|
 “One of the most respected classical
violinists in the world” (Woman
Around Town), Stephanie
Chase is in demand as soloist with
eminent
orchestras that have included the New York Philharmonic, Chicago
Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, London
Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, and London Symphony Orchestra, in
inspiring performances acclaimed for their “elegance, dexterity,
rhythmic vitality and great imagination” (Boston Globe) as well
as “stunning power” (Louisville Courier-Journal), “matchless
technique and flawless intonation” (BBC Music Magazine). Her
most recent appearance at Carnegie Hall was in May, 2008 as soloist in
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.
Internationally recognized as “one of the
violin greats of our era” (Newhouse News), concerts by Stephanie
Chase performances are met with
rave
reviews by audiences and
critics alike. Most recently, her rendition of Elgar's Violin
Concerto with the Louisville Orchestra was selected as a “Classical
Act of the Decade” and the New York Times noted
that
"the fine violinist Stephanie Chase was an elegant soloist"
with the American Classical Orchestra. A Classical
Net Review exclaimed that “Stephanie Chase plays the bejabbers out
of Zigeunerweisen, earning a well-deserved (and unsexing)
‘Bravo!’”.
In the fall of 2011, her New York recital
with pianist Sara Davis Buechner was
chosen by WQXR as one of
"20 Concerts to Hear this Fall"
and a
Critics' Choice by Musical America.
Stephanie Chase is a top medalist of the
International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and
 recipient of the
prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Among the conductors with whom
she has collaborated are Zubin Mehta, Leonard Slatkin, Herbert Blomstedt,
Marin Alsop, and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.
Renowned for her “rich, passionate tone,
dead-true intonation throughout, and virtuosity galore” (Gramophone),
Ms. Chase is equally at home in the virtuoso's repertoire,
historically-informed performance practice and contemporary music, and
she offers “refreshingly stylish” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
interpretations of an attractive and diverse repertoire spanning the
Baroque to the late-20th century and consisting of over sixty
concerti and major works for violin and orchestra.
 In addition to the standard concerti, Ms.
Chase performs those by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ellen Taafe Zwilich,
Erich Korngold, Karl Szymanowski,
William Walton, Julius Conus, Henri Vieuxtemps, Dmitri Shostakovich,
Leonard Bernstein, and Kreisler’s one-movement version of Paganini’s
Violin Concerto. She also offers lesser-heard but compelling works
such as Saint-Saëns’ “La Muse et le Poète” (for violin, cello and
orchestra), Borodin’s “Nocturne” (from his famed string quartet,
arranged for violin and orchestra by Rimsky-Korsakov), and Chausson’s
“Poème” for violin and orchestra.
Recordings by Ms. Chase are celebrated for her “technical control, beautiful
sound, rhythmic flexibility, unerring taste, and natural stylistic
affinity” (Strings Magazine) and have been awarded the highest
possible ratings by Cambridge University Press and BBC Music Magazine,
featured by Classic CD as “Record of the Month,” and selected by
Stereophile as a “Record to Die For.”
Stephanie Chase’s interest in musicology
and performance practice is reflected in her own original cadenzas for
concerti by Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn. She is a noted interpreter of
Beethoven's music and the first violinist ever to record Beethoven's
majestic Violin Concerto (featuring her own cadenzas) on original
instruments. This landmark recording is deemed “one of the twenty most
outstanding performances in the work's recorded history” by Robin
Stowell in ‘Beethoven: Violin Concerto’ (Cambridge University Press).
Writing for BBC Music Magazine, H.C. Robbins Landon declared that
“Stephanie Chase has a great sense of style, matchless technique and
flawless intonation.”
Her recent concert performance of this
work (with the Portland Symphony) inspired the poet H. D. Wagener to write:
“with the apparent ease that accompanies
great virtuosity..... Stephanie, Beethoven and the orchestra, striving
toward Truth celebrate the highest image of the human.” (Gleanings
and Giftings - H.D. Wagener)
Born in Illinois, Stephanie Chase is the
daughter of two musicians, the noted music arranger and composer Bruce Chase
and violinist Fannie
(Paschell) Chase, and the granddaughter of violinists. She made her
first public appearance at the age of two years and within a few years
was nationally recognized as a child prodigy through appearances on
television and performances in the Chicago area. Her debut with the
Chicago Symphony followed her first prize win, at age nine, in its Youth
Competition. That same year she was featured performing a Mozart
Concerto on WGN’s “Artist’s Showcase,” in a program that was awarded the
illustrious George Foster Peabody
 Award for excellence in television
broadcasting. Further studies with Sally Thomas of the Juilliard School
ensued and, following two appearances at age thirteen on Sir David
Frost’s television interview program, Ms. Chase embarked on a major
concert career, touring as a teenager across the United States and
Canada and appearing as soloist with orchestras that included the
Chicago, St. Louis, National and American Symphony Orchestras. Her
Carnegie Hall debut was at age eighteen, in which she appeared as
soloist in the retirement concert of the eminent conductor-educator Leon Barzin.
