Classical Recording Foundation Honors 2012 Award Winners at Carnegie Hall, 11/20

CRF Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artists violinist Barbara Govatos and pianist Marcantonio Barone are being honored for their forthcoming recording of all of Beethoven’s Sonatas for Violin and Piano, to be released in December on Bridge Records. Barbara Govatos and Marcantonio Barone first encountered one another when, as teenagers, they won prizes in different divisions of the same concerto competition in Philadelphia. Their acquaintance was renewed by chance several years later when he delivered a message to her by telephone on behalf of a mutual friend, and they have performed chamber music concerts and sonata recitals together regularly since 1985. As a duo, they made their New York recital debut in 2000, performing the complete works for violin and piano by Brahms at Weill Recital Hall. Barbara Govatos holds the Wilson H. and Barbara B. Taylor chair of the first violin section of the Philadelphia Orchestra and was named the winner of the 2012 C. Hartman Kuhn Award for enhancing the standards and the reputation of the Fabulous Philadelphians. As a chamber musician, Govatos has collaborated with Emmanuel Ax, Radu Lupu, Riccardo Muti, Christopher Parkening, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and the Emerson String Quartet. She made her solo debut in Alice Tully Hall with the Juilliard Orchestra and has made appearances with the Dallas and Delaware Symphonies and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. Marcantonio Barone was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1962. He studied with Eleanor Sokoloff at the Curtis Institute of Music and with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. As a solo recitalist, Barone has performed for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and at the Metropolitan Musem in New York, the Wigmore Hall in London, and the Large Hall of the St. Petersburg Filarmoniya, among many other venues. In the 1980s and ’90s, he frequently performed as soloist with major orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he performs annually at the Delaware Chamber Music Festival, and as a member of the Lenape Chamber Ensemble, the mixed ensemble 1807 and Friends, and the Craftsbury Chamber Players. He has premiered solo piano works by David Finko, Ulysses Kay, Gerald Levinson, Philip Maneval, and George Rochberg. As a member of Orchestra 2001, he was the pianist for the first performances of all seven volumes of George Crumb’s monumental American Songbook and for the recordings of the volumes issued so far in Bridge Records’ George Crumb Edition.

CRF Award winner Gerald Ranck, harpsichordist, is being honored for his recording of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier by J. S. Bach, planned for eventual release on Cantilena Records as a 4-CD set. Ranck is making his new recording on three different instruments – harpsichord, fortepiano, and chamber organ – all of which were known to Bach. Ranck has given each prelude and fugue an assigned instrumentation based on its inherent musical style, and his own personal preference. Gerald Ranck was born in Pennsylvania and began piano studies at age six. He was a scholarship student of Jose Echaniz at the Eastman School of Music, before coming to New York City in 1961 to study the harpsichord with Sylvia Marlowe at the Mannes College. His New York debut was in 1967. In 1976 he gave the first performance on harpsichord of Bach's Art of Fugue, the same year in which he became the first ever harpsichord soloist to appear in Teheran. He has appeared to great acclaim in London's Wigmore Hall and at the Drottningholm Court Theater in Sweden. He has recorded for Soundspells (Bach flute sonatas with Samuel Baron), Cantilena (numerous CDs with Laurel Zucker), and Decca (with Andreas Scholl and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra). He is a founding member of the Strathmere Ensemble, and is a frequent guest soloist with the Orchestra of St Lukes, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, and the Metropolitan Opera Chamber Ensemble (complete Brandenburg Concerti with James Levine). He is the music director of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, a position held since 1984.