TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY NO . 4
Maximilian Franz
Katherine Balch ’ s whisper concerto with “ jawdropping brilliance ” ( Dallas Morning News ) as the dedicatee of the work .
A winner of the 2017 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the 2017 Astral National Auditions , Fung has taken the top prizes at the 2018 Alice & Eleonore Schoenfeld International String Competition , the 2016 George Enescu International Cello Competition , and the 2015 Johansen International Competition for Young String Players , among others . He was selected as a 2016 U . S . Presidential Scholar for the Arts and was awarded the 2016 Landgrave von Hesse Prize at the Kronberg Academy Cello Masterclasses .
Fung was announced as a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Winner in 2022 and awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2020 . He was named to WXQR ’ s Artist Propulsion Lab in 2023 . Fung has been featured on NPR ’ s Performance Today and has appeared six times on NPR ’ s From the Top . He plays a 1717 cello by David Tecchler of Rome , kindly loaned to him through the Beare ’ s International Violin Society by a generous benefactor .
Of Bulgarian and Chinese heritage , Zlatomir Fung was born into a family of mathematicians and began playing cello at age three . Fung studied at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Richard Aaron and Timothy Eddy , where he was a recipient of the Kovner Fellowship . Outside of music , his interests include chess , cinema , and creative writing .
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
By James M . Keller
Toshio Hosokawa
Born October 23 , 1955 in Hiroshima , Japan Residing in Nagano , Japan , and Mainz , Germany
MEDITATION — TO THE VICTIMS OF TSUNAMI 3.11 [ 2011 – 12 ]
Thirteen years have now passed since Japan was struck by a calamity that resounded throughout the world , an event commemorated by Toshio Hosokawa in his Meditation — to the victims of Tsunami 3.11 , which was premiered in 2012 . He explains : “ 11 March 2011 , East Japan has suffered a great disaster . A tsunami struck the northeast coast after the earthquake , taking thousands of lives and destroying the daily lives of many people . The Fukushima nuclear power plant accident was discovered shortly thereafter , sacrificing the lives of people in the region , and even today a lot of people are still suffering due to the radiation effects . This work is dedicated to the victims of the Tohoku earthquake .”
This is one of several works in which Hosokawa grapples with the awesome power of nature , the devastation it can wreak on people , the ultimate resilience of humanity , and how music might inspire people to seek a healthy balance with the natural world . “ My musical idea ,” he has written , “ is to find harmony between nature and humans . Therefore , the tsunami of 2011 was a great shock to me . Nature just isn ’ t only nice and beautiful , it can also be cruel sometimes . We Japanese seem to have lost our respect for nature .”
Born in Hiroshima a decade after that city ’ s devastation at the end of World War II , Hosokawa left to study in Germany with such figures as Isang Yun , Klaus Huber , and Brian Ferneyhough at such avant-garde hot-spots as the arts universities of Berlin and Freiburg and the Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt . He absorbed the thorny techniques of European modernism , which , as his career progressed , he blended with an esthetic outlook specific to Japan and particularly to noh drama . His career developed in parallel in Japan and Europe ; he has served as a Composer
Maximilian Franz
24 OVERTURE / BSOmusic . org