Ms. Chase furthered her artistry through
studies with the legendary Belgian violinist
Arthur Grumiaux,
who remained her mentor until his death. She also studied chamber music
at the renowned Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont with many of the
20th-century greatest musicians, including Rudolf Serkin, Felix Galimir,
Misha Schneider, Rudolf Firkusny and Marcel Moyse.
Stephanie
Chase’s triumphant, award-winning performances at the Tchaikovsky
Competition in Moscow led to international fame and concert tours in
twenty-five countries, including an historic tour of the People’s
Republic of China as soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic on its
first ever trip to the PRC.
Ms. Chase's most recent recordings include
albums of music for violin and piano by Rudolf Friml and Viteslavá
Kaprálová.  In addition to
the Koch International Classics label, Ms. Chase has recorded for Cala
Records, Harmonia Mundi, MSR and Paulus.
Stephanie Chase is also applauded through
her concert performances in the dual roles of violin soloist and
conductor. Concerts she has conducted with the Jupiter Symphony, The
Chamber Orchestra of the Spheres, and the Symphony by the Sea (MA) have
been extremely well received, and she has led performances from the solo
violin position with orchestras throughout the United States and Mexico,
including the String Orchestra of New York City, The American String
Project and the New Century Chamber Orchestra.
Her music
arrangements are performed to rave reviews in venues that include
Carnegie Hall. “A Fantasy about Carmen,” a work she created for string
orchestra (inspired by Sarasate’s virtuoso for violin and orchestra
featuring Bizet’s music from Carmen), was premiered in 2005 in
Zankel Hall in a performance by the Perlman Chamber Orchestra conducted
by Itzhak Perlman, who are currently performing her arrangement of
Sarasate’s “Zigeunerweisen.” In a concert review (yourobserver.com, January 6, 2010), critic June LeBell noted: “But the
real energy came with the finale: a clever arrangement by violinist
Stephanie Chase of Sarasate’s “Zigeunerweisen.” This, like Chase’s
arrangement of the “Carmen Fantasy,” used by the PMP Chamber Orchestra
in past years, is a blockbuster of a piece… eliciting cheers, laughter
and total delight from the audience.”
Also renowned as a chamber musician, Ms.
Chase is a guest artist at many prestigious festivals – including
Caramoor, Bargemusic, Cabrillo,
Kuhmo (Finland), Nuits de Bourgogne, and Sommerfest
(Minnesota Orchestra) – and has collaborated with musicians that include
Lydia Artimiew, Yuri Bashmet, Jean-Ives Thibaudet, Sara Davis Buechner,
Dominique LaBelle, Jon Nakamatsu,
Marc-André Hamelin, and members of the Daedalus, Muir, Guarneri and
Tokyo String Quartets. In July 2010 she replaced an artist on one
day's notice for three concerts at the Bravo! Vail Festival, which
included the Colorado premiere of Joan Tower's new Piano Quartet. She is a co-founder and Artistic Director of the
acclaimed
Music of the
Spheres Society, which presents
chamber music concerts and lectures that explore the links between
music, philosophy and the sciences. As a former artist member of the
Boston Chamber Music Society, she toured internationally with the group
and is featured on several recordings made by the Society in a variety
of repertoire.
Ms.
Chase is frequently the subject of profiles in newspapers and journals,
most recently including
The Epoch Times
(October 14, 2009) and
Woman Around Town,
(November 16, 2009).
Stephanie Chase
teaches violin at New York
University’s Steinhardt School and at the Aaron Copland School of Music
at Queens College. She is frequently invited to perform master classes
by prestigious institutions that include Juilliard, Southern Methodist
University, Mannes, San Francisco Conservatory, Shepherd School at Rice
University, Milwaukee Conservatory, and the Institute for Strings, and
has judged numerous violin concerto competitions, including the 2011
Concorso Postacchini in Fermo, Italy, and at The Juilliard
School. She is also a Violin Advisor for Dover Publications.
