Spanish-born violinist Francisco Fullana, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has been hailed as an “amazing talent” (Gustavo Dudamel) and “frighteningly awesome” (Buffalo News). His latest album on Orchid Classics, Bach’s Long Shadow, was named BBC Music Magazine’s Instrumental Choice of the Month. Its five-star review stated: ‘Fullana manages to combine Itzhak Perlman’s warmth with the aristocratic poise of Henryk Szeryng’
A native of Mallorca in the Balearic Islands of Spain, Francisco is making a name for himself as both a performer and a leader of innovative educational institutions. As a soloist, he has performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Bayerische Philharmonie led by the late Sir Colin Davis, the Sibelius Concerto with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, and the Brahms Violin Concerto with Venezuela’s Teresa Carreño Orchestra under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel. His versatility as a performer has brought him to perform with numerous ensembles across the artistic spectrum: from major orchestras such as the City of Birmingham, Vancouver, Pacific and Buffalo Symphony Orchestras, the chamber orchestras of Saint Paul and Philadelphia, to the baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire and the new music driven Metropolis Ensemble. Francisco has worked under the batons of Hans Graf, Alondra de la Parra, Christoph Poppen, Jeannette Sorrell, and Joshua Weilerstein, among many others.
In 2015 Francisco was honored with First Prize in Japan’s Munetsugu Angel Violin Competition, as well as all four of that competition’s special prizes including the Audience and Orchestra awards. Additional awards include First Prizes at the Johannes Brahms and Julio Cardona International Violin Competitions, the Pro Musicis International Award, and the Pablo Sarasate National Competition.
Francisco Fullana performs on the 1735 “Mary Portman” ex-Kreisler Guarneri del Gesù violin, kindly on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
Ravel: Sonata no. 2 for Violin and Piano 20′
This program is played on violin with gut strings, giving you a taste of the authentic sound of timeless classics of Bach and Mozart. The concert culminates with Ravel’s violin sonata on the modern instrument. Francisco Fullana performs on the 1735 “Mary Portman” ex-Kreisler Guarneri del Gesù violin.
Praised by the critics for her “technically fluid, dramatically convincing, and sonically full-bodied supportive collaborations” (Boston Globe) – Milana Strezeva is a Moldovan-American pianist. At the age of 11, she began playing chamber music with her clarinetist father and her mother, a renowned soprano. Milana’s love for family collaboration eventually grew into a passionate advocacy of vocal and instrumental chamber music.
A founding member of the award-winning Manhattan Piano Trio, one of the most creative and dynamic young ensembles in America, Milana has performed with them in over 30 American states, in Australia, South Africa, and Italy, and in venues such as Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, and the Ravinia Festival. The Washington Post described the Trio as “impressive” and “outstanding.” At the same time, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune said, “one seldom is privileged to enjoy the music of such a wide range of styles performed with self-effacing skill and relaxed assurance.” In honor of the composers’ bicentennials, a CD of Schumann and Chopin trios was successfully released on the Marquis Classics label in 2009.
Milana’s most enduring and treasured collaboration is with her mother, the renowned Soprano, Svetlana Strezeva (a.k.a. “The Russian Nightingale” and winner of the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition). With programs that reflect their love of Russian vocal literature, they have given recitals across the US as well as in Italy, Denmark, Germany, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, and China.
Milana received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School on a full scholarship. Currently, Milana lives in Naples, FL, and is a President & Artistic Director of Grand Piano Series.
Mike Cheng-Yu Lee is one of a new generation of pianists who is at home performing on pianos that span the early 18th to the late 20th centuries. Awarded Second Prize and Audience Prize at the 2011 Westfield International Fortepiano Competition by a jury that included Robert Levin and the late Christopher Hogwood, his performances have garnered attention for the fresh perspectives they bring to familiar repertoire. For his debut recital in Australia he received a rare five-star review in Limelight Magazine: “Try as one might, it was hard to avoid cliché responses like ‘stunning’, even ‘electrifying’. I don’t think I have heard a Mozart recital quite like this. I heard things in Mozart’s music I had never thought possible and certainly had never encountered before.”
As a chamber musician, Mike regularly collaborates with both modern and period performers and ensembles. He has appeared as soloist with the New World Symphony at the invitation of Michael Tilson Thomas and collaborated with musicians from the Formosa, Juilliard, and Aizuri quartets among others.
Mike is regularly invited to guest teach and perform at some of the most prominent music schools around the world, including the Royal Academy of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, and the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, among others. In 2015-17 he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University–Bloomington.
As a scholar, Mike’s interests lie at the intersection between music theory and analysis, performance studies, and organology. To date he has published on aspects of form, meter, and tempo in Schubert (Music Theory Online) and has a forthcoming article in 19th-Century Music that develops a new hermeneutic interpretation of Chopin’s E-minor prelude drawing on autograph and biographical sources, analysis, and performance studies. Additionally, Mike has contributed writings to Early Music America Magazine and 18th-Century Music.
In more recent years, Mike has assumed curatorship of important instrument collections. In 2017-19 he was director of the Australian National University Keyboard Institute which houses one of the southern hemisphere’s largest collections of historical pianos. Currently, he is Artist/Scholar-in-Residence at the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards where he divides his work between performance and scholarship, developing programs for the center, teaching into the DMA program, and curatorship of the center’s historical piano collection.
Mike studied at the Yale School of Music and holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Cornell University with a dissertation that was awarded the Donald J. Grout Memorial Dissertation Prize. His teachers include Malcolm Bilson, Boris Berman, Michael Friedmann, and the renowned Haydn scholar James Webster.
