Rachel-Lee Priday & Francois du Toit at Christchurch Constantia
11 March 2023 at 11:00
| R160 – R200Schubert D Major Sonatina
Beethoven Spring Sonata
Intermission
Poulenc Sonata
Jessie Montgomery Rhapsody No. 1 (solo violin)
Bartok Six Romanian Folk Dances
A consistently exciting artist, renowned globally for her spectacular technique, sumptuous sound, deeply probing musicianship, and “irresistible panache” (Chicago Tribune), violinist RACHEL LEE PRIDAY has appeared as soloist with major international orchestras, among them the Chicago, Houston, National, Pacific, St. Louis and Seattle Symphony Orchestras, Boston Pops Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Germany’s Staatskapelle Berlin. Her distinguished recital appearances have brought her to eminent venues, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Mostly Mozart Festival, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series, Paris’s Musée du Louvre, Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and Switzerland’s Verbier Festival.
Passionately committed to new music and creating enriching community and global connections, Rachel Lee Priday’s wide-ranging repertoire and multidisciplinary collaborations reflect a deep fascination with literary and cultural narratives. Recent seasons have seen a new Violin Sonata commissioned from Pulitzer Prize Finalist Christopher Cerrone and the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s The Orphic Moment in an innovative staging that mixed poetry, drama, visuals and music. She has collaborated often with Ballet San Jose, and was lead performer in “Tchaikovsky: None But the Lonely Heart”, theatrical concerts with the Ensemble for the Romantic Century at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her work as soloist with the Asia America New Music Institute promoted cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, combining premiere performances with educational outreach in the US, China, Korea and Vietnam.
This season Rachel performs in duo recital with composer/pianist Timo Andres in Seattle and Washington, DC at the Phillips Collection. Upcoming concerto engagements include the Portland Symphony, Roanoke Symphony and UC Davis Symphony at the Mondavi Center, while recent engagements have included the Pacific Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Johannesburg Philharmonic, Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony, and Bangor Symphony.
Since making her orchestral debut at the Aspen Music Festival in 1997, Rachel has performed with numerous orchestras across the United States, including those of Colorado, Alabama, Knoxville, Rockford, and Springfield (MA), as well as the New York Youth Symphony. Her In Europe and in Asia, she has appeared at the Moritzburg Festival in Germany and with orchestras in Graz, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea, where she performed with the KBS Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic and Russian State Symphony Orchestra on tour. She has also toured South Africa and the United Kingdom, appearing in recital at the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge.
Rachel Lee Priday began her violin studies at the age of four in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York City to study with the iconic pedagogue Dorothy DeLay; she continued her studies at The Juilliard School Pre-College Division with Itzhak Perlman. She holds a B.A. degree in English from Harvard University and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where she worked with Miriam Fried. In the fall of 2019, she joined the faculty of the University of Washington School of Music as Assistant Professor of Violin.
Rachel Lee Priday has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Strad, Los Angeles Times and Family Circle. Her performance have been broadcast on major media outlets in the United States, Germany, Korea, South Africa and Brazil, including a televised concert in Rio de Janeiro, numerous appearances on Chicago’s WFMT and American Public Media’s “Performance Today.” She has also been featured on BBC Radio 3, the Disney Channel, “Fiddling for the Future” and “American Masters” on PBS, and the Grammy Awards.
She performs on a Nicolo Gagliano violin (Naples, 1760), double-purfled with fleurs-de-lis, named Alejandro.
Acknowledged as one of South Africa’s leading concert pianists and musicians, FRANÇOIS DU TOIT is an Associate Professor of Piano and Head of Practical Studies at the University of Cape Town. He received tuition in South Africa with Merryl Preston and Laura Searle and with Arie Vardi and Bernd Goetzke in Germany.
During his period of study, he distinguished himself in several international competitions, taking top prizes in Hannover, Rotterdam and Athens.
He has over 40 concertos in his repertoire, ranging from Bach to Scharwenka and has also performed the concerto premieres of South African composers, Hendrik Hofmeyr and Adrian More, collaborating with conductors including Bernhard Gueller, Omri Hadari, Alun Francis, Thomas Sanderling, Piero Gambo, Arjan Tien and Alexander Lazarev.
Francois recorded all five Beethoven piano concertos with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Victor Yampolsky. In 2017 he received the Creative Works Award from UCT.