilliard School of Music, where she studied with Rudolf Firkusny. She joined the Juilliard faculty in 1978 then returned to the UW in 1987 to accept a position on the piano faculty. In 1994 McCabe was appointed Director of the School of Music, a position she held until 2009. McCabe holds a Michiko Morita Miyamoto Professorship in Piano at the School of Music and has previously held a Ruth Sutton Waters Professorship and a Donald Petersen Professorship in the School of Music.
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.
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 1995 McCabe presented the annual faculty lecture — a concert with commentary — at the University of Washington. She is the first professor of music in the history of the University to be awarded this lectureship. Seattle magazine selected McCabe as one of 17 current and past University of Washington professors who have had an impact on life in the Pacific Northwest. 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. Today she is a highly- sought teacher at the University of Washington, with students from around the world seeking admission to her studio.
McCabe performs regularly throughout the United States, and has made several tours of South Korea, Japan and China. In 2022 she has been appointed Artistic Advisor to the Beijing Royal School, an elite private K-12 institution which is evolving an international Arts curriculum She appears often as an invited jurist for international piano competitions, most recently in New Orleans, San Antonio, and Vancouver, Canada. In 2016 she served on the jury of the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition. In March of 2022 she served on the jury for the Hilton Head International Piano Competition.