Sunday, May 3, 2026
4:00 – 5:30 PM

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church
2 Revolutionary Road
Ardsley, New York

Parking is available onsite but is limited and requires the use of stairs. We recommend carpooling if possible, and/or arriving early. There is parking on adjacent streets.

The third chamber music concert of the 2025-2026 season will include three extraordinary string quintets and a world premiere. All pieces are known as “viola” quintets, in that they are written for a typical string quartet configuration [two violins, viola, and cello] with an additional viola. This type of scoring allows for soaring melodies in all registers and complex inner voices.

Mozart’s Quintet No 5 in D Major was written just one year before his death and is widely considered to be one of his final chamber masterpieces. Mendelssohn’s Quintet in Bb major was also written towards the end of his life- two years before his death- and wasn’t published until a number of years after his death. In Brahms’ own words in a letter to Clara Schumann he stated that it “is one of [his] finest works”. This piece is often called the  “Spring” quintet, particularly apt to our May concert.

The world premiere is a quintet commissioned for this concert from Manhattan School of Music composer and Ossining resident David Macdonald. It is a four movement work based on four different hymn tunes. Some in our audience will remember his music from our original performance piece “Braiding” performed in 2018.

ABOUT THE MUSICIANS

Muneko Otani [violin] As the first violinist of the Cassatt String Quartet Muneko Otani has appeared in the US, Canada and Mexico as well as in Europe and Asia. Major venues have included Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Bastille Opera House. The quartet has over 40 recordings, and were named three times to Alex Ross’ 10 best classical recordings of the year in The New Yorker magazine. Her numerous awards with the Cassatt Quartet include the Wardwell Chamber Music Fellowship at Yale (where they served as teaching assistants to the Tokyo Quartet), two top prizes at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, two CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, a recording grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and commissioning grants from Meet the Composer and the National Endowment for the Arts. As a chamber musician, she has collaborated with Paul Katz, Colin Carr, Ursula Oppens, Eliot Fisk, Walter Trampler, Martin Lovett, Marc Johnson, Kazuhide Isomura, Masuko Ushioda and Lawrence Lesser.

Miranda Cuckson [violin] delights audiences with her playing of a great range of music and styles, from older eras to the very newest creations. An internationally acclaimed soloist and collaborator, violinist and violist, she performs at venues large and small, from casual spaces to concert halls. She has been a featured artist at the Berlin Philharmonie, Suntory Hall, Casa da Musica Porto, Teatro Colón, Cleveland Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Strathmore, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music, 92nd St Y, National Sawdust, and the Ojai, Bard, Marlboro, Portland, Music Mountain, West Cork, Grafenegg, Wien Modern, Frequency, and LeGuessWho festivals. Miranda made her Carnegie Hall debut playing Piston’s Concerto No. 1 with the American Symphony Orchestra. She recently premiered Georg Friedrich Haas’ Violin Concerto No. 2 at the Vienna Musikverein and with orchestras in Japan, Portugal and Germany, and the Violin Concerto by Marcela Rodriguez with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México. Miranda is a member of interdisciplinary collective AMOC and director of non-profit Nunc. Her albums include Világ featuring the Bartok Solo Sonata; the Ligeti, Korngold and Ponce concertos; music by 20th century American composers; Bartók/Schnittke/Lutoslawski sonatas; Melting the Darkness, an album of microtonal/electronic music; and Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, named a Recording of the Year by the New York Times. She studied at Juilliard and is on faculty at Mannes School of Music.

Lawrence Neuman [viola] has been a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1991. Before coming to Chicago he was violist with the Miami String Quartet. As a chamber musician he frequently is heard throughout the Chicago area and has performed across the United States and in Europe. He has appeared at festivals and chamber music series in Boston, Marlboro, La Jolla, Madison, Napa, Portland and Davenport. Chamber music collaborators have included such artists as Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman, Yefim Bronfman, Lydia Artymiw, Gil Shaham and Aaron Rosand. During the 1998-99 season Neuman took a leave of absence from the CSO to serve as principal viola of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. For several years he has taught viola and chamber music at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

Daniel Panner [viola] enjoys a varied career as a performer and teacher. As violist of the Mendelssohn String Quartet, he has concertized extensively throughout the United States and Israel. He has performed at music festivals in Marlboro, Tanglewood, Aspen, and on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, and has collaborated with members of the Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, and Juilliard String Quartets. As a member of the Whitman String Quartet, Panner received the 1998 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award. He currently teaches at The Juilliard School, the Mannes College of Music, SUNY Stonybrook, and the Queens College Conservatory of Music. He has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Musicians from Marlboro, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He has served as the principal violist of such orchestras as the New York City Opera and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. An active performer of new music, he is a member of Sequitur and the Locrian Ensemble and has performed as a guest artist with Speculum Musicae, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and Transit Circle.

Peter Seidenberg [cello and Artistic Director] “Totally enchanting, inspired performances, brimming with natural, spontaneous musicianship”, raves Gramophone Magazine about cellist Peter Seidenberg. Mr. Seidenberg has played in major halls throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, and served as principal cellist with the Century Orchestra of Osaka. He was a founding member of the critically acclaimed Elements Quartet which created groundbreaking commissioning projects involving over 30 composers. He has collaborated with members of the Cleveland, Tokyo, Juilliard and Emerson Quartets and has participated in the Marlboro, Aspen, Caramoor, Casals and Norfolk festivals. Currently, he is the cellist for the Oracle Trio, the Queen’s Chamber Band, and the New York Chamber Soloists. Peter concertizes frequently in collaboration with pianist Hui-Mei Lin. The duo have performed together throughout the US to much acclaim.