Reviews
“The Boston Artists Ensemble Plumb the Hidden Depths of Mozart”
“When performed with this high level of polish and poise, even Mozart’s darkest music can make you smile.”
Joined by first violinist Julianne Lee, the BAE evoked haunting lyricism straight from the opening bars. Dimitriades, Gitter, and Miller supplied an ample surface on which Lee could spin sparkly lines and elegant arpeggios. But these performers just as nimbly leaned into the passages of wayward tension, episodes that revealed this to be another work where Mozart tested the boundaries of convention.
— Arts Fuse 1.7.25
“Boston Artists Ensemble — Chamber Music at its Finest”
“The Boston Artists Ensemble found the tenderness and understated grace of Robert Schumann’s Piano Trio No. 2.
Sunday’s performance channeled that power, mystery, and all shades in between. Made up of BAE regulars and guests, the ensemble played with customary élan. Violinist Sharan Leventhal unfolded her lines with gleaming tone. Cellist Jonathan Miller provided dusky complement. And pianist Randall Hodgkinson brought precision and flair to match.”
— Arts Fuse 11.7.22
“Boston Artists Ensemble opens with operatic drama, Frank premiere”
“In Friday’s performance, violinist Lucia Lin’s raw intensity proved an ideal foil for cellist Jonathan Miller’s assured phrases, making a compelling case for Frank’s score.
From the onset, the musicians matched each mother’s melodic sweep. They approached the ensuing Scherzo with similar live-wire energy. Lush string blend and delicate piano chords made the Adagio into a soulful departure. The finale found the ensemble channeling playfulness, grandiosity, and ultimate serenity—about as operatic as one can get in chamber music.”
Link to full review
— Aaron Keebaugh for Boston Classical Review 9.17.22
“Boston Artists Ensemble wrap season with skillful yet imposing Brahms and Chopin”
“….their performance also drew attention to lingering delicacies and bold contrasts. The Adagio was a scene of utmost serenity even as the musicians navigated the abrupt shifts in key. In the Scherzo, the players struck a perfect balance between gentle lilt and storm-tossed angst. Together, they rendered the finale with Magyar swagger.”
Link to full review
— Aaron Keebaugh for Boston Classical Review 4.30.22
“Boston Artists Ensemble visits Salem with a glowing tribute to a musical friendship”
“For forty years, the Boston Artists Ensemble has ventured into suburbs with programs that are as intriguing and inviting as the performance spaces they pick out for their field trips. Friday night was no exception….The ensemble opened the throttle for the trio and coda, and as the music coursed to a conclusion, the players seemed to be having the time of their lives.”
Link to full review
— Aaron Keebaugh for Boston Classical Review 3.5.22
“Sheer Delight”
“Last Sunday afternoon’s Boston Artists Ensemble concert of programmatic music at St. Paul’s Church Brookline provided sheer delight. Scott Wheeler’s new Songs Without Words for cello and piano shone between Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello and Dvorak’s Piano Trio No. 3 in F Minor, and the three pieces related well, thematically, tonally, emotionally, and calling for similar technical virtuosity. An earlier performance took place Friday in Salem. St. Paul’s was packed, as reportedly, was Salem. Violinist Lucia Lin and cellist Jonathan Miller are members of the BSO, while pianist Diane Wash has a career as recitalist worldwide.”
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— Bettina Norton for Boston Musical Intelligencer 4.27.18
BAE Introduces Important New Weir Work
” The three musicians have performed together for decades, and it showed. Although most accomplished chamber music players can play well with little rehearsal, there still is something special, even magical, about longtime musical partnerships.”
“Judith Weir, renowned London-based composer (b. 1954) of Scottish ancestry, had never before written for cello with piano before Jonathan Miller commissioned her. The very resulting “Three Chorales for cello and piano,” will surely make a luminous and evocative addition to legions of cellists’ recitals.”
