Horowitz Center Playbills and Programs
From Mozart to Beethoven Faculty Concert
Sunday, October 19, 2025
4 p.m.
Smith Theatre
FEATURING
Wei-Der Huang, piano
I-Wen Tseng, piano
Ronald Mutchnik, conductor
The Orchestra
Violin 1
Sheng-Tsung Wang, concertmaster
Yi Hsin Cindy Lin
Linda Leanza
Cleveland Chandler
Brent Price
Donna Willingham
Violin 2
Celeste Blase, principal second
Melanie Kuperstein
Janet Kuperstein
Collette Wichert
Silva Boletini Shapiro
Viola
Julius Wirth Fuentes, principal
Nana Vaughn
Jackie Capecci
Marylin Mello
Cello
Peter Kibbe, principal
Lauren Weaver
Katy I-Hsuan Chiang
Double Bass
Broc Mertz, principal
Patrick Reynard
Flute
Kimberly Valerio, flute 1
Melissa Lindon, flute 2
Oboe
Mark Christianson, oboe 1
Amanda Dusold, oboe 2
Clarinet
David Drosinos, clarinet 1
Kyle Coughlin, clarinet 2
Bassoon
Terry Ewell, bassoon 1
Lynn Moncilovich, bassoon 2
French Horn
Adam Tillett, horn 1
Anthony Valerio, horn 2
Trumpet
Brent Flinchbaugh, trumpet 1
Josh Carr, trumpet 2
Timpani
Timothy McKay
PROGRAM
| Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467 | W. A. Mozart (1756-1791) |
| Allegro maestoso | |
| Andante | |
| Allegro vivace assai | |
| Wei-Der Huang, Piano Ronald Mutchnik, Conductor |
|
| Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37 | L. van Beethoven (1770-1827) |
| Allegro con brio | |
| Largo | |
| Rondo. Allegro – Presto | |
| I-Wen Tseng, Piano Ronald Mutchnik, Conductor |
|
Intermission
| Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36 | L. van Beethoven (1770-1827) |
| Adagio molto – Allegro con brio | |
| Larghetto | |
| Scherzo: Allegro | |
| Allegro molto | |
| Ronald Mutchnik, Conductor | |
ARTIST BIOS
An active member of the Music Teachers National Association, and Maryland State Music Teachers Association, Wei-Der Huang, received her Doctoral of Musical Arts degree at the University of Maryland at College Park. Huang holds a Master of Music degree and professional study diploma from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. Dr. Huang has studied with Hsueh Lee and Kuo-Shiang Kao, Solomon Mikowsky, Marc Silverman, Anne Koscielny, and Raymond Hanson.
Dr. Huang has performed as a soloist and a chamber musician at the Hubbard Recital Hall in New York, and several concert halls in the Baltimore/Washington area, including the Homer Ulrich Recital Hall, National Institute of Health's Masur Auditorium, the Montgomery College Concert Hall, the Mansion at Strathmore and the Sumner School Museum. In 2013, she was a featured pianist in a performance of Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos with Sun Taipei Philharmonic at the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. Dr. Huang is a founder of the Octtava Piano Duo, which has performed at the College of Southern Maryland and various venues in the United States and Taiwan.
Dr. Huang previously held the Music Director and Organist position at Grace Lutheran Church in Astoria, New York. Huang is currently a music faculty member, piano Coordinator, and Coordinator of Howard Community College Concert Series, Maryland, and the Music Director and Organist at the Greenbelt Community Church in Greenbelt, Maryland.
I-Wen Tseng holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Piano Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, where she was mentored by esteemed teachers such as Dr. Solomon Mikowsky and Dr. Marc Silverman. She also received coaching from renowned chamber musicians like Ani Kavafian and Isidore Cohen. As a performer, Tseng has appeared as a soloist and collaborative pianist in New York City, New Jersey, and Maryland, and was honored with the Best Bach Performance award at the Washington International Pianist Artists Competition.
Dedicated to continuous improvement in piano pedagogy and technique, Tseng embraced the Taubman Approach, a method designed to help pianists play with greater ease and avoid injury. She is a certified Taubman Approach Instructor, having trained under Robert Durso, and she actively promotes this technique through workshops and talks in Maryland and Taiwan.