Stephanie Chase is lineally descended
(tenth generation) from Aquila Chase, a Massachusetts Bay colonist who
arrived from England in 1639 and settled first in Hampton, NH and then
Newbury, MA. The founder of one of New England's most illustrious
family lineages, Aquila's descendents include jurists, founders of
colleges, bishops, senators and a Supreme Court Chief Justice, Salmon
Portland Chase (for whom Chase Bank is named).
Ms. Chase resides in New York City with
her husband,
Stewart Pollens, an
award-winning musical instrument expert. The founder and director
of Violin Advisor, LLC, he was formerly the conservator of musical
instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among her current
hobbies are learning chess, studying the "music of the spheres" and
Stradivari violins, researching her genealogy, and strength training.
|
“One of the violin greats of our
era” – Newhouse Newspapers
“Stephanie Chase has a great sense
of style, matchless technique and flawless intonation”
– BBC
Music Magazine
“The soloist was the superb
violinist Stephanie Chase, who played with elegance, dexterity,
rhythmic vitality and great imagination. This was a Classical
performance in the best sense: clear-headed, straightforward,
intelligent” – Boston Globe
Listen to Stephanie
Chase Live!
“Rich, passionate tone, dead-true
intonation throughout, and virtuosity galore”
– Gramophone
"…one of the twenty most
outstanding performances in the (Beethoven Violin Concerto's)
recording history” – ‘Beethoven: Violin Concerto,’ Cambridge
University Press
“...a deeply poetic account of the
(Sibelius) Concerto by Stephanie Chase, (who) poured out the
impassioned northern lyricism on a spacious scale, holding
enough throbbing tone and gutsy bravura in reserve for the
extroverted passages” – Chicago Tribune
“A supreme musical performer whose
complete virtuosity enables her to ennoble everything she
plays.” – Byron Belt, Newhouse Newspapers
“A Record to Die For” -
Stereophile
“Refreshingly stylish…(Chase)
“makes each work a new musical journey, riveting the audience’s
attention from beginning to end” - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Stephanie Chase is making her
name on sheer artistry … (no violinist) plays more truly or
musically than Chase” – San Francisco Chronicle
“The American violinist conquered
the work’s many technical hurdles as authoritatively as she
illuminated its generous lyric outpourings”
– Los Angeles
Times
“She played always with firm
control, a fine sense of the music’s subtle shadings and above
all the vigor and the large gestures it often demands"
– Washington Post
“Chase’s interpretation of
Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was one of the best I have
ever heard, live or recorded. ..She is like a great actress,
with such presence that by speaking softly, she can make the
audience hang on every syllable...The cadenzas were simply
stupendous, both in composition and execution”
– Portland
Press Herald
"...with the apparent ease that
accompanies great virtuosity..... Stephanie, Beethoven and the
orchestra, striving toward Truth celebrate the highest image of
the human." - Gleanings and Giftings by H.D. Wagener
“Stephanie Chase played with fire,
sensitivity, impeccable intonation, and a wonderfully steady and
flexible bow arm that made the violin part sound like a vocal
line” – Boston Globe
"These performances are greatly
helped by Chase's technical control, beautiful sound, rhythmic
flexibility, unerring taste, and natural stylistic affinity"
–
Strings Magazine
“Chase deserves the acclaim… she
gave an unaffected, beautiful performance with a variety and
clarity of tone that projected effortlessly. It commanded the
normally violin-absorbent hall” - San Francisco Chronicle
“This showpiece (Tchaikovsky
Concerto) is rarely performed as beautifully as it was by
Stephanie Chase. Chase found ways to transcend the score (and)
her liberties were poignant and meaningful. Not extroverted, and
technically flawless, Chase’s playing often bordered on
recklessness and passionate abandon” - The Tennessean
"CHASE, UN ARCHETTO DE TRIONFO"
("Chase, A Triumphant Bow" - Headline of review)
-
La
Provincia, Pavia, Italy
“Exceptional security of technique
and bow control, married to a supreme inner radiance”
– Performance Today, National Public Radio
“Chase’s playing was sweet and
exquisite” - Chicago Tribune
“Her performance of the Haydn
Concerto was a rare moment in which a soloist’s manner of
playing seemed destined for that particular style and type of
music. The brightness of her sound, its projection into the
hall, and the stylish handling of elegant but highly ornate
music fit the Haydn work perfectly” - Houston Chronicle
“A warm and virtuosic performance
by the outstanding artist Stephanie Chase”
- Seattle Times
“A stunning violinist...Chase
nailed (Glazunov's Concerto) — she performed with great
concentration, power and expression. A splendid reading” - Edmonton Journal
©Stephanie
Chase 2012.
All Rights Reserved. |