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— Susan Miron for Boston Musical Intelligencer 9.26.16
Unbeatable Choices from BAE
” One of the finest programs of the year featured consummate performances of Dvořák, Kurtág, Mozart, and Gershwin by the Boston Artists Ensemble. What could even be more surprising and satisfying than such a polychromatic, polyculture of chamber music-making? The strong turnout on a pristine Sunday afternoon acknowledged such.
“Sumptuous blend could be another way of praising BAE’s Mozart. So, too, could sustainability, in their ability to maintain an elevated vision yet always with the spirit of human endeavor, which places BAE’s performance of the quintet at the top of my list.”
Link to full review
— David Patterson for Boston Musical Intelligencer 4.18.16
“Judging by its January 10th concert, the Boston Artists Ensemble is serving up world class performances of chamber music”
…His aim was to provide the Boston area with top notch performances of chamber music, and this presentation more than met the challenge: it was full of bravado, virtuosity, subtlety, and charisma. If, for some reason, you were not pulled in by the Bartók, the Ravel composition, with its lush harmonic paradise, would be impossible to resist. As gorgeous as the work may be, it is no less technically demanding than the Bartók. The virtuosity of the performers turned sounding beautiful into an easy task. Link to full review
— Arts Fuse 1.15.16
“a sampler of some of the best quartet music ever produced south of the Rio Grande.”
The Quartet No. 1 of Alberto Ginastera was the imaginative closer. It all works wonderfully well in this piece, with its first movement offering gaucho swagger, the second a whirlwind of special effects (this time very effectively performed) including sul ponticello, sul tasto, saltando, col legno, you name it. The third is a night scene clearly out of the Hungarian’s playbook, but with distinctive Ginastera touches like the quartal harmony he used so effectively in the Variaciones; special kudos on the performances of Lin and Miller, gossamer and soulful respectively. The finale is rousing and galumphing, with some very hard edges indeed. A pizzicato section went very well, with no slack in the textural roughness.
— Boston Musical Intelligencer 11.11.15
“Pure joy to experience”
Listening to the Quartet in B-flat in this perspective reinforced my own sense that this quartet is one of Mozart’s most wondrous: cut-ins, harmonic parallelisms, abundant textures, polyrhythms, expanded cello writing, and meatier interior movements. The Boston Artists Ensemble (BAE) never appeared reluctant “to speak the truth” — what was in their hearts and spirited bows. Expression, at once formal and personal, was pure joy to experience.
— Boston Musical Intelligencer
“Putting the Chamber Back Into Chamber Music”
“These top-flight performers remind you what the experience of chamber music is supposed to be like. Played in this space with the full throated fervor and musicianly care the BAE players brought to it, Brahms’ Piano Quartet in C minor emerged as a virtual symphony for the living room, which was certainly the composer’s intent. In this intimate setting, when Miller played the arching tune of the andante, it was as if someone were confiding something important to you.” -— Boston Globe
”some of the most vibrant, warm-hearted music to be heard. All these players possess chops, beauty of tone, and active imaginations. Their sense of ensemble is simply superb.“
— Boston Globe
“Piano Trios Blend Sacred and Profane”
“The technical virtuosity was extraordinary. Both string players had dead-on intonation and seemed to breathe as one when they joined together. They played like intimate friends who are so in sync that they can finish each other’s sentences without hesitancy. ”
— Boston Globe
“Bold Vibrant Concert from Artists Ensemble”
“The Beethoven received a vibrant full-bodied reading. The adagio had an unmannered lyricism; the scherzo, heard in such close quarters, had just the kind of daredevil audacity the young Beethoven surely hoped it would.”
— Boston Globe
“Hub treated to rare BAE treat”
“If the measure of great chamber playing is the musical and spiritual union of the
players, the Mendelssohn was a great performance…his (Miller’s) fine ear allowed him to give color and expression to each and every note without a trace of ego.”
– Boston Herald