In addition to maintaining her private studio, Tseng is affiliated with several professional organizations, including the Music Teachers National Association, Maryland State Music Teachers Association, Greater Columbia Music Teachers Association, and Howard County Music Teachers Association. She also serves on the piano faculty at Howard Community College and The Music Institute.
Ronald Mutchnik, violinist and conductor, graduated from the University of Maryland Baltimore County summa cum laude, where he studied with Robert Gerle. While there, he won the Baltimore Music Club and Baltimore Musicians competitions. He earned his master's degree from the New England Conservatory, studying with Joseph Gingold. He continued postgraduate studies at Tel Aviv University in Israel with Yair Kless. He is active as an orchestral violinist, chamber musician, recitalist, soloist, and conductor, and has been serving as concertmaster of the Columbia Pro Cantare for over 30 years. He was with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra as its Assistant Concertmaster for 36 years, and has performed as soloist with numerous orchestras in Maryland including the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Columbia Orchestra and the Frederick Symphony. He appeared in the film Washington Square, performing his own composition and in concerts with Smokey Robinson and Dionne Warwick. He was the concertmaster at Pat Sajak's wedding in Annapolis. As a chamber musician, he has appeared on many local series, including those of Music in the Great Hall, UMBC, Goucher College, and An Die Musik.
He has taught violin privately in Howard County for more than 40 years, and also taught the Strings Method Course at Towson University. He produced a music education video, Posture and Balance - The Dynamic Duo, and also toured Korea, coaching and performing chamber music, and was a past President of the Maryland/DC chapter of the American String Teachers Association (ASTA). He received the ASTA Maryland/DC chapter’s String Teacher of the Year Award twice, and has given presentations at ASTA’s National Conference several times (most recently in 2025) as well as at the Music Teachers’ National Association’s (MTNA) National Conference. He is also a past recipient of the Howard County’s Outstanding Artist Award (the “Howie”). In 2022, after an intensive course, he became the first licensed Body Mapping Educator for upper strings in Maryland. (Body Mapping is a discipline designed to help musicians avoid pain, injury, and limitation in their profession.) He has made Body Mapping presentations for the local MD/DC Chapter of ASTA as well as at UMBC, the Seventh Day Adventist University, and the Peabody Conservatory.
As a conductor, Mr. Mutchnik led the Howard County Concert Orchestra (Howard County’s first professional chamber orchestra) for a decade. He is a founding member of the Sundays At Three chamber music series, now in its 31st year, and has been its artistic director since 1999. He performs on the series nearly every year as a member of ensembles ranging from duos and trios to quartets and quintets.
PROGRAM NOTES
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467
We often hear familiar classical music themes in movies, shows, and advertisements. One of the most artful and famous uses is (or was) the slow movement of the Piano Concerto No. 21 in the Swedish film Elvira Madigan (1967). Just a short phrase of the music took on a life of its own outside of both the film and the concerto and was soon ubiquitous in popular culture. Recordings even appeared of something called Mozart’s “Elvira Madigan Concerto.” This snippet of music became a symbol, sometimes ironically, of the mannered and formal 18th century, of Mozart, of wealth and aristocracy, but also of the decadent, prim, or prudish. Although associated with less desirable or unsavory topics, the purity of Mozart’s music survived.
Mozart more or less invented the modern instrumental concerto (‘modern’ meaning from Beethoven forward to today). A prodigy on both the violin and keyboard, in his earliest years Mozart modified the ancient form of the concerto grosso (like Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos) to give himself a larger solo role. By adding in the multi-movement forms and orchestral colors of the symphony, the virtuoso concerto was born. Mozart ended up preferring the piano to the violin, and so he wrote a total of 28 piano concertos to showcase his talent. They also provided excellent sources of income.
The Concerto No. 21 is in the usual three movements, fast—slow—fast. The second movement is a precursor to the instrumental arias that Beethoven wrote, and the third a chirpy and folksy rondo.
Improvisation played a much larger role in the concerto in Mozart’s time than ours. Except for the rare works written for performers other than himself, the piano part in some of the surviving concerto manuscripts is sketchy at best. Mozart did not need it written out, and improvising was what audiences came to hear. In fact, between movements of a concerto Mozart might improvise a whole composition based on his own ideas or a theme suggested on the spot by the audience. Today, improvisation is usually limited to the two cadenzas at the end of the first and last movements. Notes by David Gilbert
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 IN C minor, op. 37
Beethoven’s early fame came not only from his compositions, but his brilliance as a pianist. Arriving in Vienna at age 22, he displaced the reigning pianists of Vienna’s society, even engaging in piano duels. One of his defeated rivals exclaimed, “Ah, Beethoven is no man, he is the devil. He will play us all to death.” His five piano concerti were written not only as examples of his musical thought and innovation, but as vehicles for his own virtuosity. Due to his rapidly failing health, he was only able to perform the first four.
