Ramey Piano Trio – Sunday, January 12 at 4 pm
Ramey Piano Trio
Florin Parvulescu, violin; David Goldblatt, cello; Samantha Cho, piano
Joseph Haydn Piano Trio in C major, Hob.xv:27
Germaine Tailleferre Piano Trio No. 1
Franz Schubert Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 99, D. 898 in B-flat major
The Ramey Trio consists of San Francisco Symphony members – violinist Florin Parvulescu and cellist David Goldblatt – alongside pianist Samantha Cho. The San Francisco-based Ramey trio will present an exciting and dynamic program: a mixture of traditional staples of chamber music literature, such as the titanic Schubert B-flat major trio, as well as the exotic trio by the lesser-known composer Germain Tailleferre, the only female member of Les Six, a group of early 20th century French composers whose music represents a strong reaction to the heavy Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, and ironically fellow French composer Claude Debussy. The program opens with the beautiful and sparkling piano trio by Haydn – a popular work in the piano trio literature showcasing Haydn’s brilliant writing for the genre. The next piece in the program – Tailleferre‘s Piano Trio – an astonishing work full of rich harmony and vast palette of colors, as well as intense outpouring of emotion, is rarely performed. Tailleferre began writing the piece in 1916-1917, however due to the violence and emotional trauma of World War I, waited to complete the trio until 1978, just a few years before her death! The program ends with one of the great pillars of chamber music, the Schubert Trio in B-flat major. This dynamic program juxtaposes French to German, traditional forms to modern expressionism, all through the medium of the piano trio.
Florin Parvulescu was born in 1971 in Bucharest, Romania. He started playing the violin at the age of six at the Georges Enescu music school. In 1978 he attended the Juilliard School Pre-College division, studying with Shirley Givens. In 1989 he went on to study at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where his principal teachers were Sylvia Rosenberg and Herbert Greenberg. He also worked closely with pianist Leon Fleisher and Berl Senofsky. In addition to earning Bachelors and Artist Diploma degrees at Peabody, Mr. Parvulescu was awarded numerous prizes, among them the Marbury Award and Yale Gordon award.
Mr. Parvulescu joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1998. From 1996–1998, he was a member of the St. Louis Symphony. As soloist and chamber musician Mr. Parvulescu has appeared in recital series at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Dame Myra Hess recital series in Chicago, Aspen Music Festival, Berkeley Chamber Music Series, Johanessen International School of the Arts in Victoria British Columbia, San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music Series, Chamber Music Series St. Louis, Heidelberg, Germany and Fontainebleau, France and as soloist with the Xiamen Philharmonic in 2009 and 2010. He has performed in chamber music concerts with pianists Kiril Gerstein and Anton Nel and performed Thomas Ades’s Piano Quintet with the composer at the piano.
Mr. Parvulescu has given masterclasses at the Beijing Conservatory and taught at the Singapore International Violin Festival in 2018. He has been featured on the McGraw Hill Young Artist Showcase on WQXR radio NY, National Public Radio, WFMT Chicago and King FM in Seattle. The San Francisco Chronicle has praised him for his “gleaming tone and pyrotechnics.”
Mr. Parvulescu studied conducting with David Zinman at the Aspen Music Festival and Michael Tilson-Thomas. As a conductor, Mr. Parvulescu has led the New World Symphony, the Aspen Academy Orchestra, the Icicle Creek Festival Orchestra, the Academy Orchestra of San Francisco. In addition, he led performances of Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale and works by Charles Ives and Scott Joplin with members of the San Francisco Symphony as part of the Symphony’s Keeping Score project. In August 2013 he conducted the Macau Youth Orchestra in an all-Mozart program (Don Giovanni overture, Violin Concerto No. 5 and Symphony No. 40) for their US debut at Merkin Concert Hall in Lincoln Center, replacing the regularly scheduled conductor on one day notice. In the summer of 2013 he conducted performances of Russian classics Scheherazade and Polovtsian Dances as well as an evening of John Williams at “Music in the Mountains” Festival in Grass Valley California. In 2014 he appeared with the Nanning Symphony in China in a program featuring Wagner’s Die Meistersinger Overture, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Mussorgsky-Ravel’s Pictures at an Exhibition. During the 2015 Mid-Summer Mozart Festival in San Francisco he stepped in for ailing conductor George Cleve conducting a varied program of arias from Don Giovanni, La Clemenza di Tito as well as concertos for French horn and oboe. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote: ”Parvulescu … stepped into the breach admirably. His interpretive style is more fluid and lyrical, which made for an interesting contrast between the two. It also fell to him to accompany four soloists-a daunting assignment which he fulfilled with impressive aplomb.”
David Goldblatt is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with Orlando Cole, Felix Galimir, Mischa Schneider, Arnold Steinhart, and Isadore Cohen. A versatile musician, Goldblatt has performed in symphonic, opera, baroque, and rock’n’roll ensembles. He has been a member of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, The Skywalker Orchestra, and the Philly Sound, which won a 1973 Grammy for best instremental rock’n’roll recording.
Presently, he is a member of both the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and appears regularly in concert throughout the Bay Area, including the San Francisco Symphony chamber music series, and is Director of Chamber Music Sundaes.
Born in Los Angeles, pianist Samantha Cho is active professionally as a performer and educator. Her recent performances include appearing on San Francisco’s Noontime Concert Series, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series with violinist Florin Parvulescu, Seattle’s radio series Classical King FM 98.1, and more. Her 2019-2020 concert engagements include solo recitals in San Francisco and Los Angeles, a radio appearance on Live from WFMT with CSO cellist Brant Taylor and violinist Florin Parvulescu, and a debut live performance in South Korea’s prestigious chamber music venue, Sejong Cultural Center. Passionate about chamber music, Samantha has collaborated with members of the San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Houston Symphony, San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and more. Samantha also performed as soloist with Kenwood Symphony as winner of the 19th Annual Master’s Concerto & Aria Competition. Her performances have been broadcast on Chicago’s WFMT, Seattle’s Classical KingFM, and Seoul’s Arte TV.
Also passionate in music education, Samantha devotes a significant amount of her time to nurturing young talents. She joined the piano faculty at Los Angeles Pierce College in 2019, and she has coached pre-college chamber music groups at San Francisco Conservatory of Music since 2016.
Samantha received her Bachelor of Music at Northwestern University, Master of Music at Cleveland Institute of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts at University of Minnesota in 2015. Her childhood teacher, Robert Turner, was a highly-sought after teacher in Los Angeles as protégée of the Lhevinnes at the Juilliard School. She continued her studies with the following teachers: Paul Schenly, Kathryn Brown, Sylvia Wang, and Alexander Braginsky.