Although Beethoven moved to Vienna to study with Haydn, his lessons were few and unproductive. Still venerating Haydn’s works, Beethoven essentially adhered to the classical structure, yet infused his own compositions with Mozart’s melodies, rhythms and phrasings. Professionally, things were going well at this time and his work on the third piano concerto was spread over 3 years and not transcribed for another year. At the concerto’s debut, Beethoven may have completed the solo part as he played, his score containing only some scribbled and unintelligible notes.
His first concerto in a minor key, the Third follows the standard 3-movement structure, but is notable as the first to sound like the mature Beethoven. Deemed ‘intense, dramatic and inventive,” the concerto begins his departure from tradition. The concerto also marked an important technological advancement in the piano itself, adding keys to stretch the piano’s range which Beethoven used fully.
An aggressive opening features the orchestra at length before the piano entrance. The initial military, march-like theme moves to a singing melody as the piano reworks its own version of the themes.
The second atmospheric Largo begins with the piano alone in a hushed, romantic mood. After a cadenza, the movement dies away until a surprise fortissimo chord. Beethoven innovates with a new kind of slow movement, adding harp-like arpeggios for the piano.
The final movement opens with a piano solo in a jaunty gypsy rondo. The energetic, dancelike coda moves into a concluding Presto, ending in high spirits. Notes by Karin Anderson-Sweet
Beethoven Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36
Shortly after completing his first symphony in 1800, Beethoven began planning his second, but it was not composed for the most part until the summer and early fall of 1802. By then, Beethoven's problems with his hearing had become acute.That spring his doctors had sent him to Heiligenstadt, a quiet village away from the noise of Vienna, and it was there that he completed this symphony in October of 1802. Earlier that month, he had written his famous Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter of profound despair over his increasing deafness, in which he contemplated suicide. But this symphony is not a dark work. Indeed, sections of it have often been characterized as "sunny." Nonetheless, it proved to be somewhat more difficult for audiences than its predecessor.
The premiere took place at the Theater an der Wien, April 5, 1803 in a concert which also included the Symphony No. 1, Beethoven's oratorio Christus am Ölberge, and the Piano Concerto No. 3 with the composer as soloist. Response to the Second Symphony was mixed. Particularly difficult and controversial was the finale with its jagged, eccentric theme, but throughout the work Beethoven is pushing the Classical idiom beyond that of his first symphony. While there were those who felt that this was a great work that would outlive many of the more fashionable works of the day, there were also those who were put off by it. One critic wrote that Beethoven's "anxiety to achieve something novel and surprising was much too evident" and that "the whole thing is too long, and overly-artificial in places." The Finale was called "a repulsive monster, a wounded, tail-lashing serpent, dealing wild and furious blows as it stiffens into its death agony at the end."
The autograph of this symphony, like that of the First Symphony is lost, and there are no other manuscript sources for it. That means that, for this work as well as for its predecessor, we must rely on the earliest printed edition, which, although it was published during the composer's lifetime, was most likely prepared without his involvement or guidance. Since that early edition has been the basis of a long performing tradition, it is interesting to see recent efforts to take a fresh, critical look at that edition, at the apparent errors in it, and at the publisher's corrections. Notes by Martin Pearlman
HCC CONCERT SERIES
Hsien-Ann Meng, Director, HCC Concert Series
Bill Gillett, Chair, Performing Arts
HOROWITZ CENTER STAFF
Janelle Broderick - Director
Jessica Chaney - Content Coordinator
A Lorraine Robinson - Production Manager
John Elder - Technical Director
Darius McKeiver - Business Associate
Linwood Milan – Technical Coordinator
Eric Moore - Production Electrician
Mark Smedley - Associate Technical Director
Julie Via - Audience Services Manager
Bill Watson – Gallery Manager and Curator
SPECIAL THANKS
This performance is made possible through generous support from the Galbraith-Winer Family Trust Fund and the Maryland State Arts Council.
